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Subject: Re: Question(s) for chessplayer's who use chess playing software - Openings

Author: Tina Long

Date: 16:09:15 12/19/99

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On December 19, 1999 at 02:07:18, Lawrence S. Tamarkin wrote:

>Lets say your preparing for a tournament. You have a chioce of Nunn's Chess
>Openings, Rebel Century, with its MVS book, or Fritz6, with its General CTG
>book.  Perhaps you have all these tools available.  What is best.  Can the
>Opening book be totally dispenced with, because you have one or more of the
>playing programs with their large book with statistical analysis, or is a
>combination of Opening books (other than Nunn is possible too), & Software, the
>best all-around way to prepare a repertiore for your future event?
>
>Personally I wouldn't live without any of this, so perhaps I'm answering my own
>question(s), but I am curious what everybody thinks about this, and thanks for
>any opinions...
>
>
>Larry T.

Informators!

Hi Larry,

YOU are preparing for a tournament, YOU must have an opening repertiore.

If I was going to play in a major tournament January I would:
Get my hair done, buy a low-cut dress.....  sorry.   I would

Get out MY OWN opening book (several hundred handwritten sheets of pink(black) &
yellow(white) cardboard) which is based on the first few moves by Fischer,
Karpov & Kortchnoi, updated to include Kasparov, and then handwritten (lately
handtyped into excel spreadsheet) variation lines from Informators 26-6?.

I would then wade through Informators 6? to 75 updating all my lines.

Why?
Because Informator has annotations by the actual player of the game & his/her
impression of the position.  This information must pass some very stringent
judges before it is posted.

Informator Judges give "Best opening Novelty" lists:
Informator 74/330 Shirov - Kramnik 13...Bh4!! N
If I played black in a Petroff, here's a move I'd give a double underline (must
play) and there go all the other variations I used to have for that line.

My method is laborious & slow, but I SEE & think about every variation I'm
including in my book.

Computer Database?
My database can tell me "this position:  +87 =145 -56" but it doesn't tell me
that in the last couple of years, since so-&-so played it as a novelty, the top
players are playing line X, and although it hasn't been played in a game so-&-so
provides the following analysis....    This is what I get from Informators.

Finally:
Once I have manually updated my book I will do Database searches of the last few
months games I've collected from TWIC to get up to date.

Pre Tournament:
I play lotsa game in 30min against computers, using my opening book to cheat -
this is to visually see my book moves happening on a "board" as a memory aid.

The Rebel Opening Book is fine (well extremely excellent) but it is out of date
the day after it was written.

So, my answer to your question:
1: know what your opening 2-3 moves are for all possible openings.
2: wade through Nunn (which I assume is not unlike ECO) with a highlighter pen.
3: check out every TWIC since a month befor Nunn was written.

Just my opinion guys
Tina Long



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