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Friday, June 7, 2013

Who Do You Trust?

      Who Do You Trust? began as a prime time game show titled Do You Trust Your Wife?, emceed by ventriloquist Edgar Bergen which ran from January 3, 1956 to March 26, 1957. After a brief chat with Bergen and his dummy, the couples would try to answer four questions. The husband could attempt to answer or "trust" his wife to do so, hence the name of the show.
      In 1957, Johnny Carson's career was in serious trouble due to the cancellation of his prime time CBS variety show The Johnny Carsen Show when he became a daytime game show host. When Do You Trust Your Wife? returned as a daytime show on September 30, 1957 it kept the title until July 1958, then changed its title to Who Do You Trust? and had contestants other than married couples. Carson would tell the male contestant the category of the question and he would have to decide whether to answer the question himself or trust the woman to do so.
     Now that Stockfish 3 is out and I recently installed Houdini 2, the question is, “Who do you trust?”  According to Chess Owl, a modified version of Stockfish 3 (Stockfish 130427) defeated H3 in a match and it's the Stockfish 130427 version I have been using a lot lately. 

White to move
I have been analyzing this position off and on for a couple of days now using both engines. Both engines, contrary to OTB results, slightly prefer Black:  Stockfish 130427 prefers 13.Bh4 while H2 prefers 13.Rb3. It seems the deeper into this position I get with these two engines the more complicated things get because both engines give different ‘best’ lines and evaluations.  A fascinating position! Here’s a game to enjoy starting from this position. Tolush was a player who seems not to have gotten the attention he deserved.

2 comments:

  1. When I ran this with H3x64 it gave me the line
    13. Bb5 hxg5 14. Rb3 Qxa2 15. Qc3 axb5 16.Qxc8+
    with an evaluation of 0.0 Did you look at this line?

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  2. Yes. It was actually played in Shabalov-Areschenko, Port Erin, 2006 and was drawn after 16…Ke7 17.0–0 Qa7 18.Rd3 Nxe5 19.Nc5 Nbd7 20.Nf5+ exf5 21.Rxd7+ Kf6 22.Rxf7+ Kg6 23.Qxf5+ Kh6 Draw.

    After 13. Bb5 hxg5 14. Rb3 Qxa2 15. Qc3 Stockfish 271413 (64bit) thinks Black is slightly better after 15…Nc6.

    In Stellwagan-Anand, Germany, 2009, Anand played 13…axb5 and went on to win.

    I do not know the ‘real’ evaluation of this position, but based on my db, white wins the vast majority of the games.

    ReplyDelete