Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 12:35:31 07/15/04
Go up one level in this thread
On July 14, 2004 at 03:49:34, Derek Paquette wrote: >On July 13, 2004 at 17:12:39, Peter Berger wrote: > >>The question raised at CCC by some was actually if the opening book of Crafty >>was "en par" with its opponents or if Crafty was "seriously crippled" by it. >>Let's take a look. >> >>Crafty played the following opponents in the tournament: Junior, Shredder, Deep >>Sjeng, ParSOS, Fritz, Falcon, Diep, IsiChess, Movei, The Crazy Bishop and >>FIBChess. >> >>An excellent opening for white would leave it out of book with an edge in a >>position it it supposed to understand, on the black site equality would be >>acceptable given there is some imbalance to work on and it is no dead draw. A >>fine opening is basically the same but slightly worse than excellent. >> >>This would mean excellent openings in games against Junior, Shredder, Fritz, >>Movei, The Crazy Bishop and FIBChess. Fine openings against ParSOS and Deep >>Sjeng. >> >>Openings against IsiChess and Diep did show some minor book problems - but both >>games were won by Crafty anyway, so they are partly irrelevant for the >>discussion. >> >>The opening against Falcon was fine too - we wanted to win this game, so Bb4 and >>Nd4 were not acceptable as being too drawish. Bd6 looks strange for the >>unaccustomed human eye, but it has been successfully introduced into grandmaster >>play some years ago. But even if it would be argued that this game led to an >>opening Crafty didn't understand too well ( although I wouldn't agree in this >>case) ; the game was actually won too. >> >>Crafty lost games against Junior, Fritz and ParSOS and drew against Shredder and >>Sjeng while winning the other games, which led to a dead tie with Fritz to the >>4th place with 7.0/11 and equal Buchholz. No loss of points in the tournament >>was due to a weakness in opening book, one might even slightly argue to the >>contrary thinking about some of the games. >> >>While I am very much open to criticism, there is simply no data to support it >>in this case. >> >>Of course Crafty's openings didn't always follow the latest hype in grandmaster >>chess and some mainlines were avoided. But this was done intentionally, mainly >>because Crafty does have some problems with middlegame tactics and king safety >>compaired to its main competitors and to emphazise its strength in endgame play. >>Another reason was of course the limitted time for preparation for the event. >>But I don't buy the argument that Crafty was in any way handicapped in this >>tournament. >> >>Talking about "crippled by book" - it might be worth some time to look at >>ParSOS's games ; that's what I would call a crippled book. Dead lost out of book >>against Fritz, The Crazy Bishop and Junior; in many other games questionable >>positions were reached. In the few games where it accidently reached reasonable >>positions ( which unfortunately included the game against Crafty :) ) it was a >>very strong contender - it just lost too many points on book. >> >>And whether taking part in the eternal Najdorf battle of book authors is >>objectively really a good idea - looking at the results of the games in the >>tournament it looks *much* more like a worse version of Russian roulette to me. >>The only program that never seemed to have book problems was actually Junior. >> >>Credit where credit is due: several opening ideas for Crafty and this event were >>burrowed from the recently released book "The Chess Advantage in Black and >>White: Opening Moves of the Grandmasters" by IM Larry Kaufman (Random House >>2004) after having been checked for usability and tactical oversights; else the >>short preparation time would have not been sufficient. It's a very good book in >>general IMHO and most probably the first book on openings co-authored by Junior, >>Fritz and Hiarcs (which sometimes make it a very funny read :) ). >> >>Yours sincerely >>Peter >> >>PS: Last message written in Ramat-Gan - will post it tonight at home :) > > >related or perhaps non related to the openning book, >list in order the most fear to the least worrisome of opponents you faced at >WCCC2004 I don't believe we "feared" anyone. We certainly had respect for the commercial programs and their books... > >this perhaps because of hardware, book, the software itself, > >who were you most worried about and who weren't you, >i am sure you worried about others more than some, it is only natural.
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