Author: jefkaan
Date: 07:02:58 05/17/05
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So.. Komputer Korner is back again apparently.. Well.. backsolving imho is a way to arrive at a better opening repertoire; it's just a minimax instead of an alfa/beta, but while retrieving pre-evaluated positions from disc it's fast anyway, so there's no need for alfa-beta, except when you want to reduce disk space; which you can do anyway once you have determined your repertoire; read eg. Steve Giddins 'How to choose an opening repertoire'. In ChessAssistant 7, 8, etc you can make books based on a combination of minimax (backsolving) and statistics, and some GM evaluations as well; that's the best way to determine good book moves; ChessBase program use mostly the statistical results (eg 1 d4 56 %) and that is simply not good enough, especially not when playing unorthodox openings. while good book moves are not so important for average players, they are important for GM's or strong computer programs, that's obvious. Vincent D already has pointed out a number of times the importance of a good book in computer chess tournaments, something which quite frequently is underestimated. Of course with simply backsolving you don't get a good book yet, you need a lot of fine tuning, and trying to adapt the book to the engine's playing style. When choosing a repertoire as a human player, it is not much different, read again Giddins i would say. His advice is basically: stick to your repertoire, make it sound and gradually improve it, and only experiment with gambits and so on against much weaker players. Needless to say i fully agree with him. Concluding: backsolving is just a computer chess method, its use indeed should not be overrated, but on the other hand, saying it's rubbish is like saying alfa/beta is rubbish, and you need to think like a Gm; or like 'Symbolic'.. (if you know what i mean) :)
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