Playing Chess With Holly On Christmas Day; Botvinnik-style!

Amazing game @KeSetoKaiba, you're awesome, C'mon Zion!!!))) Merry Christmas!!!)))

Thanks for commenting on the game and Merry Christmas to you too Zion

Thank you for posting this game. Very interesting to us mere mortals.

COngrats

Glad you enjoyed the game @Da-Vere and thanks for the kind words: I never thought the "mere mortals" chess expression would ever refer to a game I played myself 

Thanks for posting too @TonyL103 What did you think about team DUNE and the funny comment from @Kandigirl00 about my move analysis? lol xD I just come from posting about those moves there and now I come over here to comment on another game I annotated xD

XD

i survived 50 moves with holly doing the bongcloud, before i got checkmated by 2 knighst and a queen

Keep trying and you might eventually win if you haven't already. We both know how "solid" the Bongcloud is (or isn't), but if you lasted circa 50 moves, then perhaps the opening wasn't so bad. Keep at it!

Is there a way to bookmark a thread to my profile? Not like in my browser but how in reddit you can save a post for later. Really enjoyed this breakdown and want to read through it again in a few months when I'm a little better. 

Glad you liked it, but I don't think chess.com has a way of "book marking" threads like that (if it did, then I'd certainly use that feature!). Best I can think is maybe just saving the annotated pgn somewhere or copying the thread hyperlink.

Loved the annotations in your game posting.  Reading that she swindled you a couple times, then the comparisons to some classic play in the won game you posted gave me a warm fuzzy that I finally beat Holly Bot.  Thanks for posting!  

Signed,

another mere mortal

Thank you for posting; glad you liked the game annotations

That looks hard

It was. Holly-bot is rated 2000. It wasn't impossible (as my win illustrated), but for most chess players under grandmaster level, Holly would be usually tough to win against.

Lol some people say bots are overrated and some say underrated. None say on level

I think the inconsistent opinion is partially because comparing bots to humans isn't exactly apples to apples.  I suspect the approximate numbers of best moves, on down to blunders is probably set on par with a similar rated human, yet the computer probably has to randomize the good moves with the bad, so it can probably make for timings of some spectacular play and some very poorly timed blunders.  Not that humans aren't also subject to both, but you can replay the bots enough to get a feel for some opening defense, and maybe even general tactics.  Also, you don't need to be good at both white and black to claim a bot victory.

+1 

I was typing a longer post that basically said this but with examples and evidence given - then my internet randomly died and I lost what I was writing, so I didn't feel like re-doing it. Basically this though. 

I will add that the Holiday series bots on chess.com have been some of the most "human-like" bots I've played before though. Check out this thread from a friend of mine:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/why-this-keep-happening-to-me-1 

In my game against "Dash" (this thread inspired me to play the Holiday bots), 5...Nc6?! is a human-like move that is dubious. It looks natural to develop a piece, but the Knight is typically misplaced on c6 in these structures (...c6 is more standard).

Merry Christmas @KeSetoKaiba!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you @Vishy-jr and @ZionPureinHeart and same for everyone else reading this message; Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

I'm sure chess.com will be flooded with new "Happy New Year-threads" for the next few hours

p.s. By the way Zion, remember how my time zone is 2 hours apart from yours? I'll get to the "New Year" two hours before you do! Isn't that crazy? In those two hours leading up to it for you, I'll be in 2021 when you are in 2020. Time Zones is a funny thing that is about as close to Time Travel as I think we can realistically become lol