Author: William Penn
Date: 05:21:18 04/20/04
Go up one level in this thread
On April 19, 2004 at 21:12:40, Mark Ryan wrote: >On April 19, 2004 at 18:15:53, Stephen Ham wrote: > >>On April 19, 2004 at 16:17:37, Mark Ryan wrote: >> >>>Hi Stephen and others: >>> >>>Which chess engines are most likely to be used by correspondence chess players? >>>Which engines are used to check for tactical shots, which for positional play, >>>which for the endgame, which for opening theory? >> >>Hi Mark, >> >[snip] >>Mark, you asked about using an engine for opening theory. I'm not sure what you >>mean. Do you mean to say that one uses the engine to test book lines? If so, >>then I'd again speculate that engine use varies depending upon the nature of the >>position being tested. I've done this myself. I play the Dragon Sicilian as >>Black, but I don't think I'm a top-notch tactician. So I sometimes test my >>"TN's" against Shredder 8, just to see if there's any merit to my ideas. But >>while I like its calculating power in sharp positions, I never trust its >>evaluation. I always have to evaluate the position myself. >> >[snip] >>All the best, >>Stephen > >Actually I was thinking as follows: A chess player can study the "Encyclopedia >of Chess Openings", or "Modern Chess Openings" (MCO), or "Boris Badenuf's Sneaky >Opening Traps". Most chess engines have a unique opening book. Basically I was >wondering if any correspondence players find any chess engine's opening book >useful as a reference, in the same way that MCO might be useful. > >Mark Yes, openings books that come with chess engines are useful as reference - but only as reference! No self-respecting CC player would ever let any opening book make the decision automatically (without further human evaluation). That just wouldn't work very well in top level CC competition. In that regard I would define "top level CC competition" to begin at approximately ICCF Elo 2450. In other words those rated 2450+ are probably contributing significant human brain power to their games, and not relying totally on chess engines. The other side of that coin is that the best engines can achieve about ICCF Elo 2450 without human involvement in the decision making process. Of course that's just my informed "best guess", but imagine that I'm not too far wrong. Otherwise, again in top level CC competition, he who relies on only one engine is handicapped significantly. It is necessary to become expert with at least 2-3 top engines IMHO, because... They often disagree in complex positions, then the human must decide which move is correct, or come up with something more innovative with human brain power. It is still very much a close interaction between humans and computers at all levels of CC. They have taken over the game. WP
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