We've had several debates about built-in opening books and their perceived effect on dedicated ratings. I keep thinking about it. I have a cunning plan. What about these tournament scenarios (all round-robin)?
1. Only e4 (or d4) openings
- Broadly, you'd think this control element would favor comps with bigger books. Somewhat interesting. See below.
2. Specific lines (i.e., King's Gambit, Sicilian, Nimzo-Indian, etc.)
- The specs would be much trickier, but this is what I'd most like to see. Kind of like old masters playing a sponsored Rice Gambit tourney.
The trouble, again, would be comps with larger books. You could run games that way, anyway, and learn very quickly whether one comp's deeper database leads to decisive results, i.e., you'd find out which comps get trapped in the same variations.
Useful, but I think the fairest approach would be to find a line (via testing) where both comps go out of book at the same move. Run the game from there (both sides play both colors) and see what happens.
This would be similar to the giant Nick rating matrix tied to specific master games, but slightly less restrictive. It might even be possible to determine the champion of a particular variation. Which comps play the best version of the Najdorf Sicilian, for example?
3. Book off
One could argue that this is the purest measure. Not all machines allow you to turn the book off, so participation is limited in that sense.
4. Color
I'm not sure how this would work - I'm still thinking about it - but I have the impression that black wins more often, a LOT more often, in matches between comps of relatively equal strength. This metric is out there already - easily figured using existing data from SSDF and other sources, but I'm too lazy to do it myself. I wonder if the tournament limitations described above would yield more answers.
Welcoming ideas regards,
- R.
Old-school (yet offbeat) tournament proposals
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Old-school (yet offbeat) tournament proposals
"You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess."
– H.G. Wells
– H.G. Wells