Negative influence of computers on chess

All Things Chess
1

I’ve been out of the tournament scene for almost 15 years now, due to life requirements, though I have never totally abandoned chess. I’m looking to get back into it (I was 2000-2100 when I left). Some of the comments I’ve seen concerning what has changed in chess, is discouraging me and leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve read too many comments similar to the following: “Find an opening with sharp lines, use Chessbase or Chess Assistant to scope out every possible variation, so you can usually catch your opponent and win easily”. I’ve seen loads and loads of these comments. I suspect that this is true, since on my forays into Yahoo chess and ICC, I find if I play an opponent 10 times, he plays the same exact system (as best he can) 10 times in a row. I would never think of doing that in skittles speed games on Yahoo or ICC!

Is this how people are learning and playing these days? Back in the 70s-80s people on my level knew the openings somewhat, maybe specialized in one, but concentrated more on middle game and endgame study. Me, I played the Modern as black just to avoid everyone’s preparation, and it did me quite well. As White, I played QP, and stumbled my way out of the opening.

Is it necessary to pour over opening lines with the computer these days to advance one’s rating??? Or are the “old methods” still effective? Again, i’m talking about the 2000-2200 level, i dont realistically expect to advance further than that.

2

Well, if you play bizarre openings the way I do, you can still have a lot of fun without booking up very much. 1.d4 c5 2.d5 b5. Or 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Ne4.

Bill Smythe

3

Bill, I’m skeptical about your first line working well at the 2000+ level. Of course maybe you’d cream me with it if we played, but 3.e4 just looks very nice for white. What does Fritz say about that? :smiley:

Karchad, I’ve been inactive for a long time and am still inactive as a player. But I suspect that doing no opening prep has a bigger potential to damage your results now than it did before. But the potential to develop your own lines is much greater, because with some effort you really can troubleshoot them with the computer’s help.

4

I think computers are a GREAT tool for chess improvement. I don’t study the openings all that much (not that I’ve had much time for studying lately, anyway).

I like the tactics training programs like CT-Art, Personal Chess Trainer, etc. It’s MUCH easier to practice your tactics with these programs than just looking at problems in books – you get a lot more return for your effort.

Endgame study is easier also. Back in the 80s, Averbakh (sp?) had a great series of endgame books. You can now get the entire collection on a DVD, can play through the diagrams move-by-move, and the entire collection costs about as much as a single volume did back then.

For studying openings, I like playing through game collections that use that opening. That’s much better than rote memorization. And again, computers are a great tool.

After I play in a tournament, I can analyze my games through Fritz and it’ll give me actual comments about the mistakes in the games.

As for playing the same line over and over again on-line? Isn’t that a great way to practice a new opening? Personally, I don’t consider my on-line games to be serious, like OTB.

5

I have no idea, as I don’t use computers for playing chess. I simply respond 3…Ba6.

Bill Smythe

6

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You could not find your opponent using the same basic opening variation 10 times in a row unless you were using the same opening too.
Deep opening preparation mostly works against known opponents. Kramnik can study Anand’s games, but you never heard of your opponent until a few minutes before the game starts.

Deeply repetitious openings affect those of us who replay grandmaster games.
For a breath of fresh air, play thru one or two chess960 games between grandmasters:

FRC-chess960
http://www.chesstigers.de/ccm7_index_news.php?id=1161&rubrik=6&lang=0&kat=0#finetwcs

Fritz_9 and later is chess960 enabled.
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7

I guess the conclusion here is, i’m going to have to join the crowd and really specialize in an opening. So be it. I’ll feel like a GM at least! Okay, i’m up for the challenge, look out, here I come (well, not this year, maybe next year!).

I’ve always liked the Nimzo-Indian, both sides. I played as white Nf3 and g3 before kasparov uncorked it on Karpov in, was it '86? hey, he stole my opening preparation!

What I’m in the process of doing, Fritz (I have version 10) has this great feature that analyzes a whole game for you. I’ve been slowly going thru all my past tournament games (which were already in chessbase), and re-saving them, with Fritz’s annotations. It’s amazing what I’m finding. One endgame that I always assumed was a dead draw was a win for me in three places! It’s a humbling experience, seeing how much one truly misses at the board. Then with clocks running down, and opponents across the board, one need not be so harsh on oneself. Rather, I take it as a sign that I have much that can be improved upon rather immediately.

8

Yes that’s a great attitude. The computer can show weaknesses that you might never have found otherwise.

