Great input, yeah I understand there comes a point in almost all games that grandmasters can understand the position vs the computer not being able to calculate that far in advance.
My question for this is where do you acquire such depth of knowledge for positions. Is it just mostly experience or the majority of it comes from coming from books with great annotations of games played?
What are "4+ draws"?
So as an IM when you do use chess engines do you just look at for those types of positions when considering different advantages/disadvantages or you just figure out on your own what moves are playable? Also, what advice would you have for beginner players on what the best way is for them to find playable moves.
Thank you so much for your information!
When using chess engines I'm trying to figure out at what threshold an acceptable move would be. Obviously when the top rated move or two is more than a point or more over the next rated move this is very clear.
When however it gets down to a difference of .20 or .30 what should we consider a playable move. I do know that when the computer shows an advantage of .30 this is considered a small advantage, .70 is considered a considerable advantage of 1.40 is considered winning. So my thinking was anything that is within half of .30 is "playable" So my initial thought is 0.15
Now, I understand that engines think differently than grandmasters with regards to positions vs brute force calculations and also depth of search. I have Komodo which factors in positions to a degree. I just want to get an idea of where I should consider the cutting off point.
Unless youe playing an engine, the +/- factor doesnt matter. And when youre talking about .15? That is completely irrelevant.
Long story short. Unless youre using an engine to review games, playing against an engine and not understanding is a waste of your study time.
Well I am trying to review my games using an engine but sometimes I'm not sure which one are really playable and which ones aren't sometimes.
Well I am trying to review my games using an engine but sometimes I'm not sure which one are really playable and which ones aren't sometimes.
If you are using an engine for review that is different. I set the threshold at .33 of a pawn (1 tempo) You would probably be ok setting it at 1.00 pawn. That way any move made that the engine think is better or worse than a pawn will show variations.
"Noone lost a game that they didn't make a wrong move." (Except for Bobby Fischer when he didn't show up for game two!)
yeah but it's a mistake never the less even if you can't find it
even a master can blunder
I've found, as a very amateur player, that normally anything of less that 0.3 from a computer standpoint isn't going to be any use for me to evaluate in most cases. In fact, I have seen positions up to about 0.7 (and occasionally a little higher) where I can't really see why the computer thinks any suggested moves are so much better.
For differences from a 0 to 0.15, I usually just ignore those completely. 0.16 and up to maybe 0.5, I'll try and see if I can find the better move, but I won't spend too much time on it there and won't normally spend a tremendous amount of time looking over the engine variations either. At the level I'm playing, it is the obvious blunders (that weren't so obvious in game) that I spend the majority of my analysis time on.
Sometimes, the suggested line is easier to understand but for most people, a lot of moves, even if not objectively the best to a computer, are playable. Ideally, a stronger player could explain why a certain line is better. If you put enough effort into it you might be able to figure it out but you'll probably get the most benefit out of the larger jumps.
"What do you think?
Can Humans still beat Engines?"
No! because they last time they haven't won a match is Kasparov in 1998!
In general, if it's <0.3 point difference, it'll probably be challenging for class level player to find the difference between it and the other move choices.
There are clearly exceptions, but it's pretty easy for a class player to find whether it's a good enough move or not - there are situations where the CPU will go into a really complex line with many losing chances and difficult play to get that "tiny edge" which a human class player would reject as way too risk. You just have to play out 3-5 additional moves, and see if the resulting position and trades look crazily dangerous, or you like the style of play and choose accordingly.
Computers love pointing out suicidal sacs where you're 100% lost if you don't find THE only continuation, whereas it's much more sane and practical to play the 'not as winning' move which is stupidly obvious and totally risk free.
I will add that as I've come to seriously study openings now, computers are NOT a great reference for choosing the best lines to play for opening study. Computers are really good for pointing out which moves NOT to play (errors) in the opening, and where you screwed up in your last game in the opening, but they'll often steer you toward tough positions to play out in realtime if you just go by the CPU point evaluation.
Whereas if you study opening books written by IMs/GMs, they'll recommend some lines that a CPU will say are -1.0 or even more in evaluation, but SO much easier to play that it's almost certain your opponent will be lost if they aren't a computer (these lines work against GMs according to the author.) My opening results improved significantly when I started trying out these 'human' lines rather than aping the computer "0.0" lines which led me to planless middlegames.
I guess the point here I was trying to figure out is where should you're cutoff be when using chess engines. Obviously it is not perfect but when the engine is showing the best move is 1.60 and the next best is 0.20 that's obvious. But when the best move it is showing is 1.60 but then the next best is 1.10 or 1.00 where do you cut off and say ok so this second move is not going to work and I can look at it and this is why it doesn't work.
When using chess engines I'm trying to figure out at what threshold an acceptable move would be. Obviously when the top rated move or two is more than a point or more over the next rated move this is very clear.
When however it gets down to a difference of .20 or .30 what should we consider a playable move. I do know that when the computer shows an advantage of .30 this is considered a small advantage, .70 is considered a considerable advantage of 1.40 is considered winning. So my thinking was anything that is within half of .30 is "playable" So my initial thought is 0.15
Now, I understand that engines think differently than grandmasters with regards to positions vs brute force calculations and also depth of search. I have Komodo which factors in positions to a degree. I just want to get an idea of where I should consider the cutting off point.