Oh, what fun!

I know the holidays are gone, but here's a tune to prolong the season.

(to the tune of Jingle Bells)
Hashing through the moves
On a dual-core Intel chip
O'er the lines we go
At a heady clip.

Tablebases on.
Evaluation's right.
What fun it is to analyze
A GM game tonight.

Oh! Analyze, analyze.
Learn an endgame tip.
Oh what fun to analyze
On a dual-core Intel chip.

In Round 3 of Wijk aan Zee, Van Wely pressed Radjabov from the Black side of a RP v. BP ending. The ChessBase article was authored by GM Mihail Marin. His comments were very interesting as he talks about "human lines" versus "computer lines". He also discusses "fun" in going over such lines. I know I have fun going through lines where an ocean of variations compresses down to a narrow canal of winning lines. But to most, it's probably like watching paint dry.

GM Kasparov was watching the game in progress and he was able to speak from experience in a couple of his games where he had the same material advantage. Marin describes Kasparov getting very enthusiastic when the theoretical ending came up, even citing a Rubinstein game.

The analysis is very detailed and instructive with hidden kernels of truth comparable to "To defend, keep your king close...but not too close." All the while, I was thinking that the ending could transpose into the Rook and rook Pawn versus Bishop ending that I have already studied in some depth.

Now all I need is to put the Radjabov-Van Wely position into Fritz and train myself to see it through to checkmate. Fun!