Staunton-Cochrane Sicilian, "Sicilian killer"

Honestly, I think your chess thinking is weird and will ultimately stunt your development.  "Drawable" is not a goal, maybe a failsafe in certain tournament situations, but if you don't desire to win this game then I think you should consider putting your time into another game or hobby.  

No, I play the same whether I'm playing White or Black: I play the best I can and keep a vigilant watch for mistakes. As soon as I see a mistake that I believe will be fatal I stop worrying about keeping the position drawish, stop worrying about my pawn structures, stop worrying about keeping pieces coordinated, and I go for a tactical win because I know the win is there. You can see that in both those games I posted in this thread where I won. As I pointed out in an earlier thread, you *must* take advantage of mistakes or else those mistakes become strong moves that will destroy you. It's just logic. You have no choice in that case since it's a tactical necessity. In fact, that observation is just an extrapolation of all those chess puzzles you see where one side is about to be mated in one move but the side to move has a combination that mates in x moves before their opponent can make that mating move. That's just the way chess is: it's mate or be mated. In fact, I secretly curse my opponent whenever he/she makes a major mistake: I think, "Oh great, you had to make a mistake and turn the game tactical, didn't you? Now I gotta start thinking." Mistakes are what destroy the positional balance that a normal game of chess has and turn the game tactical. In practice I may not find the right tactical solution, but from experience I know it must be there.

Gee, people are sure interested in my philosophy here! All I did was post an opening I thought was useful, partly for feedback on the opening!

I am guessing that gambit players p!$$ you off then...

The explanation of the phenomenon you discovered is simple. It's called the "horizon effect," which is a sudden termination of the ability of a program to look ahead even one more ply, which in turn creates losses that didn't need to be losses. Any sudden horizon destroys the normal continuity and robustness of the progress of a chess game. By the way, that observation also generalizes to economics, computer science, law, and just about every other domain in life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_effect

Because it's weird!  lol

From where I am standing, gazing upon the horizon, I see that as a mutually exclusive problem for both sides, whether it is black and white's scope in an engine playing itself game or comparing how humans play one another to how engines play themselves. The horizon of a human is far more limited, and can help to account for why humans draw more.

I think it is that humans are only able to understand a certain level of chessic difficulty and therefore aren't able to see the forced wins, that require tedious and perfect play. A human may be lucky to ever play one or two perfect games.

BTW, the engines aren't limited in scope, it is the computers that drive them, which run out of resources. Most of us turn on our 4 core 3.0 ghz, 16 gb Ram systems and blame the engine for the horizon effect. If Houdini 4 x 64 pro has it's max usable 256 gb of ram at it's disposal, I believe a forced win in inevitabel in many lines.

I'm afraid you're misinformed about the ability of quantum computers to advance the domain of chess:

----------

(p. 114)
   Quantum computing is not directly applicable, however, to problems such as
playing a board game. Whereas the "perfect" chess move for a given board is a
good example of a finite but intractable computing problem, there is no easy way
to test the answer. If a person or process were to present an answer, there is no
way to test its validity other than to build the same move-countermove tree that
generated the answer in the first place. Even for mere "good" moves, a quantum
computer would have no obvious advantage over a digital computer.

Kurzweil, Ray. 1999. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York, New York: Viking Penguin.

Is 4.d3 still dead drawn on ICCF?  

You are saying that chess would have to be solved in order for it to be made a certainty. That is fair.

However, by the same token, this idea nullifies your own assertion about chess being objectively a draw. You can no more prove it than I can that is a forced win once certain choices are made.

Of course I cannot prove it, but even the existence of the Higgs boson is not provable. When dealing with extreme domains like quantum mechanics all we can do is resort to probability (e.g., http://understandinguncertainty.org/explaining-5-sigma-higgs-how-well-did-they-do). Chess is defintely one of those extreme domains where we can only keep pushing against (what is essentially) infinity and providing probabilities based on what we've seen so far, and make educated guesses as to the ultimate nature of the phenomenon. I believe it's true that we can never make a proof of that type about chess, but we can eventually provide so much overwhelming evidence using so many subsets of the problem, as FirebrandX pointed out with the single subset so far of the Berlin variation, that it becomes ridiculous to believe an exception will ever be found. All indications I've seen are that no such forced win exists from the opening position of chess, and Firebrand X's example makes me even more convinced. I remember even Bobby Fischer's book "My 60 Memorable Games," which was published in 1969, mentioned that one variation of the King's Gambit had already been analyzed so much by then that it was known to draw. That was 45 years ago, and all evidence since then keeps strongly suggesting that no such forced win exists in any opening whatsoever. You can keep holding out belief of the existence of such a situation, but that's like believing dinosaurs are still living somewhere. After a while such a hypothesis gets ridiculously unlikely. I'm siding with the overwhelmingly likely hypothesis.

While you are making a good case of what seems most likely, from the evidence, we are comparing human lines and not best possible play of engines. Then again, I can't prove what that even is...

