💡📝Sam Trenholme wrote on Thu, Oct 1, 2009 04:11 PM EDT:
I think you will enjoy reading the postings here and here, where we talk about Chess engines playing without an opening book (among other things).
Zillions is a general-purpose engine which is excellent for prototyping variants, but it does not play Chess all that well. I use it for basic testing to make sure a given game is sane (no forced mate in the opening, reasonable White-Black balance, not too drawish, etc.), but not for serious opening analysis.
ChessV, with some heuristics to evaluate opening moves, actually comes up with a reasonable opening book for FIDE chess. You should download and try it; I have a copy of it at samiam.org/chessv; to say it plays the opening better than Zillions is a vast understatement. It can’t find the Sicilian defense, but besides that its replies to 1. e4 in FIDE chess (when its opening book is removed) are fine; keep in mind people played FIDE chess for centuries before deciding the Sicilian was a really good reply to 1. e4.
The reason why many Chess engines designed to play FIDE Chess can’t come up with very good opening moves is because they don’t have to. It’s a lot simpler to just have a really big opening book and play moves from the opening book until a novelty is finally played.
Joker80, the engine I used (which, as it turns out, I didn’t write), actually plays the opening quite well, since it’s an engine designed to play Chess without an opening book.
Zillions is a general-purpose engine which is excellent for prototyping variants, but it does not play Chess all that well. I use it for basic testing to make sure a given game is sane (no forced mate in the opening, reasonable White-Black balance, not too drawish, etc.), but not for serious opening analysis.
ChessV, with some heuristics to evaluate opening moves, actually comes up with a reasonable opening book for FIDE chess. You should download and try it; I have a copy of it at samiam.org/chessv; to say it plays the opening better than Zillions is a vast understatement. It can’t find the Sicilian defense, but besides that its replies to 1. e4 in FIDE chess (when its opening book is removed) are fine; keep in mind people played FIDE chess for centuries before deciding the Sicilian was a really good reply to 1. e4.
The reason why many Chess engines designed to play FIDE Chess can’t come up with very good opening moves is because they don’t have to. It’s a lot simpler to just have a really big opening book and play moves from the opening book until a novelty is finally played.
Joker80, the engine I used (which, as it turns out, I didn’t write), actually plays the opening quite well, since it’s an engine designed to play Chess without an opening book.