I received the book "My Famous Predecessors" yesterday and spent the
evening reading it.

Despite its weak points, it is an excellent book probably worth buying
for the history only. The game analyses are also valuable.

It is interesting that for every game I tried so far with Fritz8, I
found major mistakes in the analysis. This is not meant as a criticism,
but as a comment on how difficult it can be to analyze a game without
error. I already posted here my "refutation" of the claim that Lasker's
famous g4 in the 7th world Championship against Steinitz was a mistake
(apparently the later h4 move that Fritz8 found and that gives Lasker
the advantage has been overlooked by everyone).

I went over the Anderssen's famous "immortal game", which the book shows
as full of mistakes by both sides, and again found a move that has been
overlooked - at least in the book).

One may find it strange that I claim to find mistakes in Kasparov's
analysis, until one realizes that because of the time it took to write
the book, Kasparov probably had an earlier version of Fritz and a slower
computer, and he could not take the time to spend five minutes on every
move in the book - not to mention the many variations.

Such mistakes do not detract from the value of the book but enhance it
when one realizes that even the oldest classics are still subject to
revision, and that they will probably always be.

This raises the interesting question : to what extgent will it ever be
possible to consider the analysis of a game "closed"? Is it even
possible? I believe not, but I will not go into that for now, since it
raises the question of whether or not chess will ever be "solved".

I will spend many hours going through the games and probably learn a lot
doing it. it would be nice if the games with the analyses were put
online so that one could go through them with Fritz without having to
keep the book open next to the computer (with all my games, there is no
room for a book...).

Now for a question: Kasparov was helped by a colleague. Sometimes there
is a note in the book in italics signed G.K. Does that mean that all the
rest was written by the co-author? If he and not Kasparov did most of
the work, why wasn't he put on as a co-author on the cover? I am just
curious, this is not a criticism.

Highly recommended. Buy it, you'll like it.

Henri

"henri Arsenault" skrev i meddelandet
...
I received the book "My Famous Predecessors" yesterday and spent the
evening reading it.

Despite its weak points, it is an excellent book probably worth buying
for the history only. The game analyses are also valuable.

It is interesting that for every game I tried so far with Fritz8, I
found major mistakes in the analysis. This is not meant as a criticism,
but as a comment on how difficult it can be to analyze a game without
error. I already posted here my "refutation" of the claim that Lasker's
famous g4 in the 7th world Championship against Steinitz was a mistake
(apparently the later h4 move that Fritz8 found and that gives Lasker
the advantage has been overlooked by everyone).

I went over the Anderssen's famous "immortal game", which the book shows
as full of mistakes by both sides, and again found a move that has been
overlooked - at least in the book).

One may find it strange that I claim to find mistakes in Kasparov's
analysis, until one realizes that because of the time it took to write
the book, Kasparov probably had an earlier version of Fritz and a slower
computer, and he could not take the time to spend five minutes on every
move in the book - not to mention the many variations.

Such mistakes do not detract from the value of the book but enhance it
when one realizes that even the oldest classics are still subject to
revision, and that they will probably always be.

This raises the interesting question : to what extgent will it ever be
possible to consider the analysis of a game "closed"? Is it even
possible? I believe not, but I will not go into that for now, since it
raises the question of whether or not chess will ever be "solved".

I will spend many hours going through the games and probably learn a lot
doing it. it would be nice if the games with the analyses were put
online so that one could go through them with Fritz without having to
keep the book open next to the computer (with all my games, there is no
room for a book...).

Now for a question: Kasparov was helped by a colleague. Sometimes there
is a note in the book in italics signed G.K. Does that mean that all the
rest was written by the co-author? If he and not Kasparov did most of
the work, why wasn't he put on as a co-author on the cover? I am just
curious, this is not a criticism.

Highly recommended. Buy it, you'll like it.

