If I understand you correctly, you suggest to ignore our opponents demonstrated chess vision or lack of it based on a performance evaluation of his historical game data.

This belief runs contra to my view which places great importance on the preparation for a serious match game.

I try to find the presents of special talents or deep ply prepared opening lines indicating a desire to follow or avoid a particular path guided by his chess vision, theoretical novelties or a certain engine evaluation route.

This method served me well. I lost only one game due to a posting error and not for lack of preparedness for my opponent in all my cc playing.

I believe that it is of utmost importance not to play into the demonstrated strength of ones opponent. In other words if my opponent special skills to mount an attack and keep it sustained or prefers a positional approach to a tactical solution I modify my play accordingly.

I'm not suggesting to totally ignore to study the opponent, but for practical reasons I think it's more effective to plan our opening related to our own strenghts. And what are our strenghts then? IMO, it's brute force. The strenght in numbers, so that we can cover more variations and side-variations than the opponent. The huge amount of work by the engine operators which makes it posssible not to be surprised. Therefore I think that if we can reach an equal but complex position the situation favours us. Regardless of the strenghts/weaknesses of the opponent. Just my opinion.

It's not really possible to affect the outcome. :-)

We have swarm intelligence with <RV>'s machines and some people like <kwid>. GMT already did a try by playing anti-computer chess with his Dutch. It was close to success but has proven not enough. Now, GMAN will have very specifically analysed our decision-making dynamic and look for its Achilles heel. I believe we should cover this point in the preparation as well.

In the latest game, the main weakness were the ocassions when there was no clear plan available and very close votings followed, which in fact prevented us from setting up a longer term strategy. These forks were always brought about by the collision of this two preferences: either playing 'as sound as possible' (i.e. relying on statistics and theory) or 'to our strenght' (i.e. opening up lines and messing up). The same thing is bound to occur in this game.

I wonder how GMAN could benefit from this. Specially, in his choice of opening ?

Semi-Slav? Yes! Carlsen plays it.>

Carlsen is a smart fella i play that too lol...But i hardly doubt it's to smart to pick a opening that can lead too yet another closed type of game...Something tells me GMan won't give us another chance and do a analyse as Timmerman did picking 36..Rc7?.

Thanks for the support but i fear it's in vain, to many forget the lessons or do not understand the lesson a game should give...Or for that matter understand the limitation engines still has....Our team effort is probably around 2800 elo strenght in cc chess, but that's not because of our understanding of the game of chess. But our hard work checking countless lines with super engines..

I tryed to convice the team about open approach at the start of this game a few others did the same and recived a lot of heat for it...Not planning to press hard for open games ones more, but simply not take part in the next game as much as the 2 last.

Yes Hugin this also is a dream of most young upstart to play like Morphy,Bronstein or Tal. Those were the days of romanticism where the styly of Botwinik was frowned upon.

But you know it is said that Botwinik groomed a young boy named Gary Kasparov to become the worlds best player and was instrumental in one of the first chess computer programs.

Botwinnik's positional style remains under rated when compared to Tal and Fisher tactical geniuses.

I belief that you seek to avoid closed positions in order to maximize the potential calculating power of engines which should be reflective in our playing strength.

This compares well with my assessment of how to play against programs. When I started cc playing I took into account that my opponents will use engines and therefor i would have to compete with the speed of calculations derived from engines. Because I happen to work in engineering were mathematical calculation were still performed with a slide ruler I became aware that electronic calculators were far superior to slide rulers.
Now what has this all to do with chess you ask? Well I thought that chess playing programs are based on building a block and add on it in order to go some where. But most of my engineering projects started with a conceptual assessment first with the customers wish to have something build which I had to formulate into a concrete form of a model to see if this is really meets the desire or wish of the costumer.

This model can build a castle on a mountain top meeting the desired requirements requirements. Now my point is that a computer is only a tool for the engineer it can not go there where it never was.

Therefor when playing cc games my objective was to eliminate as much of the computers calculating power as possible by leading into positions where there are the least amount of threats that I could foresee and just adding blocks leads to nowhere.

Now is it unreasonable to assume that GAN would not try a similar method and lead us into theoretical lines where our engines are of little help?

The question remains what are we playing against his proven and tested opening lines?

I warned against it before the game started and during the game all in vain, and now because he made a major mistake and we are winning most of the team seems uncapable to take this very important lesson how as team dependant on engines can put up the best figth.

Ok let's debate what our best replies are for d4 and e4 in an effort to get the most out of our engines.

The team most likely choice against e4 will be c5 and we have to make our first decision after Nf3. Do we play e6 and follow the lines played by Hydra and Osterom or do we play d6 or Nc6.

