Chess Concept: Running Out of Book

One of the problems with playing against computers is how quickly and how often they change. Grandmasters are used to preparing very deeply for our opponents, researching all of their latest games and looking for weaknesses. Mostly this preparation focuses on openings, the established sequences of moves that start the game and have exotic names like the Sicilian Dragon and the Queen's Indian Defense. We prepare new ideas in these openings, and look for strong new moves ("novelties") with which to surprise our opponents. This is particularly effective if you can find something nasty in one of his favorite lines. since you can reasonably expect to reach that position.

I'll go into more detail on how computers navigate these openings in the Deep Blue chapters, but I'll point out now that they rely on a database of moves derived from human play, called an "opening book." These books have evolved over the years to allow the machines more flexibility, but the basic idea is what it sounds like, a book of openings it follows more or less blindly until it "runs out of book" and has to think for itself. This is effectively similar to how I do it, relying on memory to select the opening lines I prefer until I run out of book and am on my own.