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Strange Game Explorer Behavior

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soothsayer8

So, I noticed something when I was looking through one of my online games with Game Explorer. In my game, I had reached this position:













I was white, and I figured the best move would be to play Bxc4, naturally, but I looked through the game explorer, and all 693 master games that had reportedly been through this position played 6. Nf3. Not a single one deviated. This seemed very strange to me, so I looked into some of the games from that position, and then more and more, until I realized that none of those games had actually been in that position! Rather, what had happened is that white had already played Nf3, and it seemed like Game Explorer, instead of demonstrating what moves came next from my position, instead just showed me what was different between my position and the position of other games. What moves I could make to reach the place that those master games were at.

This seems like clearly undesirable behavior. If there were no games with my position found in the database, why would Game Explorer decide to say that there was?

bestpony

The game explorer, and opening databases in general from what I've seen, are made flexible to include transpositions from whatever line you're playing. I do realize you'd like to know the optimal move order for your specific position, but it simply doesn't work that way and I don't know what needs to be done for that to be a possibility. For now, you'll simply have to look at specific games or think for yourself to figure out what move really is the best.

soothsayer8

Thanks, bestpony. I think there's also an option in Game Explorer to "Explore all games from this position" or something of the like that would only show me games that had the same position as mine, though it doesn't give a move by move breakdown. That would be nice. Well, it just requires a little more work and independent thought which I certainly don't mind at all.