Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone. Just a short message from OM team. We have published new OM Golem with 8,104,368 games and OM OTB database with 6,149,182 games. All files have been uploaded already to DropBox cloud. Enjoy the games and Happy Easter Holidays. Best wishes from Alexander Horvath and the team...

What exactly does chess player expect from database program?

At first, he is waiting for an answer where to move in the opening. The purpose of the lectures is absolutely not to state that whatever there is in database, one needs to oblige. It is purely an analysis of position from all possible views, e.g:

 
a/ the number of appearance replies for one move.

b/ when and by whom it was played, and games alone with possibility to re-play.

c/ if database contains commentaries, then opinion of the annotator on key moments of the game

d/ the possibility of watching next sequel and statistics of individual moves of the sequel.

e/ Each database program contains also chess programs (i.e. engines) which know in the right moment to perform the ‘reference analyses’ of the positions.

In this, but also in other analyses, man and machine can be very good partners, but only if you know the weak parts of the engines such as:  

-       valuation of closed pawn structures

-       diagnosis of the possibility of next never-ending check, eventually 3x repeat of the same position

-       inept change of figures right before moving into the end-game

-       end-game continuation itself and the rule of 50 moves, meaningless chasing of the king in some end-games, not recognizing obvious draw

-       closed positions of the middle game

-       inability to correctly valuate some openings

-       Orthodox understanding that rock is more then bishop or knight.

-       bad valuation of positions where there is obvious non-balanced material

-       willingness to move h6 also in dangerous positions, underestimation of sacrifice

-       intuation for attack moment

-       not every best move is the best

-       ability of strategic maneuver before end-game

-       not understanding that many times threat is more then execution 

The engines plays simply strict, based on the rules and they behave like that. Every year there are new engines which gradually remove the above mentioned defects. Many times the quality and power of the engine depends on if the engine programmer is also a good chess player. If there is such a combination once in a while we call it ‘fishie’ (or baby fish). The analysis of individual engine problematic, its setup of the parameters and tournaments would require a separate web site.

Happy Easter

OM team...