OK!

Thanks for that,

Cathexis

QID is the name of an internal function that returns a generated ID, thus the number.

This function isn't called when the initial post is made, so QID shows up. But it is called when quoting a post, so the number shows up. As to why it's called in one scenario and not the other... (shrugs).

If you want to avoid this happening, you can use the noparse tag, as I did in this post. Use the Quote button to see it.

Lauri Torni wrote on 02/12/21 at 19:14:23:


I ageee 100%. My own statitics vs London, Colle etc increased when I started to play d5 without pawn commited to e6. I play a 1 d4 Nf6 move order since I play Nimzo Ragozin combo (and sometimes Bogo too) and ad  an other line vs Catalan.

I enjoyed reading this whole thread as I am considering the QID/Nimzo hybrid as possibly a safer option for a beginning 1.d4 response by Black. But all the discussion re: Top GM "fashions" and the use of computer engines made me chuckle at the thought that one day the "fashion" may be: Game your opponent by seeing what they're playing that's perhaps chosen for its engine-friendliness. Then hit them with variations that are not so engine-friendly. Hence, reliance on the computer now becomes a vulnerability to exploit! Haha.

FWIW,

Cathexis

an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 02/12/21 at 15:11:22:


There's a slight misunderstanding showing up here, I think. I don't think the top players blindly follow fashion to any great extent.

A bit yes, but when they move en mass there's something concrete behind it at the point they move. Its just that those changes haven't yet ever proven to be terribly stable over time.

An awful lot of that must be down to computers evolving over time. Maybe they're getting near to stopping doing so, dunno.

On a side note, this stuff about fashion happens to remind me of a bit from the late Lubomir Kavalek (who was a favorite chess writer of mine) in the tournament book of Wijk aan Zee 1975, commenting on Sosonko-Smejkal:

In his book "The Grunfeld Defence" Hartston only mentions "the old" 8...N-B3?! and the "modern" 8...N(B3)-Q2.  This looks to me as though there were only mini-skirts and maxi-skirts in the fashion world and nothing between.  Anyway the game took its particular course and Sosonko was really not impressed very much by Smejkal's new "skirt".  But creating a new fashion always creates some problems.  Sosonko claims that he could have put Smejkal out of the fashion business with 15. N-QN5 and maybe this is so.  But he did not do it and soon the players agreed to a draw.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1127528

I guess the QID has some issues with all the d5 based gambits and/or current engines?

LC0/Alpha zero and friends are all keen on those for white and will happily give white a load of interesting ideas about how best to handle them.

They're also not really concrete positions, so you can't learn a solution from SF, and obviously no one alive can hope to defend a passive position even half as well as SF once they're on their own.

When I attributed the preference for QGD over QID to fashion it was an opinion, or at best an educated guess. When LeeRoth questions whether fashion even exists today, it's a valid question, but I think the facts he presented are far from conclusive. We should proceed methodically if we want to draw firm conclusions.

• I have no problem with only considering 2700+ games, as long as we take it as just an arbitrary number, rather than as a judgment that GMs below that number are unable to have correct and possibly even complete knowledge of theory. I must say though, I thought the recent chesspub gold standard was correspondence games.
• I think it would be better not to mix rapid games with classical games. It's well known that risky openings are considered more playable in rapid. That may not have anything to do with QID vs QGD, but still I think it best not to muddy the waters. Anyway at Tata Steel, after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3, my informal count shows 3...d5 eight times and 3...b6 zero.
• When we notice the 100% preference for QGD at the top, this *still* could be due to fashion. This is not stubbornness on my part, it's just the way fashion works. More on this below.
• Even saying that the top players are careful and concrete does not in any way prove there is no fashion. A logical inference that is consistent with (a) 100% preference for the QGD, (b) careful and concrete preparation, and (c) the existence of fashion, would be: "the QGD is no worse than the QID".

So the question becomes, what would be decisive evidence that the QID is worse than the QGD, or indeed that there is no such thing as fashion at the top today? These are not at all the same question. Certainly the QID could be worse than the QGD and yet maybe say the Rossolimo Sicilian is popular due to fashion. And as I noted above, even positing there is no fashion at all wouldn't prove the QID is worse than the QGD, at least not on current evidence. I won't pretend to be able to answer these questions all by myself, simply because different people will have different standards of proof.

A little digression on fashion in chess openings....

I hope we can all agree that in the past there was such a thing as fashion in chess openings. When any of the world champions, or to a more limited extent any other top player, took up an opening, the whole chess world followed. But maybe my next hypothesis is a little radical: A top player didn't take up an opening because it was theoretically good; it was the other way around. An opening became theoretically good simply because a top player took it up. Opening theory was essentially a tug-of-war, and whichever side had the bigger heavyweights pulling for it would "win" the theoretical battles, at least in the short run. Well, you may not agree with my hypothesis, but if you did, then you would necessarily have quite a high burden of proof for concluding that opening A is absolutely better than opening B!

And how is theory chosen today? Everybody uses engines, but let's not be glib about their impact. We should go slowly.

1. Preparation time is limited. At some point a human is deciding to use an engine on this opening and not on that opening. So even in an engine-driven world there is still room for fashion. It's at least plausible that fashion could still exist.
2. Despite their enormous strength (even compared to our 2700 GMs they are +700 or so), there are still some openings where engines do not do well, and this is not always due to insufficient depth.
3. Engines are causing  a kind of schism in chess openings. It used to be that openings were on a continuum from top-tier, to second-rate, to slightly dodgy, to dubious, and finally unsound. Because of their ability to analyze to great depth, engines are driving a wedge, forcing openings into basically two camps: either they lead to equalilty, or they lead to a huge advantage. (For crying out loud, even the Modern Benoni is being analyzed to equality!) How huge doesn't matter to the top players. If it doesn't lead to equality, it's in the bin. In olden days white used to expect += and try for +/-, but today that borderline +/- seems to have disappeared and it's more about getting something "interesting" and seeing how the opponent handles it.

And here I will state an opinion and just leave it out there for others to discuss. Given a shortage of preparation time, and given the engine's relative weakness in certain types of positions, it stands to reason that it might be very much harder to make some openings "work" compared to other openings, even if there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the opening. In my humble opinion, the QID belongs in the eventually equal bucket, but when trying to demonstrate that equality the engine doesn't help you much. So the top players choose to spend their time either on something more engine-suitable (e.g. the QGD), or on something where the engine's unsuitability carries more risk for the opponent (e.g. the KID).