Greatest chess players ever? Capa, Kramnik, Karpov, Kasparov, *in that order* (cuz 'puters don't lie!) - rec.games.chess.misc

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Message from discussion Greatest chess players ever? Capa, Kramnik, Karpov, Kasparov, *in that order* (cuz 'puters don't lie!)

raylopez99

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More options Apr 26 2007, 5:13 pm

Newsgroups: rec.games.chess.misc, rec.games.chess.computer

From: raylopez99 <raylope...@yahoo.com>

Date: 26 Apr 2007 14:13:41 -0700

Local: Thurs, Apr 26 2007 5:13 pm

Subject: Re: Greatest chess players ever? Capa, Kramnik, Karpov, Kasparov, *in that order* (cuz 'puters don't lie!)

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On Apr 26, 11:00 am, David Richerby <dav...@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
wrote:

> raylopez99 <raylope...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I find the rebuttal by Dr. S=F8ren Riis, Oxford, UK unconvincing for
> > a number of reasons.

> > - it was clearly written with a popular audience in mind (witness the
> > exclamation point!

> Obviously, anything written with a popular audience in mind cannot
> possibly be accurate.

No, but popular means not as accurate as a journal paper, which the
original paper was. Otherwise it's like saying whoever wins this
Usenet thread is right moreso than two chess researchers debating.

> > - it fails to understand the simple argument of 'normalization'. The
> > Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko original article pointed out that Crafty
> > was used since it was open source and could be modified; the stronger
> > programs are not, but in any event Crafty is hardly a weak tactics
> > program and the authors are looking for a standardized (normalized)
> > way of spotting blunders.

> Just because they used the same system for everyone doesn't mean the
> system was good or useful. For example, they could declare that every
> king move is a blunder. That's consistent across all the players but
> would declare players who tend to win in the endgame (where the king
> gets moved more) to be weaker than players who tend to win in the
> middlegame. You need to apply the same *good* measure to everyone.

That is the ideal, but my point stands--equally bad is not so bad.
And BTW using your example, a player who wins in the middlegame is
indeed probably stronger than one who wins in the endgame (it's
tougher to win a short game--think of winning a chess brilliancy
against equally matched opposition--than to grind out a win in the
endgame. In fact, a standard technique I use to draw against my much
more powerful chess playing computer is to reduce to the endgame and
go for the draw).

> > -The fact that Riis found positional sacrifices not evaluated by
> > Crafty is not convincing since: (1) such positional sacrifices are
> > rare--as computers have shown, chess is largely tactics; (2) everybody
> > will be judged equally by Crafty, so others pos sacs are also scored
> > 'badly', so nobody will lose relative standing to one another

> No. A player who plays more positional sacrifices will be penalized
> for playing moves that crafty doesn't understand.

No. See my point above. And chess is 99% tactics (famous quote).

> > and (3), as long as assumption (1) is valid, Crafty will find the
> > most "mistake free" chess player, or one that plays closest to being
> > "tactics mistake free", which is a very good way to determine a good
> > chess player IMO.

> But World Champions make very few tactical mistakes.

Not true. Nearly all games are full of tactical mistakes, except
perhaps at the correspondence chess level. I was reading a book by
John Nunn ("Chess explained move by move") that makes this point in
the preface--Nunn had a hard time finding 20 OTB games that were
'mistake free' for his book, after searching 1000s of games.

> > Now of course the surrebutter (rebuttal to the rebuttal) will be
> > that players like Tal will score poorly--and indeed they (he)
> > did--but let's face it, Tal was more of a shock player that relied
> > on playing the man rather than the board.

> I'm not convinced by that assertion. Tal played games that were sound
> enough that they were very hard to defeat over the board. I don't
> think that counts as playing the man rather than the board.

But on balance Tal was a shock player. Deny that and you become a
chess revisionist.

> > In a match of coolheaded Karpov or Kramnik versus Tal, all in their
> > prime, the less emotional player is likely to win

> Hmm... The two Botvinnik-Tal matches between them were only won by
> Botvinnik +12-11=19. Hardly a convincing victory for the cool head.

Pace Karpov's lifetime record against Tal, which is way positive. Of
course it was a young Karpov against an older, sick Tal, but the point
stands.

> > Think of all the bogus moves made by beginners, sacrificing knight
> > for pawn, "to break up their pawn chain", with no positional
> > advantage. If you believe chess is positional play more than
> > tactics then such bogus moves should work more often than they do.
> > They do not.

> This argument is bogus. Sacrificing a knight against one's opponent's
> pawn structure is hardly a prime example of `positional chess'. You
> might as well say that all the bogus tactical shots attempted by
> beginners to `win material' or `checkmate the king' show that tactics
> play a small role in chess.

Positional chess SACRIFICE was my point. A positional chess sacrifice
is rare in chess is my point (goes to chess being 99% tactics). A
positional chess sacrifice is one where you do indeed exchange knight
for two pawns, so you're down a pawn, with no immeadiate hope of
recapturing your lost material. But the positional gain will help you
20 moves from now. This is common in GO but not in chess.

Ray

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