The Role of Computers in Planning Chess Strategy
Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 9:51PM That's the title of an article by Debra Littlejohn Shinder, a computer professional who happens to be the mother of Hikaru Nakamura's second, Kris Littlejohn. It's an interesting read (one factoid that caught my eye was Nakamura memorizing 500-1000 moves of opening prep before each game, which is a lot, although I suspect he already knew at least a fair amount of it), but I do have two quibbles/additions/clarifications.
First, the author mentions that ChessBase 10 runs 349 euros/almost $500 and that ChessBase Lite is free. Both statements are true, but the best deal by far is to download ChessBase 2009 and buy the activation key. Then, for well under $100, you have ChessBase 10, albeit without a database. As there are ways to buy databases for far, far, far less than $400, you still come out way ahead.
Second, she writes that once Nakamura knows the "colors" in the tournament, his second gets busy doing specific prep for the opponents, looking for novelties, etc. I suspect this is a slight misunderstanding on her part, as this information is only known the day before play starts, when the players draw for lots to receive their pairing numbers. Considering how far in advance she reports on their accumulating data on forthcoming opponents, I doubt they'd wait until the night before the first game to start looking for novelties.
Quibbles aside, it's a good read, and you'll get to see what hardware they use in their prep, too.
HT: Nate Criss
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Reader Comments (5)
Can you expound on "there are ways to buy databases for far, far, far less than $400?"
Thanks!
Yes, please expound!
Since even the laziest possible answer suffices to refute the author's suggestion, you can see that even the Rolls-Royce of databases, Mega2010, costs under $200, while Big2010 (all the games in Mega, but without any annotations) costs $60, so you'd really have to go out of your way to spend the kind of money she was talking about! Have a look at ChessBase's database page.
The board in the photo looks like Fischer Random Chess to me---anyone agree? Do "500--1000 moves" of opening prep go into that nowadays??
On a more serious note, how are top players using computers to train aspects of their play besides analyzing the openings? And besides training on endgames. I really mean, is there a known way that computers help players make qualitative judgments about their style of play and kinds of middlegame positions in which they fare best?
That's because it was Chess960, in Mainz, where he crushed Aronian in the final.