On Sat, 2007-01-20 at 15:06 -0500, Don Dailey wrote: > Years ago A player in the chess > club kept beating me over the head with a non-standard > opening move that was difficult to refute. I got sick > of this, sat down in the privacy of my own home and > didn't get back up until I discovered the correct > response. In effect I consulted a much stronger > player, myself, given a lot of extra time. I think > I spent about 2 hours on this - so it was as if I consulted > a player a few hundred ELO points stronger. I found > a move I had no chance of finding in 20 or 30 seconds, > even after repeated ad-hoc unstructured attempts. > > As soon as a started playing this move, my opponent > stopped using it and he had to work harder to beat me.
I forgot to mention an interesting addendum to this story. I was only about 1700 rated at the time and I later showed the position to a 2300 player - a good friend of mine. I had already figured out the correct response but out of curiosity I wanted to see how quickly the 2300 player would find the right response. I set up the position and he took a glance at it. He did a little analysis out loud and figured out the correct move but it took him about 30-60 seconds - it wasn't as quickly as I thought it would be. But it makes sense. He was some 600 ELO stronger than I was, so I would expect him to find it about 64 times faster if each doubling is worth 100 ELO. I don't know if you can apply the formula directly to a single move like this, but it was interesting nonetheless that it was roughly in the same ballpark. This very same master always analyzed his games and someone we analyzed them (and my games too) together. He often found moves he should have played that he didn't consider during the actual game. This was always after spending a great deal of time studying the position. You cannot tell me that thinking long and hard about a difficult move will not enable you to make a better one. - Don _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
