Insider Theory

Today on Twitter, not-quite-our-own Theo Slade had a very interesting exchange with Peter Svidler about opening theory. (@polborta is Svidler's personal twitter account.)

@theosladechess In topical lines in particular, top players independently look at the same positions in great depth, resulting in a pool 1/

— Peter Svidler (@polborta) November 16, 2016

@theosladechess ... of shared knowledge which has not yet been shown in practice, creating a kind of 'insider theory'. Official theory is 2/

— Peter Svidler (@polborta) November 16, 2016

@theosladechess ...stuff that has already been seen in published games, and is therefore openly available to everyone.

— Peter Svidler (@polborta) November 16, 2016

@polborta existed. So would that mean that, eg, Black shouldn't go 9...d5 for fear of "insider theory," or is it more a case of Carlsen 2

— Theo (@theosladechess) November 16, 2016

@theosladechess That's a lot harder to say, requires levels of speculation I am not happy with, sorry. Both are possible.

— Peter Svidler (@polborta) November 16, 2016

Apologies for formatting issues, but I think that's easy enough to follow.

One can come up for many reasons for Svidler to defer further comment, too. Ultimately, anything he says could be construed as giving away information to potential competitors about what he does and doesn't know, or may or may not know. Although choosing what to believe of anything he says after that last tweet would become a poker problem, and not a chess problem, if that makes any sense. (And it may not. I am sick at the moment, and I'm not sure that my brain cells have survived the illness, or if having survived they still function with a reasonable modicum of coherence.)