Originally posted by thesonofsaul
I don't mean to be rude, but before I could ever be convinced that chess engines help humans to play better I need some concrete evidence. What patterns have you found with computer aid?
For years I was convinced the same way you are now, printing out various computer analysis and pouring over them, until fairly recently, when I asked myself for the ...[text shortened]... rated players, need to be very careful with how the computer generated analysis is used.
I have two concrete examples, if we go beyond just chess playing programs and include databases, and one additional one that is very general for me.
For tactics, the first pattern I discovered is that I miss backward knight moves. I had a vague sense that I had issues with them because I lost a game or two to opponents that way, but the computer showed me lots of examples where I had the opportunity to "do it to the other guy", but never saw it. I think it's easy to find our tactical mistakes that lead to obvious harm for us, but the computer will show you good moves that you overlooked, which are much harder to find. When you are playing the same openings and doing it to your own games, patterns start to emerge. You still have to do the work to find them, but the computer makes them much easier to find.
Second. Chessbase has a function that will break down all of your games (assuming you have "moused them in" and created a database) based on the types of endings you end up with. From that, I learned that I had a very particular weakness in queen and pawn endgames. I have dramatically improved my play in those endings since I discovered what a big whole I had in my knowledge there.
In the broad sense, chessbase helped me correct a major misconception about the state of my game. I had always pictured myself as a good opening and middlegame player, but weak in endings. After crunching a database of my OTB games (254 at the time), I learned that my performance rating in games that made it to the endgame stage was about 300 points HIGHER than my overall rating. Basically, I was winning lots of endings, even against higher players, while many of my losses were occurring before the game made it to an ending.
I think computers are just like books, in that they are garbage in/garbage out, and it depends on how you use them. In the very broadest sense, the computer is great at "Dude, look what you missed here!" type stuff, and it is best at the concrete tactics part, where no explanation is needed- either I saw the tactic, or I didn't, and I don't need a deep explanation to help me understand that I keep missing pins, etc.
As an aside, I do not interpret your question as rude at all (and aren't we all too sensitive online!), and I hope I have given it the answer it deserves, even though I went beyond the engine parameters a bit.