UHO 2022 Openings released

[pohl4711]

On my website:
https://www.sp-cc.de/uho_2022.htm

Direct download-link:
https://www.sp-cc.de/files/uho_2022.7z

Whats new in UHO 2022:
The UHO 2022 opening sets, are filtered out of the Megabase 2022 (by ChessBase). And the only filter, I am using, is the eval of KomodoDragon 2.6 in the endposition of each opening-line. (UHO V3 used Megabase 2020 and KomodoDragon 1.0 for evaluating). And the UHO 2022 files are around +10% bigger than the UHO V3 files, because the Megabase 2022 contains more games than the Megabase 2020, of course.

What did I do exactly?
- sorted the games of the Megabase 2022 by Elo: both players 2700+ Elo, both players 2600+ Elo, both players 2500+ Elo, both players 2400+ Elo, both players 2300+ Elo.
- cutted all games after 6/8 moves (12/16 plies).
- removed all Chess960 games
- removed all lines with double endpositons, so each endposition is unique. And because the games are sorted by Elo of players, each opening line in the UHO-sets is played by the strongest players (if weaker players played the same opening line, this game was deleted by pgn-extract, because pgn-extract always keeps the first appearance of a line in a pgn-file)
- removed all lines, were not both queens are still on board in the endposition.
- removed all lines, starting with silly pawn-moves in move 1 and 2 (a4, b4, g4, h4 (same for black (...a5, ...b5, etc.)

After doing these work, there were 111789 6-moves deep opening-lines remaining and 316318 8-moves deep opening lines remaining (all with unique endpositions).
Finally, these opening-lines were evaluated (endpositions) with KomodoDragon 2.6 (8.5 seconds per endposition on a 12 core AMD Ryzen CPU) and kept all endpositions in an eval interval of [-2.99;+2.99] (this is the UHO 2022 RawData (can be found in the download, too)). That took around 40 days of computing...
The UHO 2022 RawData can be very useful for other purposes, because it contains all opening-lines from very good for black to very good for white. Feel free to filter these openings as you like...The eval (and search depth) is stored in the Annotator-Tag of each line:
[Annotator "depth=29 eval=+114"]
You can use ChessBase (for example) for searching. Examples of searching:
"eval=-05" finds all lines in an eval-interval of [-0.50;-0.59]
"eval=+00" finds all lines in an eval-interval of [+0.00;+0.09]
"eval=-1" finds all lines in an eval-interval of [-1.00;-1.99]

So the Unbalanced Human Openings contain:
- 100% moves played by humans, only. Both players had at least 2300 Elo.
- opening lines played by the stronges players are at the beginning of the pgn/epd-files.
- no manually constructed openings (like my Drawkiller openings)
- no manually added moves to make castling impossible (like my NBSC openings)
- no selection of piece-patterns

There are 8 folders with different UHO 2022 openings-sets, with increasing advantage for white:
*** IMPORTANT: *** KomodoDragon 2.6 shows evals, which are around +0.20 higher, than KomodoDragon 1.0 does, which I used for evaluating the old UHO V3 openings. So, the Eval-intervals in the new UHO 2022 are +0.20 higher: UHO 2022 starts with Eval [+1.10;+1.19] instead of Eval [+0.90;+0.99] (UHO V3). But as you can see at the bottom of the site in the testing results, using UHO 2022 with Eval [+1.10;+1.19] gives nearly the same Elo-spreading and draw-rates, UHO V3 with Eval [+0.90;+0.99] gives...

Eval [+1.10;+1.19] 6mvs: 3317 lines 8mvs: 8940 lines 8mvs_big: 27074 lines
Eval [+1.20;+1.29] 6mvs: 2608 lines 8mvs: 7296 lines 8mvs_big: 22336 lines
Eval [+1.30;+1.39] 6mvs: 2214 lines 8mvs: 6100 lines 8mvs_big: 18252 lines
Eval [+1.40;+1.49] 6mvs: 1777 lines 8mvs: 4856 lines 8mvs_big: 15048 lines
Eval [+1.50;+1.59] 6mvs: 1440 lines 8mvs: 4092 lines 8mvs_big: 12130 lines
Eval [+1.60;+1.69] 6mvs: 1098 lines 8mvs: 3182 lines 8mvs_big: 9831 lines
Eval [+1.70;+1.79] 6mvs: 823 lines 8mvs: 2557 lines 8mvs_big: 7787 lines
Eval [+1.80;+1.89] 6mvs: 614 lines 8mvs: 2048 lines 8mvs_big: 6192 lines