If chess were only as simple as a coin flip, I would be completely enclined to agree with you. However, the long term concessions that are made by certain choices, that might result in a drawish position for a while, eventually show their merits. I believe this truth would belie false perceptions we have of the game at this point, I just can't prove it.

Once certain moves are played, due to their endelible nature (pawn moves, acceptance of promotions, etc), the initiative, forcing moves that cost the other side tempos and or material ( windmill tactics come to mind), etc, a concrete winner would be found, in many lines, if chess were solved. Even if it was, it would be a moot point since, no human is capable of retaining that much information, even for one opening.

Totally agree that if black gets either of these ideas in, he is doing well.

@XPLAYERJX: I looked at that thread, and it is singularly lacking in any analysis.

Anyways, 1. e4 c5 2. c4 Nc6 3. ne2 and after e6, d6 or g6 white can play d4 and is doing OK. Maybe just not what he intended when he played c4.

Yep.

Systems don't aim for +/= in any case :p

I think I've only played it once in a tournament.  My position was maybe a tiny bit better in the middlegame, but I did eventually lose :(

Well, at least responses like yours are contributing useful information and make some logical sense. As for Bg5 trades, I don't play Bg5 at all in this opening unless there is some mistake by Black that justifies it. In general I guess you could say I have an entire *system* set up with this opening, which includes a philosophy and unique unit placement, not just a set of opening moves. Today I went over some old games from the 1800s between Staunton and Cochrane that used this opening but they used different enough setups (such as White playing f4) that *most* of their games didn't resemble mine, although one was strikingly close. As far as Black trading off his QB for my knight, couldn't I trade off one of my bishops for his knight, as well?

pfren,

I'm not "boasting" about 2. c4. I'm just claiming that I've greatly changed the character of the opening by playing that move instead of the usual, ambitious 2. Nf3. I'm just posting my usual response to the Sicilian, in response to a request by a member (DKenney) who asked me to do that in another thread (http://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/i-was-really-stuck-in-the-midgame-longer-game-feedback?page=1). I almost abandoned this variation before, after that one Yahoo game I mentioned, and I still might abandon it, but not before I've lost enough games against humans when I was playing well, and not before I've convinced myself through analysis of lost games that the opening is so defective that it's not worth its intent, which is to change the character of the middlegame environment.

Fixing_A_Hole,

Apparently you still don't understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying that if I have a winning position that I'm going to give my opponent a stalemate just to draw because for some perverse reason I value draws above wins. Not at all. Again: I'm saying that I'm trying to change the *character* of the opening from very dangerous to very safe. Also your term "weird" when used to describe thinking seems to me to mean "creative," which most people consider a good thing. This opening idea *does* imply a new way of thinking about the Sicilian, and it alerts players to the possibility that they don't have to succumb to Black's chosen environment when playing against the Sicilian. If you can't handle creative, new ideas, then maybe chess isn't for you.

I guess I'm going to have to start playing against humans to get any promising play from Black in this opening, although I'll try playing the chess.com program on expert level for a game or two first. I was interested when I saw Chess Titans play ...g6 in our game a couple days ago, then it proceded to lock the center and to fall back into its old habits. This phenomenon relates to what I was saying in another thread (http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/idea-for-opening-books-desired-next-move) that it would be very useful to create some language or representation for computers at a slightly more abstract level of description, so that you can tell a program a general plan to which it will stick, instead of falling into its usual, short-sighted, tactical solutions.

Your ideas aren't new, they give equality at best, and like all systems are mostly for lazy players who don't really want to improve.  But if you feel you are living on the wildside with your creative play than don't let me rain on your parade.  If creativity in chess becomes what you consider it, playing for draws against computers as white, than yes maybe I will quit chess!  

If you haven't been playing in a long time (I seem to remember you saying something like this) then beating / drawing chess titians is, IMO, really good.

But both chess titians and the chess.com java computer are not playing at full strength, no matter the setting.  Engines are easily master level now-a-days, anything else you can bet has been forced to play bad moves one way or another. 

Modern strong engines given time to think will be more consistent with a logical plan.  Although there is still the problem you point out, chess opening database loaded into the engine usually get it past the opening with no problems at all.

Anyway, as for your chess, yes, playing humans is important.  Not only do you face moves that challenge your ideas, but also moves that you know are not good, but your human opponent knows it presents you with challenging practical problems.

For example if a human deems your attack to be strong, then they may go all-out for counterplay, forcing you to find many accurate defensive and attacking moves.  A computer may calculate all the correct moves, and so would never try such an active defense, so in the end, a successful attack against an engine may be much easier!  Or in any case, you wont have the opportunity to test yourself / learn as much.

The London System is for lazy players, yet perfectly feared by many including myself..

Facedesk.

XPLAYERJX,

You're absolutely right about my misunderstanding the bishop pin you were talking about. My mistake.

Ouch, yes, I can see now where White can't get rid of that nasty outposted Black knight at d4. However, I wonder if 3...d4 could have helped to free up White early on. (Sorry for all the typos, mistakes, and slowness. I'm tired and should go to bed.)