Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 16:29:19 02/11/04
Tournaments are expensive and time-consuming and yet ratings and titles cannot be obtained without participation in rated tournaments [and/or matches]. This causes training for tournaments to be a rational undertaking. Why throw good money and valuable time away by going to a tournament unprepared? Better, would be to prepare extensively for each tournament. That is logical. Ideally, one would do several things in preparation for the next tournament. One of those things would be to play practice games against opponents who are typical of those to be one's opponents in the coming tournament. Generally, one's opponents in tournaments are HUMAN! Clearly, the best way to train for competition against human opponents would be to play against equivalent human training partners. Unfortunately, this is not an option for most of us, especially those who do not live in large metropolitan areas. The above leads to the obvious conclusion that computers should be used to emulate human opposition. I guess everybody knew this was the conclusion as soon as the title of this bulletin was seen. Everybody also knows that such chess computers do not exist. Yet. There is more, however. Human tournaments are not all the same strength and those seeking help with training are not all the same. The tournament preparation suitable for a GM is not the same as that for an IM and that for an IM is not the same as that for someone below the master level. The fact is that there is a wide range of strengths of the people who participate in tournaments. If it were possible to obtain a chess-playing program which could be set to some playing strength and also set to emulate human play, then the use of such programs would be used extensively world-wide by serious chessplayers for tournament preparation. I would be one of those. What is everybody waiting for? No one said it would be easy, but look at how popular [and maybe rich] a chess programmer could become if he/she were to produce the needed software [for a home PC]!!! : ) [Hint, hint, hint] Bob D.
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