Each folder contains 3 UHO openings-sets (pgn and epd): 6 moves, 8 moves and a bigger 8 moves file with a bigger eval interval of 0.29 instead of 0.09. The idea is to adjust the draw-rate of engine-tests and tournaments in a recommended interval of around 45%-60% by using a different UHO 2022 opening set.
At the moment, it is recommended to use the first UHO 2022 set with [+1.10;+1.19]. But if this set gives a too high draw-rate, because of a very drawish test-environment (Stockfish vs. another Stockfish for example), you can use a higher UHO 2022 set, to shrink the draw-rate.
Same for the computerchess in the future, where faster hardware and stronger engines will lead to increasing draw-rates, too. Then using a higher UHO 2022 (more advantage for white) set can be useful.
But mention, that the draw-rate should not get too low (below 45%), because this will lead to a lot of 1:1-pairs (= one opening line is clearly won for white, when Engine A and Engine B plays white in a head-to-head, both Engines win one game, using that opening-line (=1:1 points/pair)). If the draw-rate in your engine-testings is below 45%, you should switch to a lower UHO 2022 set (=smaller advantage for white) otherwise you will shrink the Elo spreading of your test-results!!!
Mention, that the UHO 2022 files are getting smaller and smaller, the higher the Eval-interval is, because the games in the Megabase getting rarer and rarer, giving white such a huge advantage after 6/8 moves.
The UHO openings give white a clear advantage, so these openings can be used for Armageddon rescoring or using my Gampairs Rescorer Tool (both are included in the UHO 2022 download (Rescoring tools for biased openings)). But it is also possible, of course, to use these openings with regular chess with classcial scoring system.

Here the testing-results of UHO 2022 and some non-biased openings and one UHO V3 opening-set for comparsion:

Code: Select all

Stockfish 14.1 avx2 vs. KomodoDragon 2.6 avx2, 5min+3sec, singlethread, no bases, no ponder, 
AMD Ryzen 3900 12-core (24 threads) notebook. Cutechess-cli. 1000 games each testrun. 
Stockfish 14.1 point of view: 

Balsa_v2724 openings:        1000 (+45,=951,-4),   Score: 52.0%, Elo: +14, Draws: 95.1%
Feobos c3 openings:          1000 (+121,=865,-14), Score: 55.4%, Elo: +38, Draws: 86.5%
Hert 500 openings:           1000 (+84,=904,-12),  Score: 53.6%, Elo: +25, Draws: 90.4%
Stockfish 8moves_V3:         1000 (+90,=897,-13),  Score: 53.9%, Elo: +27, Draws: 89.7%

Average result of the 4 classical openings:        Score: 53.7%, Elo: +26, Draws: 90.4%

Re-test of old UHO V3 for comparsion:
UHO_V3_8mvs_+090_+099:      1000 (+332,=580,-88),  Score: 62.2%, Elo: +87, Draws: 58.0%

Here the results of the new UHO 2022 with recommended Eval-interval of [+1.10;+1.19]:
UHO_2022_6mvs_+110_+119:     1000 (+364,=540,-96), Score: 63.4%, Elo: +96, Draws: 54.0%
UHO_2022_8mvs_+110_+119:     1000 (+340,=575,-85), Score: 62.8%, Elo: +91, Draws: 57.5%
UHO_2022_8mvs_big_+100_+129: 1000 (+327,=599,-74), Score: 62.6%, Elo: +91, Draws: 59.9%
These results are really impressive!The Elo-spreading, using UHO 2022 openings, is around 3.5x bigger than the classical
openings (more than +90 Elo instead of +26 Elo (!!!)) And the draw-rate is much, much lower (around 57% instead of 90% (!!!))

