Major Cat wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
What I forgot to mention is that, as far as I'm aware, nobody has
thought it worthwhile to take one of these computers and have it
chug away at the standard opening position for a month or so. This
would suggest that the approach is not seen as being very valuable.

Yes, but this may be due to the fact that most serious analysts
appear to believe that "orthodox" opening theory in its present
state is superior to almost anything that a powerful computer can
come up with on its very own...

True. And we don't need our FRC opening book to be as good as FIDE
chess opening theory; we just need it to be better than what a top GM
could come up with over the board.


As an aside, could a program specifically designed to evaluate
openings make some difference? If so, what would its salient
features be and how would it differ from existing all-purpose
programs?

I've no idea. :-)


Dave.

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Major Cat wrote:
David Richerby wrote:

Major Cat wrote:
Yes, _one_ interpretation is that Mr. Fischer broke a gentleman's
agreement of sorts in deviating from "generally expected" (accept-
able?) GM behavior... 8)

Not really... Nobody goes into a big match without some opening
surprises prepared. Admittedly, it's usually a new idea on move
fifteen of the Ruy Lopez rather than playing a totally unexpected
opening but that's just a difference of scale.

It is precisely this difference in scale that may be important
to speculate about here. I have a hunch that GMs tacitly agree
to minimize certain types of risk while fully embracing others...

But a huge part of winning any battle is the
element of surprise. Imagine if your opponent
could read your mind....do you think you would
win many games?

There are certain favorite openings
that are well known, and maybe it's a big
risk to venture off into less-explored territory,
but that's apparently what it takes to be
a world champion.


S.

wrote:
But a huge part of winning any battle is the element of surprise.
Imagine if your opponent could read your mind....do you think you
would win many games?

Yep. I'd play up a couple of classes so my opponent would spend so
long laughing at the stupid moves I was thinking about that I'd win on
time.


There are certain favorite openings that are well known, and maybe
it's a big risk to venture off into less-explored territory, but
that's apparently what it takes to be a world champion.

Actually, if you look at the openings played in World Championship
matches, it's mostly `main-line' stuff. As I recall, one of
Kasparov's trainers (possibly even Botvinnik) told him, `The queen's
gambit is the opening for World Championship matches.' And, Lo!, for
the first two matches against Karpov, we see Kasparov responding to
1.d4 mostly with the QGD, with a few QIDs in the first match for
variety.


Dave.

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