Check out Modern Chess, our featured variant for January, 2025.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Sam Trenholme wrote on Sat, Sep 26, 2009 05:41 PM UTC:
H.G.Muller wrote:
Sam: The most obvious difference is that Joker80 likes c2-c4 quite a lot, while ChessV thinks it a pretty poor move.

Well, lets look at the ChessV 0.9.0 + Human tweaking opening book 1. c3, 1. Nd3, 1. e4, and 1. f4; I will probably do black responses to 1. Ng3 tonight.

Here is the opening book I have so far:

1. c3 Ng6
1. c3 e5
1. c3 e6
1. Nd3 f5
1. Nd3 Nd6
1. Nd3 Ng6
1. e4 e5
1. e4 Ng6
1. e4 d5
1. f4 f5
1. f4 Nd6
1. f4 c6

And compare it with Joker80’s 12-ply opening book, where it thinks White’s five best moves are: 1. e4 (PV +.05 pawns), 1. c4 (+.05 pawns), 1. c3 (PV +.04 pawns), 1. g4 (PV +.02 pawns), and 1. f3 (PV +.01 pawns). Observe that there are no Knight openings in Joker’s list, and that it thinks 1. f3 (+.01 PV) is better than 1. f4 (+.00 PV, or equality). In addition, Joker80 likes 1. g4 more than ChessV does.

So, there are some significant differences between the openings Joker80 likes and the openings ChessV likes. Both opening books look reasonable; Capa variants have a somewhat higher branching factor than FIDE chess (after White and Black move once in FIDE chess, there are 400 possible positions; in the Schoolbook Capa setup, that number is 784), so I would not be surprised if there are more reasonable openings than in FIDE Chess.

I retract my statement that there is no value in setups where we randomly advance pawns for both sides one square (if we advance White’s c pawn, we advance Black’s c pawn, for example). In FIDE chess, it increases the number of openings by 256; with Capa arrays, it increases the number of openings by 1024 and computer analysis can tell us if certain pawn advancements make for usable opening setups.

Again, I will finish up my ChessV 0.9.0 analysis of the Schoolbook opening setup over the next few days and should have a final opening list up soon.

Reply to this thread


Edit Form

Comment on the page Schoolbook

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.