For the future or games played on extremly fast hardware and/or long thinking-time, here
the testing-results of some UHO 2022 sets with higher Evals. You can see, that the 
Elo-spreading gets worse (=smaller), when the draw-rate is too small (below 45%) - 
because of too many 1:1 gamepairs (the advantage for white is too big)

UHO_2022_6mvs_+120_+129:     1000 (+384,=498,-118),Score: 63.3%, Elo: +96, Draws: 49.8%
UHO_2022_8mvs_+120_+129:     1000 (+387,=481,-132),Score: 62.8%, Elo: +91, Draws: 48.1%
UHO_2022_8mvs_big_+110_+139: 1000 (+388,=492,-120),Score: 63.4%, Elo: +96, Draws: 49.2%

UHO_2022_6mvs_+130_+139:     1000 (+412,=448,-140),Score: 63.6%, Elo: +98, Draws: 44.8%
UHO_2022_8mvs_+130_+139:     1000 (+416,=421,-163),Score: 62.6%, Elo: +91, Draws: 42.1%
UHO_2022_8mvs_big_+120_+149: 1000 (+406,=432,-162),Score: 62.2%, Elo: +87, Draws: 43.2%

UHO_2022_6mvs_+140_+149:     1000 (+436,=365,-199),Score: 61.9%, Elo: +85, Draws: 36.5%
UHO_2022_8mvs_+140_+149:     1000 (+439,=355,-206),Score: 61.6%, Elo: +83, Draws: 35.5%
UHO_2022_8mvs_big_+130_+159: 1000 (+436,=361,-203),Score: 61.6%, Elo: +83, Draws: 36.1%

UHO_2022_8mvs_+150_+159:     1000 (+456,=271,-273),Score: 59.1%, Elo: +65, Draws: 27.1%

[pohl4711]

Perhaps, I should additionlly say, that the old UHO V3 openings are still available in the Anti Draw Openings download-package, which is unchanged. And, of course, UHO V3 openings still work fine. UHO 2022 is an improvement, but evolution, not revolution (but UHO itself is...).

[lkaufman]

On my website:
https://www.sp-cc.de/uho_2022.htm

Direct download-link:
https://www.sp-cc.de/files/uho_2022.7z

Whats new in UHO 2022:
The UHO 2022 opening sets, are filtered out of the Megabase 2022 (by ChessBase). And the only filter, I am using, is the eval of KomodoDragon 2.6 in the endposition of each opening-line. (UHO V3 used Megabase 2020 and KomodoDragon 1.0 for evaluating). And the UHO 2022 files are around +10% bigger than the UHO V3 files, because the Megabase 2022 contains more games than the Megabase 2020, of course.

What did I do exactly?
- sorted the games of the Megabase 2022 by Elo: both players 2700+ Elo, both players 2600+ Elo, both players 2500+ Elo, both players 2400+ Elo, both players 2300+ Elo.
- cutted all games after 6/8 moves (12/16 plies).
- removed all Chess960 games
- removed all lines with double endpositons, so each endposition is unique. And because the games are sorted by Elo of players, each opening line in the UHO-sets is played by the strongest players (if weaker players played the same opening line, this game was deleted by pgn-extract, because pgn-extract always keeps the first appearance of a line in a pgn-file)
- removed all lines, were not both queens are still on board in the endposition.
- removed all lines, starting with silly pawn-moves in move 1 and 2 (a4, b4, g4, h4 (same for black (...a5, ...b5, etc.)

After doing these work, there were 111789 6-moves deep opening-lines remaining and 316318 8-moves deep opening lines remaining (all with unique endpositions).
Finally, these opening-lines were evaluated (endpositions) with KomodoDragon 2.6 (8.5 seconds per endposition on a 12 core AMD Ryzen CPU) and kept all endpositions in an eval interval of [-2.99;+2.99] (this is the UHO 2022 RawData (can be found in the download, too)). That took around 40 days of computing...
The UHO 2022 RawData can be very useful for other purposes, because it contains all opening-lines from very good for black to very good for white. Feel free to filter these openings as you like...The eval (and search depth) is stored in the Annotator-Tag of each line:
[Annotator "depth=29 eval=+114"]
You can use ChessBase (for example) for searching. Examples of searching:
"eval=-05" finds all lines in an eval-interval of [-0.50;-0.59]
"eval=+00" finds all lines in an eval-interval of [+0.00;+0.09]
"eval=-1" finds all lines in an eval-interval of [-1.00;-1.99]

