On Apr 26, 3:18 pm, Ron wrote:

The whole idea of judging a player by his "error rate" presumes that the
way to win at chess is to commit no errors.

But a quick look at players like Lasker, Tal, and Bronstein shows that
there's another way: make an error in order to induce your opponent to
make a bigger error.

Right. This is precisely the, um, strategy I use when
I make all my errors. I am deliberately failing to see
the correct move and instead playing a turkey, with
the intention of inducing a similar blunder by my
opponent. Of course, I could always find the best
move if I really wanted to; I just *want* to play poorly.
;D


Many of Tal's sacrifices would be considered errors by a chess program
(and that's just counting the ones where you could expect a program to
see it through to the end, in all variations, in however much time you
gave it - and if you're only giving even a top program ten minutes a
move, you're not getting there on a lot of sacrifices) but Tal wasn't
trying to play perfect chess. He was trying to win games.

This is why it is rather unfair to try and judge
competitive players by how closely their moves
match up to a chess program; the program is
under no pressure to protect its title, for instance.
Nor is it ever faced with stupid questions from
reporters like- Q: "In game one, why did you allow
42.Q-g7 mate?" A: "As world champion, I never
overlook such things. Clearly then, I must have
been offered, and accepted, a huge bribe, of say,
ten billion dollars. Pardon me, but I *must* get to
the bank before it closes. The interest I'm losing
as we speak is KILLING me!"


And judging by his results (a world championship; the longest undefeated
streak in tournament games) he did so incredibly well.

Because of all the hype surrounding GM Fischer
and all the controversies brought on by Cold War
politics, we seldom remember that even as BF was
taking the title from the "evil axis" in 1972, at the
same time GM Tal was undergoing a period of near
invincibility -- the streak you mentioned above.
Countless fans of BF will recount a 6-0 match
victory or two, while never once realizing the
simultaneous exploits of GM Tal, who by the way,
"took" the year 1972 according to Chessmetrics,
over GM Fischer!


To say, therefore, that he was making errors strikes me as somewhat
absurd.

If we go by what GM Botvinnik said, only Tigran
Petrosian never made any (combinational) errors.
(In the position after 1.e4 Nc6 2.Qh5 Nb8 3.Qxf7+,
one would be wise to decline the sac according to
GM Botvinnik's advice, if GM Petrosian has White.)


If the "error" was never intended to be an irrefutable move, and it
leads directly to victory against a top player, how can you call it an
error?

All this shows is how closely a given player's
world championship games matched up with
move selections by a crippled Crafty. I don't
know about you, but if I were world champion,
I would hope to be a bit stronger than crippled
Crafty, and want my moves to match up well in
simple tactical exchanges, but not otherwise.

I really think the scope of such a statistical
analysis ought to have been limited to finding
out which world champion was the least
afflicted by a tendency to blunder, and which
was most afflicted.

-- help bot