Author: Dagh Nielsen
Date: 05:39:03 11/19/05
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Dear JNoomen. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm in full agreement with what I understand as the main point: That the best course of action depends heavily on the circumstances. Let me add another similar point: The measurement of success ALSO depends heavily on the circumstances. Just like the "best move" depends on the opponent, the concept of a "strong book" depends on what is your measurement of success. I have been managing a book for play at playchess for a while now as hobby, and I often find myself confused about just what is my goal with the book. It started as a kind of vague challenge, how well could I profit from using good sources and time on analysis. Would my limited skills allow me to become "king of the hill", whatever that meant? But at the same time, I am heavily guided by interest in opening theory, and that interest doesn't cover all openings. So I quickly decided to focus almost all my work on a semi-rare Ruy Lopez line as black, intending to "perfect" play in that line. Either I could make it work, or if that failed, I would learn how to kill it and could use that as white, and move on (and on and on). So OK, I had a very detailed dead wood book on that opening, and I spent lots of time analysing critical variations. I have found many strong improvements now, and variations that are just simply difficult to play as white or black for an unprepared engine. And results have been good in the last big patch of games(like 62% with black on playchess, using only an AMD XP 2400). But it has also dawned upon me now: my opponents begin to avoid my "traps" (or lines that are simply not as good as public results had indicated). Maybe it would have been better not to play so many games and keep my analysis more secret? And then we are back to how we measure success. If my only goal was "peak performance" (like a tournament once in a while), I should probably keep my analysis and areas of investigation secret. But success could also be just to demonstrate in public that one can make a line work? Or to learn as much about an opening as possible? If that were the case, I should be happy to play lots of games and find out what problems my opponent book cookers are able to present me with. It would be similar to an arms race of analysis. Maybe the goal is to have fun THAT way? Also, in general, what kind of book would make you satisfied? A broad or a specialised book, an "impressive book" (whatever THAT would be), a book achieving high rating, a book finetuned to a specific engine, or a book that maybe works well as an engine neutral book? And another decision: do you want your book to save a slow computer or bad engine by going into drawish or safe variations, or do you want your book to enter complex positions where the fastest comp + engine could optimize its results? I think here also a good distinction is between semi-secret books that are effective partly thanks to them being secret, and then the concept of a "resilient book". A resilient book is a book you can't easily beat by preparing lines that would trap most engines. If you want to make a book intended for publication, you would probably want it to be as resilient as possible. But that would also mean that you may have to discard some sharp lines that are not thoroughly explored yet and vulnerable to cooked traps. Is that a compromise you are willing to make? So, all in all, there are many decisions to be made. The measurement of success is highly subjective and depends on the circumstances. Personally I have found book cooking a very funny hobby, and I would be very interested to learn what conclusions other people with this hobby have reached about the above questions. All the best, Dagh Nielsen
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