Larry- The Berlin Wall - can strong GM resist Houdini/Komodo

[Lion]

Hello,

I was wondering if a strong GM I.e. 2650 ELO can resist with black vs Houdini/Komodo ?
Strong GM of course playing black.

Rgds

[beram]

Perhaps sometimes, 1 in 100

[lkaufman]

Hello,

I was wondering if a strong GM I.e. 2650 ELO can resist with black vs Houdini/Komodo ?
Strong GM of course playing black.

Rgds

I would expect that the GM would have better drawing chances in the Berlin endgame than in other openings, but still would only draw occasionally. The percentage of draws would depend somewhat on whether a special book were prepared for the computer or not. I would advise the computer to avoid the endgame by 4.d3 if that is allowed; then the draw likelihood would be small.

[Lion]

Lets say we are talking about the Berlin endgame with Q exchange ?

Also what variation/setup do you prefer today ?
- Kaufman/Kritz with a quick Be7 with idea to exchange a N on h4 ?
- Ke8 followed by a later h5 like in the latest book from Igor Lysi and Roman Ovetchkin ?
- Or like in John Cox book an early Ne7 ?
- Or maybe tray to put the K on the Queen side with a Bd7 (doesn't work if white plays early Rd1)

Rgds

[lkaufman]

Lets say we are talking about the Berlin endgame with Q exchange ?

Also what variation/setup do you prefer today ?
- Kaufman/Kritz with a quick Be7 with idea to exchange a N on h4 ?
- Ke8 followed by a later h5 like in the latest book from Igor Lysi and Roman Ovetchkin ?
- Or like in John Cox book an early Ne7 ?
- Or maybe tray to put the K on the Queen side with a Bd7 (doesn't work if white plays early Rd1)

Rgds

My current Komodo analysis in Aquarium IDeA (for whatever that's worth in this situation) favors the ...Bd7, ...Kc8 plan, which as you say can be avoided by 9.Rd1 but that has its own drawbacks with the king on e8. I can't say from personal experience as I switched to the Breyer several years ago.

[M ANSARI]

I saw GK win quite a few nice games with the Berlin against computers on Playchess. I think I also Svidler win a couple of games using the same opening against computers. It is a good opening against engines as it has some very long term strategic ideas that are way beyond the horizon of even the best chess engines. But really the Berlin Defense is for very experienced GM's who know of all the small nuances, as things can go very bad very quickly. I bet Kramnik would give H3 a good game with the BD as GK found that he was banging his head on a concrete wall in their WC match.