Book Making Q & A II
Friday, January 2, 2009 at 3:14PM
Hi Kevin,
Hope you don't mind but could I just run one last thing by you.
As an experiment yesterday I followed your book making advice to make a seed book and started with all server games from January 2007 to January 2008. I then removed all draws and games with less than 35 moves and from what was left I extracted all games where elo of both players was at least 2700. This gave a game base of 31,605.
I then created a learn base using games of Big Rabbit, BigMc, Zapchessbook and Golden Boy (these seem to be consistently high elo players) giving me a learn base of 3,667. I then compiled the book using Absolute 100 (I meant to ask - do you use Absolute or ECO Relative to compile book ?). I then ran a learn from DB using my learn base ticking black and white wins.
I had short run on the server using the GUI book settings you suggested and when I looked back at some of the losses I found that my book played quite long into what was not a very good line. When I checked against Tour Book 14.Ov and 14.Oz I found that your books had stopped well short of that position eg. stopped at move 14 whereas my book line played on to move 23. Is this because as part of tuning you have cut short certain lines and removed them , or is maybe because you compiled using ECO Relative rather than Absolute ?
Regards,
Mark
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Mark:
It appears that you have done everything right. As for absolute or ECO, I always use Absolute as it will give the book better depth.
As for the new book following unproductive lines to great depths, yes this will happen at first. As you play the book more and add games that you have won as well as your opponents wins against your book; the new lines will begin to supersede the losing lines. At this point you have not set any red or green moves to be followed, so with the recommended book settings given; the fledgling book is using only the percentage of games won with any given move as it criteria for choosing.
As games are added to the learn file you will almost always notice the depth of the book reducing. (always add the games that you wish your book to learn, to both the main game base and the learn file) The slow reduction of the books depth in this stage of development is a good thing. After you have added 2000 or so games (adding primarily games played with the book you are adding them into) the book will stabilize. Once this happens you can go to the hand tuning phase and it is here that you can extend the winning lines to their full depth.
Good luck and Best Regards:
Kevin:
Reader Comments (2)
Hey Kevin
Id like to begin by giving a BIG thanks for all of your insight here. This is the most all inclusive site on book tuning I have ever found.
Ive followed your instructions to the tee and they have surely shown an improvement in my ELO on the playchess servers. Although I have a solid seed I still get beaten from time to time, mostly due to opponents moving out of my book leaving me to rely on my "average" processor (compared to the monsters they have out there nowdays). My book holds its weight very strongly until someone makes a new move. My idea is to run a blunder check on all of my games and thereby more thoroughly evaluate all moves as well as provide variations of better moves in the games ive lost (and won in some instances). Since you suggested not to add moves to the book by importing them directly, I would like to know how you do suggest adding them. I know how to manually add them but Ive noticed they get added as "main move" and given 100%. If I switch off "main move", the values all return to 0 and the move does not get played automatically. So im wondering how this all comes into play....
If I leave it as a main move, will the previous moves in the book be effected to where it favors (adds weight to) all leading moves up to the point of the "main move"?
Ex: There are times when I would just like my book to know how to compete against a particular line but not favor playing it.
On a side note... does setting the book to minimum game=0 tell it not to learn while playing on the server? If so, that makes sense to me as I would prefer it to only learn only from the games I specify. However, what do you recommend the settings to be while not on the server and I am manually learning from database?
I know this is alot but you seem to know the most about this and I respect your insight so any ifo you could give me would be appreciated.
Keep up the good work!
Ron B.
Hey Kevin
Id like to begin by giving a BIG thanks for all of your insight here. This is the most all inclusive site on book tuning I have ever found.
Ive followed your instructions to the tee and they have surely shown an improvement in my ELO on the playchess servers. Although I have a solid seed I still get beaten from time to time, mostly due to opponents moving out of my book leaving me to rely on my "average" processor (compared to the monsters they have out there nowdays). My book holds its weight very strongly until someone makes a new move. My idea is to run a blunder check on all of my games and thereby more thoroughly evaluate all moves as well as provide variations of better moves in the games ive lost (and won in some instances). Since you suggested not to add moves to the book by importing them directly, I would like to know how you do suggest adding them. I know how to manually add them but Ive noticed they get added as "main move" and given 100%. If I switch off "main move", the values all return to 0 and the move does not get played automatically. So im wondering how this all comes into play....
If I leave it as a main move, will the previous moves in the book be effected to where it favors (adds weight to) all leading moves up to the point of the "main move"?
Ex: There are times when I would just like my book to know how to compete against a particular line but not favor playing it.
On a side note... does setting the book to minimum game=0 tell it not to learn while playing on the server? If so, that makes sense to me as I would prefer it to only learn only from the games I specify. However, what do you recommend the settings to be while not on the server and I am manually learning from database?
I know this is alot but you seem to know the most about this and I respect your insight so any ifo you could give me would be appreciated.
Keep up the good work!
Ron B.