So the Unbalanced Human Openings contain:
- 100% moves played by humans, only. Both players had at least 2300 Elo.
- opening lines played by the stronges players are at the beginning of the pgn/epd-files.
- no manually constructed openings (like my Drawkiller openings)
- no manually added moves to make castling impossible (like my NBSC openings)
- no selection of piece-patterns

There are 8 folders with different UHO 2022 openings-sets, with increasing advantage for white:
*** IMPORTANT: *** KomodoDragon 2.6 shows evals, which are around +0.20 higher, than KomodoDragon 1.0 does, which I used for evaluating the old UHO V3 openings. So, the Eval-intervals in the new UHO 2022 are +0.20 higher: UHO 2022 starts with Eval [+1.10;+1.19] instead of Eval [+0.90;+0.99] (UHO V3). But as you can see at the bottom of the site in the testing results, using UHO 2022 with Eval [+1.10;+1.19] gives nearly the same Elo-spreading and draw-rates, UHO V3 with Eval [+0.90;+0.99] gives...

Eval [+1.10;+1.19] 6mvs: 3317 lines 8mvs: 8940 lines 8mvs_big: 27074 lines
Eval [+1.20;+1.29] 6mvs: 2608 lines 8mvs: 7296 lines 8mvs_big: 22336 lines
Eval [+1.30;+1.39] 6mvs: 2214 lines 8mvs: 6100 lines 8mvs_big: 18252 lines
Eval [+1.40;+1.49] 6mvs: 1777 lines 8mvs: 4856 lines 8mvs_big: 15048 lines
Eval [+1.50;+1.59] 6mvs: 1440 lines 8mvs: 4092 lines 8mvs_big: 12130 lines
Eval [+1.60;+1.69] 6mvs: 1098 lines 8mvs: 3182 lines 8mvs_big: 9831 lines
Eval [+1.70;+1.79] 6mvs: 823 lines 8mvs: 2557 lines 8mvs_big: 7787 lines
Eval [+1.80;+1.89] 6mvs: 614 lines 8mvs: 2048 lines 8mvs_big: 6192 lines

Each folder contains 3 UHO openings-sets (pgn and epd): 6 moves, 8 moves and a bigger 8 moves file with a bigger eval interval of 0.29 instead of 0.09. The idea is to adjust the draw-rate of engine-tests and tournaments in a recommended interval of around 45%-60% by using a different UHO 2022 opening set.
At the moment, it is recommended to use the first UHO 2022 set with [+1.10;+1.19]. But if this set gives a too high draw-rate, because of a very drawish test-environment (Stockfish vs. another Stockfish for example), you can use a higher UHO 2022 set, to shrink the draw-rate.
Same for the computerchess in the future, where faster hardware and stronger engines will lead to increasing draw-rates, too. Then using a higher UHO 2022 (more advantage for white) set can be useful.
But mention, that the draw-rate should not get too low (below 45%), because this will lead to a lot of 1:1-pairs (= one opening line is clearly won for white, when Engine A and Engine B plays white in a head-to-head, both Engines win one game, using that opening-line (=1:1 points/pair)). If the draw-rate in your engine-testings is below 45%, you should switch to a lower UHO 2022 set (=smaller advantage for white) otherwise you will shrink the Elo spreading of your test-results!!!
Mention, that the UHO 2022 files are getting smaller and smaller, the higher the Eval-interval is, because the games in the Megabase getting rarer and rarer, giving white such a huge advantage after 6/8 moves.
The UHO openings give white a clear advantage, so these openings can be used for Armageddon rescoring or using my Gampairs Rescorer Tool (both are included in the UHO 2022 download (Rescoring tools for biased openings)). But it is also possible, of course, to use these openings with regular chess with classcial scoring system.

Here the testing-results of UHO 2022 and some non-biased openings and one UHO V3 opening-set for comparsion:

Code: Select all

Stockfish 14.1 avx2 vs. KomodoDragon 2.6 avx2, 5min+3sec, singlethread, no bases, no ponder, 
AMD Ryzen 3900 12-core (24 threads) notebook. Cutechess-cli. 1000 games each testrun. 
Stockfish 14.1 point of view: 

