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Subject: Re: A question about unwanted transpositions in the opening book

Author: Alessandro Scotti

Date: 13:52:01 10/08/04

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On October 07, 2004 at 18:55:48, Dieter Buerssner wrote:

>... snip
>
>Assume your opening book has for example the following line.
>
>1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5 e6
>
>You also have other lines for black with 1. d4 e6. You play with black. After 1.
>d4, you play sometimes Nf6, and sometimes e6. The game goes:
>
>1. d4 e6 2. Bg5??
>
>You try all legal moves in this position. And when trying 2...Nf6, you find that
>the position is in the book. So you will play out of book Nf6??, now, instead of
>Qxg5. Peter Schäfe mentioned, that one should check, that the current position
>is also in the book, and if not, search instead of looking for book moves. And
>in this small example, it is not in the book, yet. But assume you add another
>line to the book.
>
>1. d4 e6 2. Bg5 Qxg5.
>
>Now the position after Bg5 is in the book. The position based book move
>searching algorithm will find 2 moves, now after 1. d4 e6 2. Bg5?? - Qxg5 and
>Nf6. A typical algorithm will play half of the time the stupid move Nf6. I
>think, this clearly shows, that a position only based book will not work
>reliably in general. In engine matches, this may not be very obvious, because
>engines will not make such gross errors like Bg5?? typically. But more subtle
>cases are possible.
>
>... snip

Thanks Dieter, this example is really interesting... it seems that one of the
nice features of position-based books (transposition) can also become its
biggest defect...



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