Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 10:54:08 02/06/03
DISCLAIMER: I am not a chess grandmaster and do not have any first hand knowledge about what GMs do in the privacy of their own homes. Anybody who has played around with chess engines and chess databases, will have experienced many cases where the chess engine wants to play a new move in the opening. By "new move," is meant a move which does not appear in the games of the database. These new moves may or may not be any good. Believe it or not, there was a time when chess engines, and electronic databases, did not exist at all! [This may come as a shock to many.] It seems reasonable to assume that GMs have always devoted a lot of time to developing their opening repertoires. What do they do, specifically, in the process of developing their repertoires? One thing seems obvious. They come up with good new moves, never played before, [i.e. TNs] and then prepare lines from that move which will give them an advantage over their opponents. Ideally, the unsuspecting opponent would have to refute the TN over-the-board with the clock running. A good TN would be one which presents very difficult problems for the opponent, so that it would be very likely that the opponent would go astray in the ensuing positional &/or tactical complications. It also seems reasonable that GMs would be aware of the possibility that their opponents might prepare TNs. One must surmise, then, that GMs not only prepare TNs for their own use but also spend some time in identifying possible TNs which might be used by their opponents. I would expect that each new opening line a GM plans to use would be exhaustively analyzed by that GM, both using conventional methods and using computers. For example, the GM's computer might be tasked with the overnight analysis of a line as if it were a game. The chess engine would be given plenty of time to analyze each move. New moves for the opponent identified by the computer, including new "second best" moves, would then be studied by the GM in preparation for coming events so that the GM would be prepared for potential TNs played by the opponent. As an example, it was noted that Kasparov sprung a TN on DJ in the fourth game, and DJ then surprisingly sprung a "counter-TN" against Kasparov, effectively turning the tables on Kasparov. Kasparov then spent a long time trying to figure out what to do and finally had to settle for a draw with White. It was Kasparov who had to try to find a refutation to his opponent's TN over-the-board with the clock running. Actually quite funny! TNs really do make a huge difference in the serious games of the top GMs. When preparing his TN, Kasparov had to look at all plausible responses by his opponents. It is remarkable that DJ seems to have come up with a refutation to Kasparov's TN. But was it really the chess engine that did that? Could it be that the people who made DJ's opening book had already identified Kasparov's TN and prepared for it, providing a refutation in the opening book? Bob D.
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