Modern Defence vs Pirc Defence

Are engine evaluations really relevant for these matters?

Dark, you and I know a lot more than the average Joe on chess.com.  The majority of these people on chess.com that toot their horns about how great the Pirc or Alekhine or whatever other secondary opening use this as their only source.  Look at how many posters refuse to spend money on an actual book or ChessBase or chesspublishing.com or professional coaches!  They rely on the low setting bots here.

I am well aware that the Kings Indian is not +1 for White.  But what the average user here sees is when they go to the weak analysis engine here on chess.com is an evaluation above 1 after the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 O-O.

You know that info is a farce.  I know it is a farce (AND HENCE WHY I SAY 0.2 VERSUS 0.9 IS USELESS IN THE OPENING!).

The problem is, most average joe users on here that are no better than a 1000 rated over the board player do not understand that it is a farce and will utter that the Pirc is better than the French!

but those are two different statements

"engines are useless in the opening" does not mean the same thing as "noobs using engine at low depths and not exploring the given line further". 

That is the point I am making.  Average Joe users that aren't very good at chess and use chess.com as their only source go around arguing X.

I go mentioning that X is useless at a given stage in the game (in this case the opening), and point out that numbers mean nothing at that point.

Then Dark goes off the deep end and does not follow the thread and realize what is being said.  He reads my post only like an ADHD person would, does not bother to understand context by looking at the previous posts, and just makes negative assumptions claiming I do not understand how to use an engine.

When you make assumptions (or ASSUME), you make an a$$ out of U and ME!

THE WHOLE POINT IS I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOUR ENGINE SAYS DURING THE OPENING MOVES OF THE GAME ARE OF NO VALIDITY TO MAKE A CLAIM ABOUT HOW GREAT AN OPENING IS!

The truth is, engines themselves ARE USELESS in the Opening and the Endgame!

An engine can sit there for an hour and it will tell you that KRN vs KR is plus 3.  It is never plus 3.  If there is an immediate fork or skewer, it is plus a bajillion.  If not, it is triple zero!

Engines need powerbooks for the opening and table bases for the endgame.  Otherwise, they are useless in those two phases of the game.  They are best in the middlegame as a whole and calculating tactics to win material in the case of blunders in the opening or endgame.

For example, after 1.d4 g6 2.Bg5 c6 3.e3??, it will see 3...Qa5+, but that is tactics, not opening evaluation.

now you are changing the topic to endgame evals which are an entirely different animal

the reason top players use engines for opening novelties extensively is proof that this sentiment is nonsense. Engines have radically changed how we evaluate openings of the past and introduce great novelties otherwise looked over by humans. That we cant expect engines to solve decades of human opening research in the time it takes to finish your coffee is not a valid critique of anything.

and like i said before CLOUD ENGINES. we dont need to rely on the number crunching of our device anymore. Now very high depth analysis of openings is borrowed from engines that have done the heavy lifting for us, and the result of HUMANS playing around with said evals and drilling in deeper yields newer evals also saved in the cloud. This isnt 2005 anymore.

luckily for us, centaur chess is still showing that engines assisted by strong human players are still superior to pure engine play

Read the whole post.  I mention both openings and endgames because the engine sux at both.

An engine needs a Powerbook to evaluate and play an opening properly!

The engine alone CANNOT DO IT!

ever heard of alphazero?

Yes I have heard of it.  But it is not on the market.  At least I have yet to see it sold anywhere accessible to the U.S.  Amazon, Chess4Less, etc.

THE POINT is that very strong engines dont "need" opening books to analyze and  play openings well. There is nothing inherent in silicon machines  that doent allow them to do that.

The reason conventional engines are rarely left entirely on their own devices is a matter of resources, you cant compare the collective experience of decades of opening research to a cursory look of an engine from the starting position. Humans have had 300 years of collective experience to have a say with some authority on this!But engines are at the forefront of finding opening novelties at an alarming rate.

alphazero is just so strong with its neural network methods of pruning that it virtually imitates the historical trial and error of humans in its own way 

Looks like you are about 2 years out of knowledge on engine news!

Current Leela running on TCEC and chess.com computer championis about 4 times bigger network than Alpha Zero, and it is estimated minimum of +70 elo stronger now (depending on time control) .  (Leela reached Alpha Zero level in 2019 Feb -2019 April .) . Beyond that point 2019, Leela programmers introduced various better training methods that were not available for Alpha Zero in 2017..If you ask in Leela discord, majority of testers can prove with their reasonable testing methods. 

Its a graveyard....there are more and more people playing d4 hoping to catch some sucker playing KID.

@ThrillerFan clearly you are too old and stubborn to be convinced that the pirc is just as good as any other response, but for a 2000 Rated player to be running around the forums calling out an opening that is used at the top level to be inferior is a complete joke

The Pirc is not played at the top level!

The last time it was, back in 1999, it got smashed and is now known as Kasparov's Immortal game!

Even the Scandinavian was used in the World Championship (1995).  Find me a Pirc in a World Championship match!

Here's Carlsen playing it against Anand about a year ago. But it wasnt a world championship game, so i guess its not at the high standard of your games.

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1958957

Here's another one, this time against Maxime: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1926255

modern is more flexible but its actually a headache to play well. A lot of the many different plans black has, there is usually some white line specifically designed to stop or at least heavily dissuade you from playing your formation of choice. They are also a lot of lines where black must know very subtle nuances in move order just not to end up in a bad spot.Pirc is still fairly theory heavy if you want to play it at a higher level but far more straightforward by comparison and linear.

I have personally never liked either. They are not particularly trappy and dont have too much surprise value and take a lot of homework to get away with past a certain level. White also has too many setups which let him dictate the game and still have a decent advantage. Other secondary defenses at least force white to make committal moves before you get the "critical" lines. 

If I play this kind of stuff, I want to be non committal and flexible. So, modern with ...a6. In particular, I like to wait before I commit my King's Knight.

@ThrillerFan is the typical Internet troll, runs around making absurd claims and disagreeing with people for no reason other than to be difficult, and then when proven wrong disappears of the face of the earth