Book Hand Tuning II

Although the opening book only has control of the first 50 moves. (100 half moves) they are most important of the game. There is no reason why (given a bit of practice) that you can not prevent your engine from losing in the first half of the game. No mater what hardware you have it is not difficult to duplicate the depth of the fastest CPUs in offline analyses. (it just takes a bit more time)

When reviewing your games played online give the most attention of course to the games that you lost, but do not forget to look at the draws and wins as well. Many times using infinite analyses it is possible to find a line that breaks the draw. In games that you have won against strong opponents lengthen the book lines. To do this use the manual add move function in the book window of the GUI. This method of adding moves to the book gives the best control but do not forget that it adds all moves as green play moves. So be sure to go back and remove the green of the move in the losing side of the line. (this is done by right clicking on the move and hitting main move a second time)

Spend more time on finding winning lines as white, as black you may have to be satisfied with getting the draw in some lines. Here are the facts about the percentages of White vs. Black wins.

W 50% - B 50% In human club play:
W 52% - B 48% In master play:
W 56% - B 44% In GM play
W 62% - B 38% In engine play

I think this data says something about the relative strength of computers over humans. But my point is that in engine chess, the opening impetus is more pronounced for white. As black you should not expect to come out of opening book with a positional advantage very often. -.30 -.50 going into the middle game as Black will still give you a fighting chance.

Trying to tell someone how to update and tune books is some what a like trying to tell someone how to type on a keyboard. You can tell them where to put the fingers and what some of the edit keys do, but the only way one learns is by doing. Along the way many mistakes will be made. (always keep a archived copy of the books that you are tuning, so if something goes very wrong you can start over) And believe me when I say that the book learning function will not produce the same result as the basic methods that I have talked about, nor will it give the same satisfaction and connection to engine chess.

In the next few days I am going to go over my method of developing original books from databases. But I have a lot of time on my hands and if any one has a specific question about tuning please feel free to send it to me in an email and I will try to answer it.

Kevin@frayerchess.com Roll up your sleeves and get into the opening book trenches and remember in engine chess the book is the key…

Comments

[ChessKnight]

Hi Kevin Frayer:

Thanks A Lot for very informative article about how to make good opening book and hand-tune it.
By the way your web-site www.frayerchess.com is interesting and resourceful in many ways.
It's always worth to stop-by while surfing and searching for good stuff.

Thanks n regards,
ChessKnight

[Guest 42]

Hiho Kevin,

thanks alot about the times we had - and maybe will have together.
Maybe another one has better book, but the biggest price he wontt get, because he dont share his knowlege.

Your a true Master!

with best wishes for health and luck

Aljoscha