Author: Jon Dart
Date: 17:12:06 03/07/04
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On March 07, 2004 at 16:46:28, Andrew Williams wrote: > Speaking of book issues, I have been experimenting with >an improved "preferred" book for PostModernist. I have essentially got rid of >the lines which I had been adding because I think PM has done Ok with them at >ICC. Instead I have been inserting "bog-standard" lines. All this was done on >Peter Berger's advice. The results have been *ASTONISHING*. I rather like tinkering with the opening book, so I do it quite a lot. If I spent the time actually improving the engine I've spent on the book, I'd probably have a computer chess champion by now ;-). But it's a hobby, so I do what I like. Besides observing behavior on ICC I also run auto-play matches on a spare matchine and look for opening "busts" or interesting novelties. Occasionally I run a match from a fixed opening position if I suspect there's some problem with the book for a particular line (for example, I did this for the Caro-Kann Advance a while back). Lately my opinion has been that a smaller book is better, because it seems large PGN collections always have some bad lines in them and win/loss or frequency data doesn't necesssarily eliminate them. If you have a smaller book and use it a lot, you have a chance to find really bad opening ideas and weed them out. I don't try to encourage any particular opening "style", but I set most of the gambits to "never play": for example, King's Gambit as White, Benko Gambit as Black. This is just based on experience. If the opponent follows "book" exactly then these openings are playable, but I think the computer doesn't cope with them well if someone deviates in the opening. --Jon
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