Author: Vasik Rajlich
Date: 16:18:07 01/29/06
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On January 29, 2006 at 10:42:03, Robert Hyatt wrote: >This reminds me of a "hobby" of mine, playing blackjack. > >Card counters often discuss the many "basic strategy departure index plays" and >ask "how important is it to learn the indexes for the uncommon plays like when >to double 8 vs 6 and the like?" > >The answer is in two parts: > >(1) the hands are not very common, which means playing them correctly or >incorrectly will not have a great influence on your long-term winning edge; but > >(2) when the situation comes up, and you have a big bet on the table because of >the positive count, suddenly that "not very important play" can be the >difference between a couple of hundred bucks and zero. > >So while they are not used often, when they are used it is sometimes critical. >I have seen Crafty win many KRP vs KR endings where its internal evaluation >thinks it is a draw because the enemy king is too close to the promotion square, >but due to a subtle rook move it is exactly one square too far away. This is >nice to know if you enter some long combination where the final position is the >resulting KRP vs KR ending, and you just traded everything away in a winning >position to reach what you hope is a really winning position. I agree that tablebases are nice to have. Sometimes they help, and they never hurt. If only every engine change was like this :) However, it looks like they help too rarely to show up on the Elo charts. Vas
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