Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 14:39:32 04/14/04
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On April 14, 2004 at 15:42:17, Sam Lloyd wrote: >On April 14, 2004 at 11:12:08, Stephen Ham wrote: > >>Hi Terry, >> >>I agree with you and am glad that 13 a3! interests you as well. >> >>As you know, I'm a correspondnece chess player with a technical style of play >>(tactics aren't my strength - especially against machines!). So I've had fun >>testing engines to see if any of them will select my purely human moves. So far, >>there's been very little acceptance of my positional/technical move tests by the >>engines. The closest correlation seems to be with Rebel 12. In one of my tests, >>it was the only engine to select the move that I played. When I fed my move into >>the other engines that didn't select my move, their evaluations eventually rose >>to a favorable figure. So it's clear that engines in general won't find the >>"positional" moves that I think are best. But when forced to play the move, they >>eventually learn to like the resulting positions, although the evaluation may >>not be as high as the original PV for that engine. >> >>So I think it would be fun for you and other engine experts to test 13 a3! to >>see if any engine selects it. Since the justifications behind 13 a3! are deep >>(they certainly are for humans), you may need to allow 24-hours or so for the >>test. >> >>Thanks again for mentioning this game, Terry. It is indseed rich in test >>positions, both tactically and of a positional/technical nature. I'll try to >>Rebel 12 on this position and will report what it selects. >> >>Stephen >> >Yes, Rebel 12 is good choice, I would think, and I may run Hiarcs 9 and compare. > >Terry Hi Terry, I've thought about offering some of my "positional" tests here, all based upon my correspondence games. But I ruled against it because I'd like to be "correct" when posting in public on chess. By that I mean that tactical tests are clearly "correct", like the position that you posted, because there's an established and unquestioned "correct" solution with tactics - either it succeeds, or it doesn't. Instead, positional moves are often so long-range that it's difficult to prove that one move is indeed positionally best. In short, one often can't demonstrate forced wins from such positional tests (e.g. 13 a3! in your Fischer game). So my test positions are subjective, based upon my feelings and "knowledge" of my CC games. Somebody else may have a totally different perception of the position. Then who's the correct one? The possible answers are: me, the other person, or we're both wrong! Here's a couple examples of my "positional" tests from my CC games. These examples were used in my ChessCafe.com review of Shredder 7. http://chesscafe.com/text/review365.pdf By the way, I won my CC game against FIDE IM Manea and my 17 Nd3! was a vital part of my winning meaneuvering. Stephen
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