Major Cat wrote:
wrote:
I mean that the computer can number crunch
way in advance (left on overnight, etc.), and find the
best opening books, looking ahead many more moves
than they normally would in regular play. They could
then store these opening moves as a database for
each Fischer random position, and thus have
a time advantage during the openings. The human
would take much more time analyzing an opening position
for perhaps the first time.


Your point is well taken, provided there is no serious, organized
and competent human interest to critically review and counter such
computer-generated opening theory. Basically, it is an empirical
and open-ended question. Time will tell...

P.S. I have never come across any published reference regarding
GMs' assessments of how well powerful computers play their first
10 moves or so in Chess960! 8)

That's a very interesting question.

I have posed this question to this newsgroup on a number
of occasions. Unfortunately, I got no answers whatsoever.


What's the general opinion that GMs have
of computer opening play without the
database on.

For FIDE chess, it has been said that GMs would come out of
the opening with some positional advantage or another. Mind
you, I have no idea how credible this apparent consensus is...


In that case, the computers must better middle and
end-game chess, because they consistently are
beating the GMs. One the world champion and the
very top players are drawing against the machines.




And, have computers verified or
shown erroneous the human research
that has occurs for the past several
hundred years or so, in terms of opening
moves, etc. Certainly computers will
be able to look quite a bit farther down the
game.

I am no expert in FIDE chess opening theory. My understanding
is that computer analysis of openings has contributed to the
re-evaluation of quite a few opening lines due to uncovered
"deep" tactical opportunities or flaws.

Do you have a link to more info?

If computers have created a re-evaluation
of opening moves, that's great, and shows
that the computer can certainly improve on
chess theory.

But the advantages of the computer
analysis will diminish, unless the ability
to memorize more and more moves
is increased in humans.

Hence, my argument that
a sizable part of a great chess
champion is pure, brute force
memorization.


SLick