Hello,
My two cents on databases like endgame and tactical exercises.
Just looking at Zurich 1953 casually made me found, for the first 30 games,
something like one very good exercise every two games. And that's just with
the help of comments, diagrams and my wetware mind. Finding good exercises
is not that difficult ; finding fair exercises with a computer is even
easier.
If we try contributing exercises, we will have to skim those we want more
than seek more exercises. Perhaps we would have to build modules according
to the difficulty we feel. It would be better to modularize according to
the evaluation by the success of a pool of players, like the [Tactics Chess
Server][tcs]. But for that we would need to have a server.
So we should aim at a solution that relies more on structure than feedback.
A better idea for Scid would be classify the exercises according to the kind
of material configuration : pawn structure and piece distribution. There
are challenges here too, as we need to connect structures according to
families and species that are not natural kinds. The Finder Window is very
well endowed to do just that. [^note]
We should not rely on manual classication, but something like pattern
recognition. Manual classification is expensive and error-prone : just look
at the mess with bibliographic keywords. (It's not your fault, Alex ;-) An
exercise can comprise more than one theme : which one is it to be classified
? Tags are practical, but unreliable. They should stay at the personal
level. Nothing very original here : I am only hinting as to why expert
systems did not fulfill the hopes classical AI entertained about them.
Anyway, the biggest problem, IMHO, will be with the headers. Chess database
are organized around real games. Exercices based on real game can provide
information. We just have to decide how to tell the user that it's just a
game fragment in the game list. (Suppose we have 10 exercises out of a
single game.) But for endgame, that is already more difficult. How are we
to indicate that it's the Vancura position we are practicing ? A line with
question marks is very uninformative. Maybe we should think about this,
while thinking about the normalization of header information.
If you meet a Quebecer, wish him happy national day !
Best wishes,
B
[tcs]: http://chess.emrald.net/
[^note]: I aknowledge being obscure here. But I can't be clearer in a
single paragraph. Finding similarities in exercises one of the topic of my
doctral thesis I am trying to finish by next year. It is the reason why
advancing Scid interests me nowadays.
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