Hi, I was studying the following line with both, an old Fritz version and Ludek Pachman's book "Sicilian defense", when something happened:

1.e4 c5; 2.Nf3 Nc6; 3.d4 cxd4; 4.Nxd4 Nf6; 5.Nc3 e6; 6.Nxc6 bxc6;
7.e5 Nd5; 8.Ne4 Qc7; 9.f4 Qb6; 10.Bd3 Be7; 11.Qe2 ...

Here, Pachman's book says that after 11. ... f5 the best move for white is
12.Nf2! cause 12.ef is better for black and gives the following example:

12. (ef) Nxf6; 13.Nxf6+ Bxf6; 14.c3 Rb8; 15.Rb1 0-0; 16.Be3 Bxc3+! etc.

But Fritz says the exact opposite. (With 12.Nf2 black becomes better and
12.ef white is better).

So who is right? I would appreciate opinions about nº12 white best move.
If other chess soft. is used, much better. Thanks.

12. exf is better because 12. Nf2 Qb4+ wins the f-pawn.

Hi Don,

If you are preparing these lines for use in tournament play, I would caution against using such an old book to study such a sharp, frequently changing opening. Opening books that old are basically guaranteed to:

1) Not reflect the current state of theory
2) Have some serious mistakes

If course if you're U1600 or something this is not such a huge deal.

If he's U1600 he could play 1. f3 2. Kf2 and still win as long as he didn't hang anything.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

Hopefully he Is being sarcastic...

U1600 World Open is probably the toughest section for its rating pound for pound. I've had people rated 2000 say that they would be hard pressed to win it.

I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm 2000 USCF and I'm pretty sure that I would beat any U1600 player 85% of the time as White with 1. f3 2. Kf2.

Oh, and the World Open has nothing to do with anything. Due to the money involved, sections are almost always won by someone who is ~400 points stronger than their rating who either sandbagged or quit playing rated chess while continuing to study and play training games.

Discipline,

You being able to beat u1600 players with f3/Kf2 has nothing to do with anything either. It doesn't mean an u1600 player could do the same thing!

What say about the World Open isn't as true as it used to be; I've played against winners of the u2200 before and they're strong, but not monsters.

Quite off-topic, but this 1.f3 2.Kf2 reminded me of something.

Me and my friend were playing in this open tournament once, and one evening they had this blitz tournament. Me and my friend decided to play, but we showed up after having several beers each (not really nice behaviour I guess, but it was quite a small tournament where everyone knows everybody so not a big deal).

We were seeded 1 and 2, and there was a quite big difference of playing level between us and the field, so my friend came up with this genius idea. As we were seeded 1 and 2nd, we would switch colors every round, that is first I play white he plays black, 2nd round I play black he plays white and so on, until some point. So his idea was that during every game we have to repeat the 3 first moves made by one of us in a previous game. An example: I play white in the first round, and I play 1. b4 2. a3 3. c3. My friend has to play these 3 moves no matter what in his second round game when he has white! I of course have to play what he had played with black, no matter what my opponent does.. After the second round we start all over again, as we can't continue with this system cause we would just have to repeat the moves.

I can tell you one thing - playing against 1600s and so on was never so much fun like that time. We both won first 2 rounds quite convincingly, but in the 3rd round my friend came up with this "setup" with black: 1.. d6 2.. Qd7 3.. Qe6. In my fourth round game when I had to play black against this 1900, the game went like this: 1. c4 d6 2. Nc3 Qd7 3. e4 Qe6 4. g3 Qd7 5. Bh3 Qd8 6. Bxc8 Qxc8, with a perfectly playable position!

Pity that we had to play each other in round 5 and started to play normally afterwards.. We both had 4/4 though

Fetus Discipline's point, I believe, was that openings don't really much below a certain level. And considering Pachman was a grandmaster, the lines he recommends are almost always going to be suboptimal at worst and usually just fine.

And of course there's the little bonus that a 1600 who is booking up is probably spending all his time in the latest and sharpest variations. When he faces lines that aren't the latest and greatest he'll be out on his own, and a 1600 in sicilian position out of theory that he doesn't understand is just going to be mighty fun.

Dire,

I'm not sure; even relatively recent opening books that were produced before the computer era frequently have huge mistakes.

lol, I dont know how the 1600 number appeared here. Anyway, I just wanted to be sure if that line was one of the mistakes that mentions qfetus, cause till now, never happened me before when taking Pachmans advice.

Sweet idea, sounds fun. I like how your opening plan here is to undo the damage done by your partner

The idea is adaptable even if you don't happen to have alternating colors with your buddy. Like if you had white in the above case, play d3 Qd2 Qe3

Just for the record: Most opening lines from old books can refuted with computers. This is why computers had such an impact in the 90's.

This simply isn't true. The number of lines that computers 'refuted' is very small. It's not like you can step fritz through some older mainline queen's gambit or spanish and suddenly: wow, what do you know - you can actually win material here, but nobody ever saw it.

But they were able to help provide refinements and improvements in alot of openings. And maybe even more importantly, computer databases enabled strong players to study games and openings extremely deeply.

Contrasted with endings where computers have indeed refuted countless positions and ideas.

I thought maybe he meant to say "most books have lines which can be refuted by computers" which would probably be true

Ok, that I'd agree with. There's definitely going to be mistakes in any given book. Actually even now I think that also probably holds true, but obviously to a much lesser degree.

On the other hand, the degree of errors is also relevant. In classic games collections that have been edited/'updated' with computer assistance (see: anything edited by John Nunn) the corrections are so typically just anal - a sideline of a variation of a sideline game having a mistake in analysis 10 moves in and the like.

Actually, it is exactly like that. The point is that it only works in sharp openings where tactical strokes are possible. Most of the "!N" novelities of the late 90's were just the number one candidate moves of Fritz 5 at the time.

Cool, can you please list just 5 "!N" novelties that were found not through human innovation/research/etc but instead simply via Fritz's #1 move selection? Particularly in queen's gambit or spanish as I explicitly said in my post?

Thanks.