9

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi

In 2005, the Japan Shogi Association sent a message to professional shogi players and women professionals, telling them that they should not compete against a computer in public without permission. The intentions behind this are to preserve the dignity of its professionals, and to make the most of computer shogi as a potential business opportunity.
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10

[size=150]I think a lot of casual players, especially when playing online, tend to get familiar with a very small opening book. I know in my games, (I"m a lower rated player btw) I tend as white to play d4, and as black, tend to like French and Indian defenses.

The problem with online chess is that player want to play alot of games and get rating points fast, so their opening book is very small. Too many players on FICS, ICC, Yahoo, and other online chess sites… tend to play fast or very fast time controls, so they want to get the opponent into thier opening book as fast as possible.

I’m now only starting to branch out in other openings like the Benoni and Caro-Kann for fun. Ya, I want to study the Sicilian sometime too. :stuck_out_tongue:

Back in the day when I was playing at a chess club (when I was in the Army like 20 years ago), not only did our small group of players had a very diverse (if not exactly cutting edge knowledge) of openings, but at least once a month we’d do a thematic meeting, and play some particular line for fun. (For example, maybe a specific line in the french or Roy Lopez, or maybe a less than popular opening like Kings Gambit or Tromposky). In any event, we didn’t get great at playing those lines per se, but it was fun as heck to walk in the door and be told we had to play some line nobody was prepared for. :smiley:

As far as needing computer preperation… There is alot out there, but nothing can help you more than good chess knowledge from level appropriate book. (not sure what books a 2000 to 2100 could use, but certainly I got a lot of help from Reasses Your Chess by Jeremy Silman. ~Need to go through that book again… I went through most of it, but due to RL stuff, had to stop playing chess for almost a year and forgot everything in the book. :frowning:

I’ll get back to it soon though.

There are certainly many ways to get your oppenent out of book pretty quick: Birds Opening, English Opening, Kings Gambit… those seem to be played alot less online (course I’m not level 2100 though).

As black, I noticed not to many people are familiar with the French Defence, Benoni, or Caro-Kann. ~Had some success with the Benoni, but I need to get some real material to learn the Caro-Kann, looking at a few games from the CM-11 database didn’t seem to help my games too much. :laughing:

I’m pretty familiar with various Indian defenses, but getting a bit bored with em. hehe.

If you want a free database program… Chessbase Light from http://www.chessbase.com/ might fit the bill. If you go to http://www.pgnmentor.com/ and click to the database section… that have scores of small databases (under 32000 games per database)… ranging from dozens of openings to scores of players, and many many tournaments.

The free version of chessbase light… you can’t open database more than 32000 games (or your limited to the first 32k entries is more accurate), and you can’t have mulitple databases open, and you can’t save/edit databases. But using Chessbase Light with the files from pgn mentor website, its actually quite a usable combination for free anyway.

Bottom line… you really don’t need computer preperation to play online chess, but stay away from fast time controls. Its really no different online than say… watching “Searching for Bobby Fischer” in Washington Park where the players are only using 2min to play chess and hoping for wild tactical gambits in lines that your not familiar with… only you can do it from the comfort of your abode. So just play slower times controls, use your noodle and have fun.[/size]

11

Chessbase Light ??? LOL !!!

Heres an better alternate >> chessdb.sourceforge.net/

More powerful than chessbase and FOR FREE !!!

Benny

12

Thanks for the info on ChessDB.

Do you have any links for the large (or any large) database… the link at the ChessDB website seems to be outdated.

Nevermind… I imported all my smaller opening pgn files into one 1.5+ million game database.

13

I wonder if, somewhere in older days, days of lore, of Ruy Lopez, Greco, Philidor, St. Amant, Staunton, La Bourdonnais, Deschapelles, McDonnell, etc. probably until the time at least of Anderssen, Zukertort, Morphy, maybe even to Steinitz, maybe later… I wonder if…someone complained about the negative influence on chess by … books.

14

This looks like SCID. Any relation?

15

Second major heading under the diagram on the main ChessDB page, “Main Features of ChessDB”, begins: “ChessDB is based very heavily on the highly successful Scid which was the premier free chess database.”

SCID hasn’t been maintained in several years, and there a at least a couple of other spinoff projects like ChessDB.

I still use the original SCID, myself.

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First off, I’m not rated 2000. The following are just my opinions. I find that before you are rated 1500, focus mostly on the mid and endgame. After that bench mark, having a good knowledge of the opening is very important. I agree that focusing on one opening is beneficial and can improve your ratings.