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Subject: Re: How to Optimize Book...

Author: jefkaan

Date: 08:02:45 12/04/05

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On December 03, 2005 at 08:13:25, William Penn wrote:

>The only purpose of these opening books, as far as I'm concerned, is to derive
>statistical analyses for the different candidate moves.

maybe in the beginning of the game you get an idea from
the statistics, but later on statistics are useless,
especially if they are based on historic human
games with lots of mistakes.

>Perhaps the statistics indicate which is the best move,

well at least in the beginning, eg. after e4 e5 Nf3!!

if use statistics to decide on sharp gambit lines,
eg. in the KGA, after move 5 or so, you get insane results.

Analyzing such a variant yourself, instead of statistics
would get better results, but if you analyze a complicated variant,
and try to find improvements with computer analysis, at least
to avoid tactical errors, you need to either have the engine
use its hashtable to 'remember' its analysis (like eg.
Shredder 9 does). But also then, when there are lots of sidelines,
and complicated endgame strategies, such an approach is far
from perfect.

So a 'mixed' approach of statistics and minimax, like the
opening books of Arena and CA.8 can do, is better than
statistics alone (like the Chessbase programs seem to do).
or minimax alone (Bookup).
But even then a problem with minimax (backsolving) is how
to evaluate the end positions. GM evaluations, either from
opening books like NCO, or specialized opening text
books tend to give better evals than a simple engine.

So in that respect CA.8 is likely to give the best
results, as you also can use GM evals with their
'elite' opening lines.

>It is not so easy.

well i can agree with that..
:)

but in any case with booklearning, a good engine,
and playing lots of games, you automatically
will get better opening books !

Jef
http://superchess.blogspot.com



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