Author: Andrew Williams
Date: 03:57:58 02/10/00
Here's a quick question: What opening preparations did other programmers make for CCT1? I'm interested mostly in the other "amateur" programmers, but I'd also like to know how/if the professionals prepared. In PostModernist's case I decided that if I was drawn against a professional program I would go out of my way to try to find an opening it wasn't happy with, but with the other amateur programs, I would not bother. So, using the excellent chess database, Scid, I prepared White and Black tournament books based on the openings with which PM had had most success on ICC (I had a database of > 9000) games. I was surprised to find that there is quite a difference between PM's results with 1.d4 and 1.e4 My first opportunity for a bit of book-cooking was against Shredder. PM has beaten Shredder (account vodka) three times on ICC, so I added these three games to my book to see what happened... The result was that Shredder evaded my "home preparation" on move one! Immediately after Shredder I was drawn against Diep, but I stupidly forgot that Vincent's program is for sale, so I didn't do anything to prepare for Vinctent's expected 1. d4 d5 2. a3 I'm not claiming PM would have won, but it might have put up a better show than it did in this game. After the first weekend, I looked again at some of the lines in my book and again using Scid's excellent "Tree Search Mode" I made some extensions to the lines in my tournament book. The only other "professional" I played was Junior, but there was a late pairing change and I only had a few minutes before the game, so I couldn't have done anything anyway. Interestingly, against two of my later opponents, Grok and EXchess, PM ended up in openings that it had lost recently against these opponents. I wonder whether this was deliberate or just coincidence? Peter? Dan? I think that possibly I was just wasting my time with all this "work", but I must say that it contributed to my enjoyment of the whole event. Andrew Williams
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