Henri

I have it and like it alot. Regarding your comparison between Fritz and My
Famous
Predecessors, have you considered issues such as calculation time, depth
etc? I checked
a Fischer-Petrosian game in My 60 (...) with Fritz, and saw that it could
sometimes take
quite a long time on my AMD 2000 computer for Fritz to evaluate moves that
Fischer
annotated as (!). Most often, Fritz found them immediatley, but sometimes it
can be a
slow process. Maybe Kasparov and his 20 top-notch computers found these
moves faster.
BTW, he reportedly told Kramnik about his 20 computers in his basement just
before a
game, just to intimidate Kramnik

regards,
Pete

In article ,
"Pete Hart" wrote:


I have it and like it alot. Regarding your comparison between Fritz and My
Famous
Predecessors, have you considered issues such as calculation time, depth
etc? I checked
a Fischer-Petrosian game in My 60 (...) with Fritz, and saw that it could
sometimes take
quite a long time on my AMD 2000 computer for Fritz to evaluate moves that
Fischer
annotated as (!). Most often, Fritz found them immediatley, but sometimes it
can be a
slow process. Maybe Kasparov and his 20 top-notch computers found these
moves faster.

Of course you could be right. In one case of the immortal game, Fritz
gave an advantage of -+ 4 for a move that was considered leading to
equality in the book. After I went through the variation proposed by
Fritz, it ended up evaluated equal after some 12 moves deep (from the
original position, the computer would have had to see some 18moves deep
before evaluating the position as equal).

However, considering the number of moves analyzed in the book, it is
highly unlikely that kasparov took the time to analyze positions that
deeply, which would have taken years for the whole book.

In sum, for any position, there is always a possibility that analyzing a
few moves deeper will change the evaluation (in my experience such
changes generally occur over a number of moves and not over a single
move). But such cases are exceptional, and in my experience, happens
only for very unbalanced positions with mind-boggling tactical
complications combined with multiple positional considerations such as
passed pawns etc. After about a minute of analysis, the best move found
by Fritz rarely becomes a losing move - but it can happen.

For the book, it is unclear which version of Fritz was used by Kasparov,
and on which computer. Given the time required to write a book, my guess
would be Fritz 6 on something like an 800 mHz P3, which would make it
significantly weaker than Fritz8 on a 2 gHz P4.

henri

henri Arsenault wrote in
rec.games.chess.analysis:

I received the book "My Famous Predecessors" yesterday and spent the
evening reading it.

Despite its weak points, it is an excellent book probably worth buying
for the history only. The game analyses are also valuable.

It is interesting that for every game I tried so far with Fritz8, I
found major mistakes in the analysis. This is not meant as a
criticism, but as a comment on how difficult it can be to analyze a
game without error.

Just a general remark.

GM's kan err, no doubt. Kasparov can err, no doubt as well. But how do
you know that computer program Fritz giving an assessment disagreeing
with Kasparov's assessment shows Kasparov is wrong? Within their
tactical horizon computer programs are unbelievable smashes, but beyond
that, and regarding to positional concepts, they still fail.


2b1k1r1/8/2p1p3/rpPpPp1p/pP1P1PpP/P5P1/8/4K3 w - - 0 1

A position with a beard, and non-existent in actual play, but still a
good proof that a computer doesn't _understand_ a thing about chess, by
not only giving a wrong assessment, but giving the _only_ losing move as
single possibitily as well. No program has been able to solve it in a
reasonable time- or solve it at all. As long as it stays that way I am
very careful with computer analysis, especially when someone with a
superior understanding like a GM differs with that analysis.

--
CeeBee


Uxbridge: "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!"
Wellington: "By God, sir, so you have!"


Google CeeBee @ www.geocities.com/ceebee_2

On 17 Sep 2003 17:32:50 GMT, CeeBee wrote:



GM's kan err, no doubt. Kasparov can err, no doubt as well. But how do
you know that computer program Fritz giving an assessment disagreeing
with Kasparov's assessment shows Kasparov is wrong? Within their
tactical horizon computer programs are unbelievable smashes, but beyond
that, and regarding to positional concepts, they still fail.

I don't disagree, but despite not having any positional sense",
computer programs now play at or above the level of World Champions. I
agree that there are pathological cases where computers totally fail
(in the time given them - how much time was that for your position?)

