What's a novelty?
Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:57 pm
I was going to reply to Dann's thread Gentlemen, start your engines: A 2 ply novelty with this question, but I thought it would derail the conversation and besides, the topic deserves its own.
As Nelson mentions in the quoted article:
If we look at our DB, we'll see that among the millions of games available, only a small portion, fit the old definition. But it was popular for a reason; the same way that traditionally, chess games from the best players, were portrayed in books, low quality games would NOT be accepted as part of chess opening theory. This made sense, when the games of the masters weren't the ones being exclusively kept for posterity, a selection criteria had to be imposed.
The new millennium, however, would bring forth another computer development, which didn't exactly help the term "novelty": engines. When you have at home, a player entity of the world's champion caliber, what happens to that well defined distinction, between "masters" and "amateurs"? The very same thing than with "novelty", it becomes irrelevant. The former because both of them, "masters" and "amateurs", are now in the same category (humans) and the later because it's suddenly impossible to properly define.
Nowadays, the most anyone can say is, "this move is a novelty... in my DB".
As Nelson mentions in the quoted article:
The problem starts when he proposes an updated definition...Traditionally, the word ‘novelty’ has only applied to new positions obtained by titled players.
For centuries, games were played and forgotten by history: casual friendly games, blitz games, club games dating back almost 250 years, even serious games between masters... lost in the mists of time. From the late 1400s to the early 1800s, only a selection of several hundred games have made it trough to us; basically, games published in books, featuring masters playing either among themselves or (just as a easily) the infamous NN player. In the 19th century, things started to look better for chess statisticians, and as early as the Chicago 1874 tournament, recording the games played, began to be imperative, at the organizers' request. Finally, in the 20th century, the extensive use of clocks, score-sheets, SAN and chess software, favoured the increase of games being recorded.which takes into account sources of games that have traditionally not constituted “chess theory”–engine games, games between club players, games played on Internet servers by anonymous nicks
If we look at our DB, we'll see that among the millions of games available, only a small portion, fit the old definition. But it was popular for a reason; the same way that traditionally, chess games from the best players, were portrayed in books, low quality games would NOT be accepted as part of chess opening theory. This made sense, when the games of the masters weren't the ones being exclusively kept for posterity, a selection criteria had to be imposed.
The new millennium, however, would bring forth another computer development, which didn't exactly help the term "novelty": engines. When you have at home, a player entity of the world's champion caliber, what happens to that well defined distinction, between "masters" and "amateurs"? The very same thing than with "novelty", it becomes irrelevant. The former because both of them, "masters" and "amateurs", are now in the same category (humans) and the later because it's suddenly impossible to properly define.
Nowadays, the most anyone can say is, "this move is a novelty... in my DB".