He must be using chess books written in the 19th century. I'd challenge the guy to provide some specific examples of errors in the opening manuals such as ECO, NCO, etc.
Individual game analysis is another matter. Anything analyzed and published before the computer is a good target for double checking.
There are plenty of chess books written before the 1990s that have not been checked out with tactical engines with chess theory that is just dead wrong in the assessment as to who has the advantage.
There was the book "Bluebook of Winning Chess". It gave human odds on various positions. So you have the practical and the theoretical and then the absolutely objective as with Ribka.
Speaking of best, Stockfish 5, Komodo 8, and Houdini 4 are the top three engines, rated something like 125 points stronger than Rybka 4.
Which are most user-friendly and human like?
I'm no expert about chess engines, so maybe someone will step in and correct me if I'm not precise about all this.
I think it mainly depends on what GUI interface is used as far as user friendly goes. Komodo 8 and Houdini 4 are both commercial engines, in other words they have to be paid for. I don't know about Houdini 4, but I know the Komodo 8 cd comes in a Fritz interface because I bought the Komodo 8 cd. The Fritz interface is popular, and seems very user-friendly to me.
Komodo 8 can be downloaded at a reduced cost cheaper than the cd, but the download doesn't come with a GUI, so a Komodo 8 download will have to be installed into an interface. If you already have a Fritz interface I suppose that would work. Stockfish 5 is considered about as strong as Komodo 8 and is free. On rating lists the very slight difference in rating strength between Stockfish 5 and Komodo 8 seems to depend on the time control of the matches as to which is higher rated. I think Houdini 4 comes in a close third. The Stockfish 5 download is free but will have to be put into an interface. Arena is a free interface, and I'm not certain but I think the engine may not think as fast in the Arena interface as it does in the Fritz interface.
I downloaded Stockfish 5 into the Fritz interface that came with Komodo 8 cd. I can actually run both Stockfish 5 and Komodo 8 at the same time but it slows down the computing speed of each engine when I do that so I don't usually. I think Komodo 8 is considered ever so slightly the more positional, Houdini 4 ever so slightly more tactical, and Stockfish 5 sort of an inbetween the two in style. I've noticed Komodo 8 and Stockfish 5 often agree but they do disagree a bit at times. If one doesn't want to spend money and already has a Fritz interface installed from a former Fritz purchase then it seems to me the free Stockfish 5 download will be the way to go. Maybe a free older Fritz interface can be downloaded, I don't know. Will an older Fritz interface run the engine as fast, perhaps not, I don't really know. Arena is a free interface download but I believe I've read before that Arena doesn't operate engines as fast and isn't quite as user friendly (though still user friendly). Maybe someone will help out about this.
Thanks a lot for the overview. There seems to be a lot of fear and hostility toward computer issues on this site due to the problem of online cheating.
I was speaking with a strong chess expert who teaches scholastic chess yesterday who said he had his students go through opening books with the best programs like Rybka. He said the computer proved many of the books so far wrong it wasn't funny. Are there articles on this?
ECO had the line 1e4 e5 2f4 d5 3exd c6 4dxc6 Nc6 -/+ Computers doubt this assessment.