Balsa_v2724 openings:        1000 (+45,=951,-4),   Score: 52.0%, Elo: +14, Draws: 95.1%
Feobos c3 openings:          1000 (+121,=865,-14), Score: 55.4%, Elo: +38, Draws: 86.5%
Hert 500 openings:           1000 (+84,=904,-12),  Score: 53.6%, Elo: +25, Draws: 90.4%
Stockfish 8moves_V3:         1000 (+90,=897,-13),  Score: 53.9%, Elo: +27, Draws: 89.7%

Average result of the 4 classical openings:        Score: 53.7%, Elo: +26, Draws: 90.4%

Re-test of old UHO V3 for comparsion:
UHO_V3_8mvs_+090_+099:      1000 (+332,=580,-88),  Score: 62.2%, Elo: +87, Draws: 58.0%

Here the results of the new UHO 2022 with recommended Eval-interval of [+1.10;+1.19]:
UHO_2022_6mvs_+110_+119:     1000 (+364,=540,-96), Score: 63.4%, Elo: +96, Draws: 54.0%
UHO_2022_8mvs_+110_+119:     1000 (+340,=575,-85), Score: 62.8%, Elo: +91, Draws: 57.5%
UHO_2022_8mvs_big_+100_+129: 1000 (+327,=599,-74), Score: 62.6%, Elo: +91, Draws: 59.9%
These results are really impressive!The Elo-spreading, using UHO 2022 openings, is around 3.5x bigger than the classical
openings (more than +90 Elo instead of +26 Elo (!!!)) And the draw-rate is much, much lower (around 57% instead of 90% (!!!))

For the future or games played on extremly fast hardware and/or long thinking-time, here
the testing-results of some UHO 2022 sets with higher Evals. You can see, that the 
Elo-spreading gets worse (=smaller), when the draw-rate is too small (below 45%) - 
because of too many 1:1 gamepairs (the advantage for white is too big)

UHO_2022_6mvs_+120_+129:     1000 (+384,=498,-118),Score: 63.3%, Elo: +96, Draws: 49.8%
UHO_2022_8mvs_+120_+129:     1000 (+387,=481,-132),Score: 62.8%, Elo: +91, Draws: 48.1%
UHO_2022_8mvs_big_+110_+139: 1000 (+388,=492,-120),Score: 63.4%, Elo: +96, Draws: 49.2%

UHO_2022_6mvs_+130_+139:     1000 (+412,=448,-140),Score: 63.6%, Elo: +98, Draws: 44.8%
UHO_2022_8mvs_+130_+139:     1000 (+416,=421,-163),Score: 62.6%, Elo: +91, Draws: 42.1%
UHO_2022_8mvs_big_+120_+149: 1000 (+406,=432,-162),Score: 62.2%, Elo: +87, Draws: 43.2%

UHO_2022_6mvs_+140_+149:     1000 (+436,=365,-199),Score: 61.9%, Elo: +85, Draws: 36.5%
UHO_2022_8mvs_+140_+149:     1000 (+439,=355,-206),Score: 61.6%, Elo: +83, Draws: 35.5%
UHO_2022_8mvs_big_+130_+159: 1000 (+436,=361,-203),Score: 61.6%, Elo: +83, Draws: 36.1%

UHO_2022_8mvs_+150_+159:     1000 (+456,=271,-273),Score: 59.1%, Elo: +65, Draws: 27.1%

This is really nice, I can hardly suggest any way it could be better. One thing that would be useful for some, is to include some lower eval ranges below +110 to 119, at least +100 to 109 and perhaps 90 to 99 and 80 to 89. The point is that although the recommended 110-119 is probably ideal for spreading out elo differences, for tournament and tester use there is also the consideration of having the openings look somewhat reasonably plausible for Black. In other words, there is a tradeoff between elo-spreading and having openings that are at least somewhat representative of serious human chess. If the draw percentage gets too high, maybe beyond 70% or so, interest drops and it takes too many games to tell anything, but I suspect that ranges like 100 to 109 or 90 to 99 will be much more representative of real human high level openings without increasing the draw percentage beyond these limits. The point is that there are many uses for these UHO openings, and the right range depends on the goal of the user. Also it is better to have too many draws than to have too many won positions, since theoretically drawn opening positions are normal in chess whereas theoretically won opening positions are rare in high level chess.

