02 Nov '04 00:01>
Originally posted by !~TONY~!Can you try to keep this civil, please.
A little wrong are we? What the hell difference is there if I searched for a response to 1. e4 as opposed to the endgame that resulted in Kasparov-Karpov? Nothing. When you look up the variations on move 3 after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6. 3.? , are you searching for what GM's and theoreticians regard as the BEST MOVE. I consider looking for what RHPers sought as ...[text shortened]... GM's did. I don't really know what your problem is. I am glad someone agrees with me though.
Even though you didn't really answer my question, I'll take What the hell difference is there if I searched for a response to 1. e4 as opposed to the endgame that resulted in Kasparov-Karpov? Nothing. to be saying that you concur with what I said, ie: You want to lay out the pieces (for say the position after move 30) on a search board, and you want all games which had that exact position to be returned?
Ok, I know databases are allowed in CC. I'm not sure if you know this, but there are more possible games of chess than there are grains of sand on every beach in the world. IE: A LOT!!! Now, you want to search through every beach in the world to find the maybe 10 grains of sand that would match up with your grain of sand. Are you going to be able to do this by yourself? Or are you going to need a program to find this chess needle in a haystack?
There is a big difference between looking for a good response to the position after 1. e4 and the position after 30. Nf3. Opening books are an area of study in chess due to the relatively few possibilities. Exact move 30 positions are not (unless of course you are in the endgame, which is also an area of study due to fewer options).
After writing all that, I read about Chessbase which Tovmauser mentions. I didn't realise you could already do positional searches. I still think its wrong though. When were the rules for correspondence chess written? I'm sure it was b4 you could buy software to search hundreds of thousands of games in seconds. Luckily, due to the large number of possible chess games, this feature is pretty useless after move 10-12 anyway.
D