Author: Christoph Fieberg
Date: 16:15:51 05/19/99
I am convinced that with a more extensive use of the available chess engines on exploring opening moves the whole theory could be rewritten and surprising new moves could be discovered. If you let the computers calculate from the beginning just the 2 best moves in each position for each side you will arrive at more than 1 billion positions after the 15th move (2^30 = 1,073,741,824 positions)! That are 100 times more positions than the largest opening books have and yet it would be a very limited book because some of the most popular lines would not be covered (e.g. after the 1th move you could arrive - depending on your engine and time allowed for calculation - at the following four positions: 1.e4 e5; 1.e4 e6; 1.d4 d5; 1.d4 Sf6 from which the tree would expand. In this case you would miss the Sicilian completely). And if you would take the 3 best moves you would arrive at 205,891 billion positions after the 15th move!! I think it would be worth to let the computers analyse as much as possible and probably it would be necessary to organise a search via internet to have the greatest benefit from their anlysis power and to achieve as much analysis as possible. Let’s say it would be necessary to let the computer calculate at least 1 hour to find the two best moves than 61,287 years would be necessary to reach 1 billion positions. Or 61,287 chess enthusiasts would have to let their computers analyse one full year. A daunting task! Christoph Fieberg
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