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Subject: Bookup's backsolving

Author: Komputer Korner

Date: 08:48:35 05/12/05


Mike Leahy of Bookup is still making his Backsolving claims on rgcc.Therefore I
feel compelled to expose his false claims.
Mike Leahy's claim for the miraculous effects of backsolving have been
exaggerated for the last 10 years. They were hype 10 years ago and the
backsolving claims are hype today. All backsolving does is automatically
attach an evaluation to each node in the Bookup book. That evaluation is
based on the evaluation at the node where you start the backsolving Ex;
30.Nxg6 mate and it backtracks up the tree to the node at the beginning
where you want the backsolving to end Ex: 12.Ng5 . I can't remember whether
you can specify the beginning node 12.Ng5 or whether you have to allow
backsolving right back to the 1st move. If you have to allow backsolving
right back to the 1st move then backsolving is less than useless because you
may not want to change the evaluations of the moves before the 12.Ng5 move.
However there may be other unplayed moves not in the tree path. Those good
unplayed moves are called novelties.  If any one of those is added to the
tree, then the preceding backsolving process is now uselesss and has to be
done again based on the new novelty. Therefore you are never certain if the
present line of play is good or not because even overnight analysis won't be
the final decision on the playability of a line. Backsolving's questionable
merit is that it automates the process of actually attaching an evaluation
at each node. However you don't really need to attach an evaluation at each
node. Simply manually attach an evaluation to the 12.Ng5  move based on the
overnight's analysis of the last move in the line 30.Nxg6. If 12.Ng5 is bad you
won't be
investigating any of the moves after 12.Ng5 anyway because you have decided
that 12.Ng5 won't be in your repertoire. If you do decide to investigate
moves in the 12.Ng5 line, you don't need automatic evaluations beside them
because you already have attached an evaluation to the 12.Ng5 move.
Backsolving is only beneficial to complete robot like idiots that can't
remember what line they are in at any particular moment of time. These robot
like idiots would need to have an evaluation at every possible node because
they are like an Alzheimer patient who would't be able to remember where
they are in the tree.  Backsolving adds an unnecessary amount of bytes to
the Bookup tree without any real merit.
Komputer Korner



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