Author: chandler yergin
Date: 19:06:15 05/17/05
Go up one level in this thread
On May 17, 2005 at 21:45:48, Komputer Korner wrote: >It is incredible that once a dishonest or false idea takes hold in the >marketplace, how very difficult it is to overturn it. Once it becomes a sacred >cow, most people just accept it on faith. Thus unfortunately is the case with >backsolving. Let us suppose that you have either bought, inherited or downloaded >an electronic openings book without any annotations. How are you going to know >what lines will be in your repertoire/ After soul searching and examining lots >of the opening lines, and other advice, you decide to play lines that fit your >style. However within these lines there are many options at each move node. Let >us say that you have one important position with 4 move choices at the 4th move. >How are you going to get these multi move choices annotated so that you will >know which lines to memorize for (over the board) or which lines to play for >internet or correspondence chess. If you can't afford GM or IM analysis of your >repertoire and don't trust your own analysis, you are left with either having an >engine analyze the opening nodes or you backsolve. If you backsolve you are >forced to put in a lot of extra move lines because backsolving depends on an >ending result or an evaluation far up the tree(deep into the game). So if you >are a committed backsolver, you accept this and you search for a lot of GM games >in your specialty opening repertoire to add to your opening book. You will have >to add an evaluation to the end of each one of these lines and then you >backsolve. However, there is an average of 3 positions in every GM game where >the assessment of the game is overturned (in other words, the assessment goes >from advantage from one side to the other or an equal position goes into an >advantage to one side or Vice Versa). This means that you are never sure that >the result really represents the value of the opening node line that you want >to have annotated and that backsolving indeed gives you as it backs up the >result evaluation to the opening node position. So you cheat a bit; you don't >put the complete GM games. You put in the 1st 30 moves or so and then have an >engine evaluate the final positions after 30 moves or wherever the engines give >a definite advantage to one side and then backsolve again. There is a separate >problem with equal and unclear positions but more on that later. However, you >wasted engine midnight analysis sessions on the 30th move analysis which you >probably will never get to play as your opponent will have veered off on another >line far sooner. The point is that backsolving is doing its annotation work (on >positions that you have your engine analyze) far up the tree (beyond the 30th >move) on positions that you will never encounter. Even if you back that up and >only analyze positions after the 20th move and then backsolve you will still >never encounter those positions in a real game. Opening study really means >opening study. It doesn't mean ending study. It doesn't mean mid game study. Of >course you should do some of those as well but only after you have a solid >repertoire. You are far better off putting your engines to work on that 4th move >(in other words study openings the old fashioned way). Now for the unclear >lines that the backsolvers 30th move analysis showed that I promised to talk >about earlier. These lines represent a special problem. If you backsolve them, >then you haven't really accomplished anything because the opening node that is >the ultimate target of your backsolving has your 4 opening choices without any >annotations before you started backsolving. Having no annotations is really the >fact that you don't know what is going on therefore they are unclear. So let >us say that 2 of the lines are backsolved to be unclear and one line was large >advantage for one side and the other line was backsolved to be equal. So the >only one we haven't talked about is the equal line. It has the same problem as >the unclear line. Since most games have 3 position overturns as explained above >you are not really sure whether the line was always equal from the 4th move on >or else it became an advantage and then was turned back into equality because of >mistakes. if every game was played perfectly, then backsolving would be worth >it. However that is not the case. So to sum up, put your effort into evaluating >opening positions and opening strategies and traps. There is no magic bullet >that will solve chess and backsolving doesn't solve anything. Total gibberish! I don't believe you are a Chess Player!
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