It seems obvious to me that given enough time (in other words being
able to see to any required depth), a computer could at least in
principle find the "best move" in any given position, if enough time
were available.

I think that we would both agree that the argument of "authority" is
not a final one to judge validity-whether the authority is a computer
program or a World Champion (Kasparov never claimed to be infallible,
and he HAS lost games...). In addition for the particular cases I have
mentioned, there is no indication that my analysis contradicts
Kasparov's; I think that he just didn't consider the specific move in
question, as others before him without computers did not either. If he
had claimed that the specific move h4 in Lasker's 7th championship
game was bad, it could be a different story, but he hasn't.

Kasparov has already agreed that there are errors and omissions in the
book. So it is no big deal per se to find a specific move that was
overlooked among the thousands of moves in the book.

Having said this, I could be wrong, but I am still waiting for a
refutation of the h4 move that I posted here earlier.

While I am at it, i might add that I suspect that there are game moves
that may remain controversial for a long time, perhaps even forever,
because as long as chess is not "solved", it could remain impossible
to prove whether or not some positions are winning or losing.

Henri

henri Arsenault wrote:

This raises the interesting question : to what extgent will it ever be
possible to consider the analysis of a game "closed"? Is it even
possible? I believe not, but I will not go into that for now, since it
raises the question of whether or not chess will ever be "solved".

Well, I do not like analysis classical games with computers. You are
not studying them to find opening novelties, but you enjoy the grandeur
of the ideas put into the moves by the classics. So who cares what
Fritz, Schredder or DJunior say? Especially about Anderssen games,
so unsound, but wonderfully aesthetical. For their unsoundness was
found not in 2003 but some 150 years earlier.

Study them without Fritz, look at the concepts and ideas. It is a false,
erroneous mission to find a hole in a great move by Lasker or Steinitz.

Now for a question: Kasparov was helped by a colleague. Sometimes there
is a note in the book in italics signed G.K. Does that mean that all the
rest was written by the co-author? If he and not Kasparov did most of
the work, why wasn't he put on as a co-author on the cover? I am just
curious, this is not a criticism.

It is possibly that G.K. used someone's commentaries, usually of a famous
commentator (Marko, Schlechter, Tarrasch, Panov, Botwinnik, Levenfish,
Levidov, Weinstein, Reti, Tartakower, Alekhine and others). It is a
common practice. G.K. just completed the old commentary.

For example, Grekov used a lot of Tchigorin's own commentaries on his
games in the books N.G. wrote about Tchigorin. Grekov's own notes among
these commentaries are marked "N.G." or in some other distinguishable
way.

I doubt Plisetsky did any of the commentaries, he is a good journalist,
but not much more than that.

Highly recommended. Buy it, you'll like it.

Henri

--
Roman M. Parparov - NASA EOSDIS project node at TAU technical manager.
Email: http://www.nasa.proj.ac.il
Phone/Fax: +972-(0)3-6405205 (work), +972-(0)51-34-18-34 (home)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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CeeBee wrote:

2b1k1r1/8/2p1p3/rpPpPp1p/pP1P1PpP/P5P1/8/4K3 w - - 0 1

A position with a beard, and non-existent in actual play, but still a
good proof that a computer doesn't _understand_ a thing about chess, by
not only giving a wrong assessment, but giving the _only_ losing move as
single possibitily as well. No program has been able to solve it in a
reasonable time- or solve it at all.

Not true any more.

Shredder 5.32 on my 300MHz computer discards bxa5 after about 2
seconds and then displays all king moves as best and equal good
forever with bxa5 as clearly the worst (by 6 pawn units) of all
possible moves.

Which is why I like Shredder.

Of course Shredder would need perhaps a year to recognize that White
is not losing, but at least he plays the right moves.

Same with Fritz 6 on the same machine, though after two minutes
Fritz thinks bxa5 is worse only by 2 pawn units. The more Fritz
thinks about it, the worse bxa5 looks.