My often selected Nc6 to stay out of the more heavily analysed d6 Naydorf. But this line leads to an early unavoidable theoretical draw line if white is satisfied with half a point unless black plays the risky e5 lines. My memory about this move is not to pleasant because I lost with it against the former Jugoslav Champion A.Fudderer in a match play in the early fifties while representing Austria on board one. If this line is considered presently sound he would have to deviate from the normal 3.d4 to avoid it.

Predicting that the team will opt for the Naydorf hoping to lead into the Defirmian game.

[White "Nickel, Arno"]
[Black "Siigur, Jüri"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "B90"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. h3 Nc6 7. Be3

(7. g4 e5 8. Nxc6 bxc6 9. Bc4 Rb8 10. Qd3 Be7 11. Be3 Rxb2 12. Bb3 d5 13. exd5 O-O 14. Bc1 Rxb3 15. axb3 Nxd5 16. Bd2 Bc5 17. Ne4 Bd4 18. c3 Bb6 19. O-O-O f5 20. gxf5 Bxf5 21. f3 a5 22. h4 Qe7 23. Kb2 Be6 24. Ng5)

7... e6 8. g4 h6 9. Bg2 Ne5

( 9... Bd7 10. Qe2 Rc8 11. f4 b5 12. a3 Be7 13. O-O-O Qa5 14. g5 hxg5 15. Nb3 Qc7 16. fxg5 Nh5 17. Qf2 Ne5 18. Rhf1 f6 19. Bf3 Nxf3 20. Qxf3 a5 21. Rd4 d5 22. exd5 b4)

10. Qe2 g5 11. O-O-O Qc7

(11... Bd7 12. f4 gxf4 13. Bxf4 Rc8 14. Kb1 Be7 15. Nb3 b5 16. a3 Qc7)

The reasoning (based on my post above): If I were GMAN I would try to throw the World into an opening debate by diverting asap from theory. There are three advantages to this:

1. Computers are useless so soon
2. Poor statistics to draw from,
3. since almost everything in the opening is non-provable and down to every one's taste, the chances of a inflamable disagreement in the team are high. For instance, as seen in moves 1 and 8 of GMT's game.

1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5 e6 3. Nf3

(3. e4 h6 4. Bxf6 Qxf6 5. Nc3

(5. Nf3 d6 6. Nc3 a6 7. Qd2 Nd7 8. O-O-O Qd8 9. Bd3 Be7 10. Kb1 c5)

5... Bb4 6. Qd2 d6 7. a3 Ba5 8. f4

(8. Nf3 O-O 9. O-O-O Nc6 10. Be2 e5 11. d5 Ne7 12. h3 Bb6 13. Rdf1 c6 14. dxc6 bxc6 15. Bc4 Be6 16. Bxe6 Qxe6)

8... Bxc3 9. bxc3 e5 10. g3 O-O 11. Nf3 Bg4 12. Bg2 Nc6 13. d5 Na5 14. O-O c6 15. dxc6 Nxc6 16. h3 Bxf3 17. Rxf3)

3... h6 4. Bh4

(4. Bxf6 Qxf6 5. e4 d6 6. Nc3 Nd7 7. Qd2 a6 8. O-O-O Qd8 9. Bd3 Be7 10. h4 c5 11. Kb1 cxd4 12. Nxd4 Qc7 13. f4 Nc5 14. f5 Bf6)

4... b6 5. e3 Bb7 6. Nbd2

(6. c4 c5 7. Nc3 Be7 8. Be2 O-O 9. O-O d6 10. dxc5 bxc5 11. Qc2 Nbd7 12. Rfd1 Qb6 13. Rd2 Rfd8 14. Rad1 Nf8)

6... Be7 7. c3 c5 8. Bd3 cxd4 9. exd4 d6 10. O-O Nbd7 11. Re1 O-O 12. Nc4 b5 13. Ncd2 Bc6 14. Qe2 Rb8 15. Rac1 Re8 16. Bg3 Nf8 17. Ne4 Nh5 18. Nfd2 Nxg3 19. Nxg3 Bg5 20. Rcd1 Bxd2 21. Qxd2 a5

Our team most likely has some experts on this opening and may prefer c5 which has quite a substantial theory in support of it.

My view of Bg5 is that if white wants to exchange a bishop for a knight this early in the game, I should be able to come up with a plan to maximise the potential power of my bishop pair. Therefor an open pawn structure as well as the placement of pawns in regards to the color of the squares is of utmost importance to give me a good chance to win in the endgame stage.

Your arguments are valid, but there's a limit how much objective advantage can be sacrificed for those reasons. <2. c4> and <2. Nf3> are played so much more often than <2. Bg5> that there must be reasons why it's inferior.

The discussion may become heated and chaotic, but with 2 days per move we should be able to survive.

But it's possible that he'll play it, and there's nothing we can do if we want to play 1...Nf6. The same goes for all openings, there's always a way to side step your opponent's favourite line.