[pohl4711]

I do not recommend lower evals. The testing results were not good. But as I wrote in the ReadMe and here:
"Finally, these opening-lines were evaluated (endpositions) with KomodoDragon 2.6 (8.5 seconds per endposition on a 12 core AMD Ryzen CPU) and kept all endpositions in an eval interval of [-2.99;+2.99] (this is the UHO 2022 RawData (can be found in the download, too)). That took around 40 days of computing...
The UHO 2022 RawData can be very useful for other purposes, because it contains all opening-lines from very good for black to very good for white. Feel free to filter these openings as you like...The eval (and search depth) is stored in the Annotator-Tag of each line:
[Annotator "depth=29 eval=+114"]
You can use ChessBase (for example) for searching. Examples of searching:
"eval=-05" finds all lines in an eval-interval of [-0.50;-0.59]
"eval=+00" finds all lines in an eval-interval of [+0.00;+0.09]
"eval=-1" finds all lines in an eval-interval of [-1.00;-1.99]"

So, if anybody wants using other evals, just use the raw-data and filter out, whatever wanted.
Example "eval=+10" search finds all lines in an eval-interval of [+1.00;+1.09]"

[Cornfed]

- removed all lines, were not both queens are still on board in the endposition.
I presume because the drawish nature rises to much?

- removed all lines, starting with silly pawn-moves in move 1 and 2 (a4, b4, g4, h4 (same for black (...a5, ...b5, etc.)

1.Nf3 b5 is not exactly a 'silly pawn move'.
I've never tried 1.b4 or ever prepared anything against it, but I'll take your word for it.

But speaking of 'silly pawn moves' (not to mention Queen...)I do notice you have 1 game with 1.h3 however...a line that goes: 1.h3 c6; 2.Nc3 Qc7; 3.e4 Qd8, 4.d4 Qc7. But I guess one could always find things to quibble about...

All the same, pretty nice work! I do wish I knew how to easily cut-off lines at about 8 moves as you appear to have. Is it a function within Chessbase I have overlooked or is there some utility you used? I am thinking of doing something similar with Megabase (not for engine games...just opening help for a student) where I could magically remove everything beyond...say, move 8. Thanks!!

[pohl4711]

- removed all lines, were not both queens are still on board in the endposition.
I presume because the drawish nature rises to much?

- removed all lines, starting with silly pawn-moves in move 1 and 2 (a4, b4, g4, h4 (same for black (...a5, ...b5, etc.)

1.Nf3 b5 is not exactly a 'silly pawn move'.
I've never tried 1.b4 or ever prepared anything against it, but I'll take your word for it.

But speaking of 'silly pawn moves' (not to mention Queen...)I do notice you have 1 game with 1.h3 however...a line that goes: 1.h3 c6; 2.Nc3 Qc7; 3.e4 Qd8, 4.d4 Qc7. But I guess one could always find things to quibble about...

All the same, pretty nice work! I do wish I knew how to easily cut-off lines at about 8 moves as you appear to have. Is it a function within Chessbase I have overlooked or is there some utility you used? I am thinking of doing something similar with Megabase (not for engine games...just opening help for a student) where I could magically remove everything beyond...say, move 8. Thanks!!

OK, silly pawn move is perhaps not the best way to say this. I just wanted to sort out some really strange lines...
And yes, in my experiments, all lines without Queens on the board raise the draw-rate at least +5% up.

All work on the openings (cutting after 16 plies/12 plies, removing double endpositions) were done with pgn-extract, not ChessBase. The evaluation was done with Pgnscanner. The only thing, I did with FritzGUI, was sorting the games by Elo (both players 2700+, then both players 2600+ etc.)

[Cornfed]

- removed all lines, were not both queens are still on board in the endposition.
I presume because the drawish nature rises to much?

- removed all lines, starting with silly pawn-moves in move 1 and 2 (a4, b4, g4, h4 (same for black (...a5, ...b5, etc.)

1.Nf3 b5 is not exactly a 'silly pawn move'.
I've never tried 1.b4 or ever prepared anything against it, but I'll take your word for it.

But speaking of 'silly pawn moves' (not to mention Queen...)I do notice you have 1 game with 1.h3 however...a line that goes: 1.h3 c6; 2.Nc3 Qc7; 3.e4 Qd8, 4.d4 Qc7. But I guess one could always find things to quibble about...

