Author: Andrei Fortuna
Date: 02:00:16 07/06/03
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On July 06, 2003 at 01:26:37, margolies,marc wrote: >about "Didactic"....it is a word about instruction. When Nimzovitch wrote "My >System," He made his living a Chess Teacher in Denmark, far from his native >Riga,Latvia. Therefore I mean telling a pupil to get his pieces out early is not >meant as a hard and fast rule for very experienced players in all positions but >rather as a learning principle, disederatum if you will. Funny how some GMs think that Nimzovitsch himself didn't play according to his own rules in some of his games. I.e. preaching about central knights but in King's Gambit playing pragmatically Nh4 and saying "in this case the knight belongs there". >My original post does expand on my view of this so it doesn't bear repeating. > >How to define good squares programmaticaly. ?? >A classic teaching method involves calculating how many possible moves that a >minor piece can make from a given square as an idication of the relative power >of that piece... to convince a young player not to put Bishops or Knights on >a1,a8,h1,h8 through an enumeration process. Of course this is an extreme >example, yet we can use it as a paradigm of piece activity for good squares. That's mobility. To quote Mr. Hyatt's opinion on this subject "is mobility the 'cause' of a good position or is it simply the 'effect' of a good position? I believe the latter is closer to the truth. Otherwise, moves like a4 would be _good_ moves because they instantly improve both the real and potential mobility of the a1 rook." >Another 'good square' issue which can be calculated is how many squares are >controlled by a piece on a certain square. Perhaps a stochastic process can also >be used... certain squares are known to work well for certain pieces in specific >openings based on the common plans and themes of that opening. While an eval >function does not need to know plans, squares can be weighted within opening >selections after aggregate analysis of the sort available using chessbase8 >operating on a large high quality database. Easy to say. But what games to include to make this database ? Even GMs make some blunders in their games and opening theory changes (a bit) in time. Even if you make this good squares table based on openings : you are still saying that in some openings some squares are just very good for some pieces, and I disagree with this because it doesn't account for the placement of other pieces. For example what in an opening 'X' it is found that knight's position on f3 is good, but this because in the analysed games the knight protects the pawns on d4 and e5, and in your game you place the knight on f3 but there are no pawns on d4 or e5 so it doesn't have the same role as in that opening. Maybe this is not a very good example but it does show what I mean above. No argue that piece squares tailored to openings would work better than plain universal piecesquares for piece development. Though I think must be better ways, as piecesquares don't take into account piece cooperation, they are too "single minded". >About 'Pawn Screens'... you are welcome to disagree with their worth because it >requires technique to use them, we have to allow for the possibilty of failure >in any chess adventure, gambits, pawn screens, whatever.....but I do not see >that as a counter argument to their value just because they don't work for you. I didn't disagree with pawn screens and I certainly didn't say that they don't work for me. I just said that sometimes they crumble to dust. I should have added that in some occasions I found them useful. >Regarding "no eval necessary".... if an examination of a few more plies prove >the answer then the advantage of programming a special idea might be marginal. Ok, now I understand your previous sentence. I don't agree with it, as sometimes good squares are from where the pieces controls some squares on the board, without immediate gain to be found in a few plies of search. Andrei
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