Thursday, October 18, 2012

Chess Master at Any Age?

My latest at The Chess Improver is in part a reply to fellow columnist Tim Hanke's Is Age Relevant to Chess Improvement?. I have previously written about Rolf Wetzell's book Chess Master...at Any Age and I thought Nigel's site could use a little give and take. Maybe next week I'll do my best to really stir up some controversy, like saying that openings are important! That'll bring out the long knives...

2 comments:

AoxomoxoA wondering said...

About openings are important:

EscherehcsE
farbror wrote:

This is one of the most interesting chess tweets ever!
"If I gave a pill to a 1400 player so that he/she memorizes MCO-15, what would their new playing strength be? Most properly guess 1400-1450" @danheisman

Is it really true?

Information from my test:

Two identical engines playing each other at about 1400 elo, except one is using an opening book, and the other is not. The opening book is Sedat's Perfect v10 book, with the depth limited to no more than 15 full moves. My guess is that this opening book is a decent approximation for MCO. So far, 700 games have been played. The engine with the book is +28 elo, with a possible error of plus or minus 12 elo at a 95% confidence interval.
....
....

At 1400 elo, 1000 games: Ufim with book is +32 elo with possible error of plus or minus 10 elo at a 95% confidence interval.



At 2000 elo, 800 games: Ufim with book is +27 elo with possible error of plus or minus 11 elo at a 95% confidence interval. (During the 2000 elo test, the elo difference had recently spent much time around the 20 to 22 level.)

It would be interesting to do more tests at 1000 elo and full strength, but I have other testing that I'd like to get on with, so I can't promise that I'll do any more testing on this book issue.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/magic-pill?page=1

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Nice to hear that they excel in the sport at their young age.