On Mar 7, 4:12 pm, Larry Tapper wrote:
On Mar 7, 3:42 pm, help bot wrote:

But I do believe there are plenty of stronger
GMs around who could give Rybka a tougher
match with these odds. Joel Benjamin, for
instance, got the upperhand (to say the least)
in the openings, game after game, but he
crumbled in the middlegame. I have yet to
see GM Dzindzi make much of his odds in
the opening, and half the time his extra pawn
gets doubled or becomes useless, due to his
own clumsy play or to wild King assaults in
which the pawn-count is rendered moot.


What are the mysterious "positional errors"
I mentioned earlier in some other thread? If
I am not mistaken, the idea I discuss below
happened in two different games, though
there were plenty of other errors worth
examining.

One example was a game where Black (in
this match, this is always Rybka, who is a
pawn down) advanced its a-pawn. Now, I
could hardly count the number of top-level
games I have seen where it was automatic
to reply with p-a4, but GM Dzindzi ignored
the "threat" (to gain space, etc.) and next
came ...a4!, to which he felt obliged to
reply a3 (otherwise Black would play ...a3,
establishing a thorn in his Queenside).

White's two Queenside pawns became
completely immobilized by a single Black
pawn (yuck). So, what was Dzindzi's "plan"
here? He next went after Black's a-pawn
with B-b5, to which Rybka replied ...Bd7,
and they traded Bishops. Note how Black
traded its (active) bad Bishop for White's
good Bishop (yuck again).

Time after time, while GM Dzindzi did a
good job of not hanging pieces, he let his
extra pawn become doubled or else hung
it outright (in fact, one of the games he
*won* resulted from this same problem).

Apparently, he drew the match, but one
of the games he lost was practically given
away via reckless play in the opening, so
it is not inconceivable that he could have
won the match-- making good on claims
that his actual rating was not reflective of
his anti-computer prowess, and so forth.
In fact, just by drawing the match, he has
given those fans justification, since all the
other GMs *lost* their odds matches.

In playing against the relatively weak
computer at GetClub, I am constantly
faced with positions where I need to avoid
getting my pawns doubled, or hanging my
one, hard-earned extra pawn. Recently,
I had a number of far-advanced passed
pawns and decided to "trade" Queens by
sac'ing mine for a Rook, then forking his
with my Rook. Unfortunately, the GC
program played the one move which
refuted this idea and I have had to
"resign" several drawn games in order to
get on with the show. Things are getting
tougher in the middlegame-- especially if
I take the program lightly.

Yet I believe I have played a number of
games there where the problems which
plagued GM Dzindzi were carefully
avoided; I do not routinely let my extra
material get taken away, nor rendered
moot, nor crippled such that it is useless.
Trouble is, I am nowhere near as good as
RD at *not* dropping pieces! :D


-- help bot