Author: Steve Lopez
Date: 21:14:17 07/02/99
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On July 02, 1999 at 23:42:15, James T. Walker wrote: >However, if you play the moves Mel suggest, here is the problem: It's >true that exf6 e.p. is in the book. So next you play Nd6+ and Hiarcs starts >thinking since it's out of book and plays Bxd6. Right -- this is what threw me. Nd6+ is not in the book, but once you play it you wind up transposing into another line that *is* in the book but is marked as bad for Hiarcs. Evidently, the opening book author missed this, too. ;-) (It's not easy to catch every transposition). This is part of what makes chess so dang fascinating. We tend to learn openings by rote, as a series of moves, but it's actually a series of *positions*. Consequently, this makes learning and memorization a whole lot more difficult. I once had a friend who was very fond of the Bird Opening (1.f4), so I resolved to learn From's Gambit (1...e5) so I could clock him. We wound up facing each other in a tournament in a game where he had White. He played 1.f4 (of course), I tossed out 1...e5 and he responded with 2.e4 -- instant King's Gambit. Ain't it fun??? :-D >By the way, my Hiarcs did play some 1 b4, 1b3, 1 g3 moves when new, but after >losing most of them it hasn't played any of those opening move in the last 150 >games. So my advice to Mel is to beat it when it plays bad lines and it will >learn it's lesson and stop playing them. :-) Of course, one could always question whether or not those lines are objectively "bad". 1.b4 was a favorite of Tartakower, 1.b3 was a specialty of Bent Larsen, and 1.g3 can transpose into a number of lines (such as the King's Indian Attack or the Reti). It's possible that the book's author thought that Hiarcs could do well in these openings and included them for that reason. This isn't unheard of for computer programs. I remember an old program called WinChess that played these hypermodern lines almost exclusively (which is how I learned to face them as Black). The other method for making Hiarcs steer clear of these openings (in addition to the one you gave) is to manually change the weights for them, reducing their probability of being played. -- Steve Lopez
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