1.e4 f5 : me and my oversized ego vs all of you

My face also likes c4.

e6.

The explanation is in white, so Irontiger can easily avoid to read it:

Calculating captures: after fxe6 Bxe6 dxc5 Bxc5 have we advantage in development. Not good for white.

the DSB is developed, the pawn on f5 threatened to recapture, hence will white play a non developing move like fxe6 or g4. Maybe is Qf3 an alternative, but then can't play white the knight not anymore to f3 (looking at the hole of e5).

fxe6 helps black to develop, g4 gives black a clear target if white should castle kingside.

Therefor will I expect Nf3 Nc6 Bg5.

Komodo TCEC also likes c4.

LoekBergman: Explanation in white? Great idea, very creative.

We need a captain to post moves - Scot, are you up for the job?

If you see a problem and you know the solution, do it yourself.

I'm in favor of e6

So... ...c4 is the computer's pick, and ...e6 the human pick.

I will leave it to you for a while, try to come to an agreement

Irontiger wrote:

Stockfish picked e6, according to somebody's post, though I can't tell from that UI snippet how many ply were involved.

Any move that Komodo and Stockfish agree on should automatically be chosen (especially if Houdini agrees), given that Fritz et al are patzers by comparison. 

In fact I propose just that...that Komodo and Stockfish at 30+ plies be the benchmark, and if the two disagree, then Houdini's choice is the tiebreaker.  So, in this case, c4.

As for the human choice, that isn't part of the challenge...so stuff like "I'm in favor of e6" is meaningless.

c4. give the computer its due.

According to ChessBase, c4 has been played the most by humans.

Deep Rybka 4x64 also chooses c4 @21

Stockfish 2.3.1. also chooses c4 @24

Well, if we had a centaur player up there, he might do better than following the computers. But computers are certainly the closest approximation of "best play" that we have here. I will disregard the "I like move X" posts with no analysis anyways.

Centaur players should identify their engine and number of ply with each move they present, then.

Horace44 wrote:

I do not care a lot about what others think of that "experiment". It is certainly not going to prove much. I will not intentionnally pick a move that computers and strong players disagree with, and will put some effort into reading the posts to avoid doing it unintentionally, but I do not feel any obligation of result. I will try to keep it clean if I can, but won't put much effort in it either.

I started this thread instead of playing a game against a computer because 1-I'm too lazy to download and install a program on my new machine and 2-I thought there might be people interested in watching.

Back to topic : going by the computer move, I assume you play ...c4. My answer is the extremely surprising 6.Bc2 (which, I can tell you now, was the reason for 5.c3 - being able to keep an eye on f5/g6).

Perhaps a trick might be better in this position- IronTiger's posted plan is sound. 

Well, in the opening you move pieces not pawns so my move would be b5.

I will try to pay attention next time. I'm surprised that hiding coordinates is the default choice, by the way, but well. I edited the last diagram.

Komodo TCEC @33 ply: 6...e6 Says black is down almost a full pawn (0.97).

Aethelred. Count the pawns.

Hope that helps, I tried my best: The numerical evaluation of a chess engine is always given in pawn values (meaning that a value of 1.00 indicates one pawn). A positive value means that the position is better for White while negative numbers mean that a position favours Black.

Please note that chess engines don’t only consider material when making their evaluations – they also take positional considerations (space, pawn structures, etc.) into account as well. In this way, you could be down a few pawns or even a piece (see Danish Gambit, Damiano Defence) and still the engine will say you’re up a couple of pawns, but in a heuristic way, not in the way humans count. 

We could say that "pawn" here are homonyms, meaning they have the same spelling and pronunciation but have different meanings.

I do not think anyone should use a Chess Engine for anything - to use a Chess Engine analogy it is 0.45 Cheating - and encourages cheating.