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Subject: Re: Analyzing Your Games With Software

Author: Laurence Chen

Date: 20:00:40 02/27/00

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On February 27, 2000 at 20:01:43, Melvin S. Schwartz wrote:

>On February 27, 2000 at 13:50:21, Laurence Chen wrote:
>
>>On February 27, 2000 at 12:36:23, Melvin S. Schwartz wrote:
>>
>>>On February 26, 2000 at 18:01:31, Pete Galati wrote:
>>>
>>>>On February 26, 2000 at 14:53:52, Melvin S. Schwartz wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I am interested in what others think is the best program to analyze their games
>>>>>against other humans. It would be helpful if you could explain the reason for
>>>>>your choice.
>>>>>
>>>>>All opinions will be appreciated. Those that do not respond will be forgiven,
>>>>>though not held in the highest esteem. :-)
>>>>>
>>>>>Regards,
>>>>>Mel
>>>>
>>>>I like annotating games with Crafty because for me it's the easiest way to be
>>>>very specific about how I want the game annotated.  Downsides to this?  It's not
>>>>a gui proceedure, more like a dos command line type of thing, for example, type
>>>>annotate in Crafty, and it will display how to go about the ccommand:
>>>>
>>>>Crafty v17.8
>>>>
>>>>White(1): annotate
>>>>usage: annotate <file> <color> <moves> <margin> <time> [nmoves]
>>>>White(1):
>>>>
>>>>So if I entered: annotate mygame.pgn w 10 .75 120"   What Crafty would do would
>>>>be to annotate the file "mygame.pgn", only the white side of the board (w), it
>>>>would start it's annotations at move 10, to a margin of 3/4 pawn difference
>>>>between the best move Crafty calculated and the move made in the game, and it
>>>>would calculate each move for 120 seconds (2 minutes of course).
>>>>
>>>>To me, this is better than doing it with an interfaced program.  Here's a game I
>>>>annotated that way http://members.xoom.com/avochess/lostgame.htm  Someone on
>>>>usenet pointed out that Crafty missed a mate, could be, I'm not sure.  I
>>>>annotated that game for 4 minutes a move on my slow computer.
>>>>
>>>>So, to _me_, Crafty is the best choice, but if you need an interface to get the
>>>>job done, then it's the worst choice.
>>>>
>>>>Pete
>>>
>>>Hello Pete,
>>>
>>>I don't have Crafty but do have a number of commercial programs. I am wondering
>>>if Shredder 4, Junior 6, or some other commercial program offer something more
>>>than what I presently have: Rebel-Tiger, Fritz 5.32, Hiarcs 7.32, Rebel-Century,
>>>Chessmaster 7000, and CSTal 2.03. I would like to use just one program to
>>>analyze my games - ideal situation - but perhaps that would not give a thorough
>>>analyzation. At most I could see using two programs but beyond that it would be
>>>to time consuming.
>>>
>>>Regards,
>>>Mel
>>What do you consider "ideal situation"?
>******************************************************************************
>By that I mean one program that is superior in all aspects to the others. If you
>read the other reply to my original post, then you would see there are people
>using even more than two programs to analyze their games.
>**************************************************************************
>  Any of the chess engines you already
>>have can do a very good job in finding missed tactical oportunities or mistakes.
>> Unless you are looking for an engine which will annotate positional mistakes or
>>ideas, then you will have to wait for a very very very long time in the future.
>>Because all chess engine of today excel in tactics, but long strategical
>>planning is an area which human players are far superior to chess engines, and
>>the only solution to this problem is to hire a chess coach, perhaps a
>>International Master is sufficient if one cannot afford a Grandmaster.
>>Laurence
>**********************
>:-)
Superior in what sense ??? All the top chess engines perform well in tactics.
Some may be able to see tactics better than others, but that is all an illusion.
Just because engine A is able to solve test suite ### and engine B is not able
to solve test suite &&& does not prove that A is better than B, because for sure
there is a &&& position which engine A fails to solve and B is able to solve. I
think it boils down to personal taste and style which a chess engine has to
offer. My favorite engine is Junior/Deep Junior, not because it is number one in
the SSDF. It is because of the playing style of the chess engine. It is a
playing style which is close to my playing style. It is aggressive, and likes to
play quiet moves to improve the position.  Of course, not hyper-aggressive as
Fritz. Besides I don't use the chess engines to annotate games, I personally
find this type of exercise too passive, and not very productive because I cannot
learn much out of it. I prefer to use the analysis mode of the chess engine, too
bad that Chessmaster still doesn't have this feature, and go move by move and
selecting different moves from the generated variations. I prefer to flex my
chess muscles rather than read a displayed/printed page of chess annotation by a
chess engine. Hope this helps.
Laurence



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