Russell Sherwood Sunday, October 3, 2021
This time we come to a basic but often overlooked area - keeping your tools up to date.
I just spent an hour or so updating engines and databases - why do this?
Two reasons
- In terms of engine development , new versions are released on regular basis. Each of these only add the odd Elo to the strength of the engine, but these add up over time, so that if you do not update on a regular basis, then you set yourself at a reasonable disadvantage. This was seen when a number of players continued to use the pre-NNUE version of Stockfish for and suffered strings of losses against those who had updated.
- New Games are published all the time and keeping your database up to date is essential to not fall into "new" opening traps.
How often should you update? For Engines monthly is adequate but for databases it is mainly a case of determining how often your game sources are updated.
CorrespondenceChessTipoftheWeek