All the same, pretty nice work! I do wish I knew how to easily cut-off lines at about 8 moves as you appear to have. Is it a function within Chessbase I have overlooked or is there some utility you used? I am thinking of doing something similar with Megabase (not for engine games...just opening help for a student) where I could magically remove everything beyond...say, move 8. Thanks!!

OK, silly pawn move is perhaps not the best way to say this. I just wanted to sort out some really strange lines...
And yes, in my experiments, all lines without Queens on the board raise the draw-rate at least +5% up.

All work on the openings (cutting after 16 plies/12 plies, removing double endpositions) were done with pgn-extract, not ChessBase. The evaluation was done with Pgnscanner. The only thing, I did with FritzGUI, was sorting the games by Elo (both players 2700+, then both players 2600+ etc.)

Thanks - I like to create a "Quality Base" after a new Megabase and generally sort by both players being, say 2300+, the game actually lasting 20 moves or so and keeping the end result - W/L/D; but I've never found a way to limit the # of moves to a certain depth (again, 16 ply or so) and then laboriously delete duplicates as I get the games from multiple sources including annotated pgn files of actual books.

I will search for pgn-extract and see if I can find a brief tutorial or perhaps it's very self-explanatory.

[pohl4711]

pgn-extract is here:
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/djb/pgn-extract/

Documentation is here:
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/~djb/pgn-extract/help.html

For using pgn-extract, write the commands in .bat-file. Use always the --quiet parameter, to supress the outputs on the screen, that makes pgn-extract running much faster on big databases...

Little example:
pgn-extract --quiet -bl20 --plylimit 16 --nosetuptags -D games.pgn --output unique.pgn

Means: Cut games after 16 plies, the games must be at least 20 moves (=40 plies long (-bl20)), nosetuptags means, no FRC/Chess 960 games allowed and -D filters all double lines. If you want to filter only doubled endpositions, add --fuzzydepth 0 before the -D

pgn-extract --quiet -bl20 --plylimit 16 --nosetuptags --fuzzydepth 0 -D games.pgn --output unique.pgn

[Cornfed]

pgn-extract is here:
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/djb/pgn-extract/

Documentation is here:
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/~djb/pgn-extract/help.html

For using pgn-extract, write the commands in .bat-file. Use always the --quiet parameter, to supress the outputs on the screen, that makes pgn-extract running much faster on big databases...

Little example:
pgn-extract --quiet -bl20 --plylimit 16 --nosetuptags -D games.pgn --output unique.pgn

Means: Cut games after 16 plies, the games must be at least 20 moves (=40 plies long (-bl20)), nosetuptags means, no FRC/Chess 960 games allowed and -D filters all double lines. If you want to filter only doubled endpositions, add --fuzzydepth 0 before the -D

pgn-extract --quiet -bl20 --plylimit 16 --nosetuptags --fuzzydepth 0 -D games.pgn --output unique.pgn

I shall look at the documentation, thanks...but I don't know anything about .bat-files so this may be beyond me.

[pohl4711]

pgn-extract is here:
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/djb/pgn-extract/

Documentation is here:
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/~djb/pgn-extract/help.html

For using pgn-extract, write the commands in .bat-file. Use always the --quiet parameter, to supress the outputs on the screen, that makes pgn-extract running much faster on big databases...

Little example:
pgn-extract --quiet -bl20 --plylimit 16 --nosetuptags -D games.pgn --output unique.pgn

Means: Cut games after 16 plies, the games must be at least 20 moves (=40 plies long (-bl20)), nosetuptags means, no FRC/Chess 960 games allowed and -D filters all double lines. If you want to filter only doubled endpositions, add --fuzzydepth 0 before the -D

pgn-extract --quiet -bl20 --plylimit 16 --nosetuptags --fuzzydepth 0 -D games.pgn --output unique.pgn

I shall look at the documentation, thanks...but I don't know anything about .bat-files so this may be beyond me.

A batch-file is nothing else but a simple textfile, where the fileending is renamed to .bat instead of .txt. You can use the Windows Editor for that. Very simple, if you just want to start pgn-extract or ORDO, you do not have to know more about batch-programming (a "relict" of MS-DOS , the batch programming language is a very simple interpreter language).
Just put the pgn-extract command in a textfile. Save it, rename the ending to .bat and start the file with doubleclicking. Easy. Of course, pgn-extract.exe and the games.pgn file must be in the same folder as the .bat-file.