Actually, there are bestselling books out with titles such as Beating the Sicilian. So yeah, people have already tried to get money with titles that appear to make ridiculous claims.
But books often make outrageous claims.
The Sicilian is an inaccuracy
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EricFleet is right, and you are wrong.
Obviously, he is writing a book. If the book says it is true, then it must be true. The sicilian is refuted.
Are you writing a book, FM Bluebird1964??
shepi13 wrote:
EricFleet is right, and you are wrong.
Obviously, he is writing a book. If the book says it is true, then it must be true. The sicilian is refuted.
Are you writing a book, FM Bluebird1964??
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Only Chuck Norris can refute the Sicilian. This is a FACT.
duck_and_cover wrote:
Only Chuck Norris can refute the Sicilian. This is a FACT.
He co-authored with me. The only annoying part was how many chess sets he went through with his round house kicks.
Gloomshroom wrote:
Wasn't it Alekhine who said that the Sicilian opening was nothing but a "cheap trick"? :D
He didn't ! But he did say that he does not like to play it because he would feel like standing in a dark room with your opponent , and both having a loaded pistol.
On the other hand, before the extensive analysis that was done essentially since the mid of 20th century only (and proved that Sicilian is playable), many strong players have used it frequently, some of them long time before: the brothers Paulsen, A. Anderson, Em. Lasker.
It seems that some players don't understand how a chess engine works.
1. Evaluations at the end of some variant are based on material, influence/strength of pieces, pawn/square weaknesses on the board (as far as those can be mathematicalized; note: even strong engines sometimes make errors in detecting weaknesses, because of the complexity of such task). Dynamic factors play NO role here anymore, because the analysis was already finished.
2. Every engine has a finite horizon for calculation of a variant (and the evaluation afterwards).
3. There are many situations in chess where the 'truth' of a position can be discovered only after going to a horizon of 20 (or even more) moves.
The amount of calculus that is necessary to follow from a given position along all possible (or, at least 'plausible') variants about 20 moves ahead, dramatically increases with the number of pieces on the board. Exactly this is the case during the opening phase of a game.
Hence, an engine evaluation of '+0.30' (after, say, move 4 to 15 of the opening) for some variant of the Sicilian that we often find on some websites, can fail !
Actually, I am not surprised about such evaluations:
In many variants of the Open Sicilian Black has a 'clamped' position (like in the Scheveningen, or so-called 'hedgehog' variants), that is, he has little space, his pieces are not too active, bishops have 'short' diagonals, etc. But his pieces have still enough room for regrouping, his position reminds of a clamped spring, waiting for the release of its energy. MUCH later, some hidden details can be important, some of them even in endgames: an extra pawn for black in the center, a minority attack of black pawns on the queenside, White might have 'overstretched' his position with a run of pawns on the kingside, thus weakening pawns and squares.
It's long been known that the Sicilian is unsound, from both sides.
I agree with schlechter55. It is impossible for a computer to say that c5 is a wrong answer. Normally, computers use opening books to guide them in the beginning, because as he explains there are too much possibilities. I suppose it is more a bug than something else, maybe the opening book is missing ? Play sicilian if you like it and just skip the begin of the analysis.
Personnaly (at my low level) I use more the analysis to see blunders and mistakes. I don't expect to play in the same way than a computer 2500. So I ignore inaccuracies.
It is not exactly what I say. I agree with you that computer doesn't "know" a bad move or a good move. They don't know, in a human sense, what is chess, or even what means 1+1. But they are able to compute 1+1, and also to solve computational problems. I think there is no doubt nowadays that a chess engine can compute a chess position after the opening (let's say after 10 moves).
However, opening is a special case since there are a lot of possibilities. So a computer analysis without an opening book is not relevant. Most of the time they said last move of the book. That's why I think that the opening book is missing, corrupted or whatever.
We can not say that chess engines are bad programmed ^^
shepi13 wrote:
Well, I think most engines don't like the sicilian that much. And the chess.com analysis isn't exactly the most accurate thing ever.
I've had something like this happen before.
lol bishop is the only promotion that wouldn't work there.
The Sicilian has NO refutation, only too much theory. Eric Fleet sounds like an idiot.
And with all due respect, if you couldn't tell the post had ten pounds of sarcasm in it...
In order for you to believe my post was serious, you would have to belive
1) I think I have a refutation for the Sicilian
2) I am writing a book about it
3) chess.com is spying on my book writing activities
4) class players can beat Grandmasters
And the usual criticism I hear from Europeans is that Americans don't get humor...
They would also have to believe that you would title a book: "The Sicilian has been refuted"
I mean, why not something that sounds better, like, "refuting the sicilian" or something.
That might be more believable.
And "Why the caro-kann leads to a forced mate in 8", honestly, your titles are like 10 words long.
So, my other book title "Why Symetrical Pawn Openings Are Just Plain Bad and You Shouldn't Play Them Unless you Want to Look Like a Patzer and have People Laugh at You for the Rest of Your Life" might not be the best?