With black rooks on a5 and g5 Fritz 6 needs 10 minutes to avoid
taking any rook, Shredder has it in 1 minute 6 seconds.

Remember this is old programs on old hardware.

They may not be able to understand chess, but they can mimick it
quite good.

Claus-Juergen

On 18 Sep 2003 19:09:21 GMT, CeeBee wrote:



Reason I mention this is the origin of this discussion: Henri's
statement (crudely reformulated) that he noticed flaws in Kasparov's
analysis because Fritz said so.

Note that the move in question is in a sub-variation, and therefore
unlikely to be discovered and analyzed unless someone is going through
sub-variations keeping an eye open for Fritz evaluations that
contradict the printed evaluations.

The interesting point of my suggestion is not that Kasparov and others
made a mistake (Kasparov demolishes a number of previous analyses by
world champions including a debunking of Alekhine's claim that he had
precisely calculated a combination 20 moves deep in one case -Kasparov
shows that both sides made serious mistakes over these 20 moves. In
this case, Kasparov says "Although it turned out to have a flaw,
discovered by the all-seeing eye of the computer..."). The book is
full of corrections of erroneous previous analyses such as the above,
and Kasparove makes his confidence in the power of the computer quite
clear.

For me the interesting point of the Lasker game is that if Fritz is
correct and if the move exd5 is good, it implies that Lasker's earlier
16. g4! move was in fact a move that gave White the advantage, which
is contrary to what everyone has believed until now.

This in no way diminishes the value of Lasker's move, on the contrary.
If true, it would show that although it is clear that Lasker had not
seen the h4 move (since he did not play it), he had the intuition that
g4 was the best move available. If this were true, isn't that a
greater tribute to Lasker's genius than saying that he played a bad
move hoping that his opponent would get lost in the ensuing
complications?

If these kinds of considerations are of interest to you, then by all
means get the book, where such questions arise in almost every game
discussed!

Henri

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 21:29:01 GMT, (Henri
H. Arsenault) wrote:

On 18 Sep 2003 19:09:21 GMT, CeeBee wrote:



Reason I mention this is the origin of this discussion: Henri's
statement (crudely reformulated) that he noticed flaws in Kasparov's
analysis because Fritz said so.

Note that the move in question is in a sub-variation, and therefore
unlikely to be discovered and analyzed unless someone is going through
sub-variations keeping an eye open for Fritz evaluations that
contradict the printed evaluations.

I have to say that the situation is still unclear.

When I analyzed the position under Deep analysis for four hours and 19
plies deep, Fritz8 still thought that white had a slight edge. So did
Fritz when I did a deep analysisas far as move 23 over some hours.

But when I played Fritz against itself using shootout starting from
move 16, White both won and lost at various time levels. Usually
White's advantage decreases slowly until it becomes equal then Black
starts to have an edge, but the positionis so dynamic at that point
with Black having two passed pawns for the exchange that anything can
and does happen.

I would like to see Kasparov's evaluation of the key move 16. e4xd5
taking into account the above information. It may well be that the
position is too complicated to come to any definitive conclusion

Henri

I have now analyzed the position (lasker Steinitz 7th game) at move 16
(exd5) even deeper, and here is what I found.I did a "Deep position
analysis" from move 16 20 moves deep for six hours.

This established that the move h2-h4 that I had proposed earlier leads
to a slight advantage for Black. On the other hand, moving the King away
to b1 leads to a slight advantage for White. From the ending position, I
did a further 19-move deep analysis using "infinite analysis", which
showed that White maintains his slight advantage.

in all cases the advantage is less than a pawn, so it is clear that any
advantage is minor.

Still, I think that this established that Lasker's famous g4! was not as
weak a move as had been suggested by everyone, in fact, it yields White
a solight advantage in the best case (but it must be admitted that no
grandmaster was or is able in the time avalialble to carry out the deep
analysis that Fritz8 did over many hours). Even Lasker would have been
hesitant to win the exchange for a Bishop and two pawns and leave his
opponent with two outside connected passed pawns with himself having an
isolani on an open file in the center...

Henri