Loved your analysis of the changing preferences for opening choices in top level ICCF chess. A great assessment based on the statistical evidence from the game data. I will be really interested to see how these preferences change in the next year or so.
What I find interesting is that I think the discussion of how to create winning chances in ICCF play really needs to be explored from a meta game level. We have reached a point where virtually everything is drawn with correct play. Most unicorn wins are the result of "administrative errors." Those players that are capable of playing more games than their competitors without increasing the chance they make an administrative error themselves will, over the long run, collect more unicorn wins. One must try to create your own "luck."
I think a key question needs to be what will offer me the most practical chances from an ICCF perspective recognizing both sides have their resources. Given a range of candidates all of which are 0.00 with accurate play, what lines force the opponent to make choices and spend time rather than "spacebar" their way through. Every time an opponent needs to actually make a choice is a small potential failure mode in their game. I am not speaking exclusively of mistakes in the OTB sense. But human error at the "administrative error" level as well. People putting pieces on the wrong squares in a hurry to get their move entered having had their analysis session cut short by a real-world distraction is one example. The chance of such an ICCF blunder is increased if they need to do some analysis in the first place.
In ICCF we live Katronias' "How to Play Equal Positions" at a massive scale compared to OTB. But a lot of the advice in his book I think is particularly good for ICCF players. The way he characterizes equal positions that appear dry into Type A Planless (No-Plan/Move-by-Move), Type B Plain-Plan Equality, Type C Calculated Risk, and Type D Prophylactic Attack is interesting. ICCF players find themselves living in Type A and Type B positions for the most part.
It will be interesting to see how the reality that modern engines just say everything is 0.00 will continue to influence ICCF play.
Jon Edwards noted in an interview that you can occasionally catch an opponent who's relying on an older opening book containing some error. I suspect this will become increasingly rare.
A few ideas come to mind for maximising the chances of an administrative error, though I'm not sure which is likeliest to pay off:
1) Avoiding trading the position down, so there's more scope for a longer game; purely a numbers game.
2) Steering towards positions with as few non-losing moves as possible. There's probably a trade-off between this and the first idea.
3) Leaving the database as early as possible, so the opponent at least has less grounding for their moves; though I admit this one is rather thin.
The discussion is a slightly sad one, but we are where we are.
Loved your analysis of the changing preferences for opening choices in top level ICCF chess. A great assessment based on the statistical evidence from the game data. I will be really interested to see how these preferences change in the next year or so.
What I find interesting is that I think the discussion of how to create winning chances in ICCF play really needs to be explored from a meta game level. We have reached a point where virtually everything is drawn with correct play. Most unicorn wins are the result of "administrative errors." Those players that are capable of playing more games than their competitors without increasing the chance they make an administrative error themselves will, over the long run, collect more unicorn wins. One must try to create your own "luck."
I think a key question needs to be what will offer me the most practical chances from an ICCF perspective recognizing both sides have their resources. Given a range of candidates all of which are 0.00 with accurate play, what lines force the opponent to make choices and spend time rather than "spacebar" their way through. Every time an opponent needs to actually make a choice is a small potential failure mode in their game. I am not speaking exclusively of mistakes in the OTB sense. But human error at the "administrative error" level as well. People putting pieces on the wrong squares in a hurry to get their move entered having had their analysis session cut short by a real-world distraction is one example. The chance of such an ICCF blunder is increased if they need to do some analysis in the first place.
In ICCF we live Katronias' "How to Play Equal Positions" at a massive scale compared to OTB. But a lot of the advice in his book I think is particularly good for ICCF players. The way he characterizes equal positions that appear dry into Type A Planless (No-Plan/Move-by-Move), Type B Plain-Plan Equality, Type C Calculated Risk, and Type D Prophylactic Attack is interesting. ICCF players find themselves living in Type A and Type B positions for the most part.
It will be interesting to see how the reality that modern engines just say everything is 0.00 will continue to influence ICCF play.
Completely agree.
Jon Edwards noted in an interview that you can occasionally catch an opponent who's relying on an older opening book containing some error. I suspect this will become increasingly rare.
A few ideas come to mind for maximising the chances of an administrative error, though I'm not sure which is likeliest to pay off:
1) Avoiding trading the position down, so there's more scope for a longer game; purely a numbers game.
2) Steering towards positions with as few non-losing moves as possible. There's probably a trade-off between this and the first idea.
3) Leaving the database as early as possible, so the opponent at least has less grounding for their moves; though I admit this one is rather thin.
The discussion is a slightly sad one, but we are where we are.
So if a correspondence player were to create a repertoire in today’s NNUE world what should they choose for the best results?
Interesting question, and probably difficult to answer right now. See Matt's comment, which I think gives a good insight into the metagame right now.