alt Hacker NewsYou think no one has done that? Aside from explicitly encoding book lines, NN weights developed over millions of games steer chess engines away from useless lines.
But if you don't explore a line, even if you believe it's effectively useless, then you haven't solved chess.
P.S.
> I don't think I've ever seen or will ever see: 1. a3 a6 2. h3 h6
I have. Children and other beginners often do play like this. And even at GM levels we've seen nonsense like the Bongcloud and, marginally less nonsensically, the Cow opening.
>But if you don't explore a line, even if you believe it's effectively useless, then you haven't solved chess.
That's actually a good point because ideas that modern GMs found to be useless (in particular, locking a wing down via aggressive early wing play) have actually found a new home in AlphaZero's play.
What might be completely dumb from an early move (say, aggressively pushing the F pawn from the start) might provide to be an incredible opening, but humans are too stupid to be able to execute it perfectly.