On May 15, 7:26 am, (Dr A. N. Walker) wrote:
In article .com,
help bot wrote:

In one of my current games at RedHot, I just
chose to double my Rooks on the only open file,
as opposed to snatching a free pawn [...];
yet my move is
likely to result in an immediate resignation
because it stomps out any imagined counter
play and thereby underscores the fact that I
am up the exchange for nothing and can win
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
material almost at will.

*Now* he tells us! OK, you are the exchange up, control
the only open file, and can win material at will. So -- purely
a guess! -- Fritz, Crafty, Rybka and any other engine except
possibly Sanny's is scoring your position at +3 or more? ...

I wouldn't know. BTW, I recently downloaded a few of the free
chess programs but have not yet been able to get any of them
to work "as advertised" so I can analyze my games. One of
these was Fritz 5.32, but its game analysis seems to just
vanish into thin air.

All in all, I would guess that your figure (+3 or more) is about
right since all of my pawns were (yes, it's over; he resigned
immediately after I captured his Rook for free) on the color
opposite to his Bishop and therefore immune to capture so
long as I kept his Rook at bay.


Suppose Crafty_12 ply
penalizes either move as inferior to the other --
how does this style issue contribute to ranking
the world champs *accurately*?

... In which case this position is outside the [-2..2]
range, and is discarded by the G&B methodology, really for exactly
the reasons you gave. So Crafty12 would not penalise your move.


Once again, you have demonstrated a complete, utter
inability to read my comments *in context*.

Look back at my original post. I was (obviously) replying
to this comment by Ray Lopez:

However, that said, I would not be surprised that even for
correspondence chess players, rating such players with Fritz 5.31 at 5
seconds a move would give you a pretty clear indication of the best
correspondence chess players, since good positional moves and good
tactical moves are largely one and the same in chess


To the idea that good positional moves and good tactical
moves are *one and the same thing*. This silly notion
is why I gave the example from my game where I had
deliberately chosen a positional move over the sharper,
tactical, material grab. Clearly, in this context, it would
not matter if I had a dozen extra Queens; there *is* a
substantial difference between positional and tactical
moves.

Among the world champions, those who tended
toward the positional were often described as having a
"dominating" style, while those who liked to live on the
edge were often described as "aggressive", "dynamic",
or perhaps more accurately, "reckless". :D

----

On the other subject, I strongly disagree that Fritz5.31
could *accurately* rank top correspondence players at
5 seconds per move (quick blunder check). This
assumption relies on the silly idea that "chess is 99%
tactics", and the remaining 1% is largely irrelevant. IMO,
the remaining portion -- whether it be only 1% or many
times that -- is not only relevant, but very *important*.

----

As for the G&B methodology, it was never described
in any detail in any of the articles which I read by
following the links earlier in this thread. Clearly, if I had
wished to skewer their "methodology", I would probably
want to know what it was. But having already learned
that the reason for the sloppiness was a shortage of
time and a complete disregard for quality work, I have
no interest in further details regarding the authors'
methodology.

-- help bot