LMR

[BubbaTough]

Well, just to play devils advocate, there are a pretty large number of people that use computers for things like analyzing their own games, or opening ideas and such.

Sure, many players do. I am fairly sure almost all of them would be better chess players if they never or just very rarely used computer programs for analysis. Being able to analyze quickly and precisely without any external tools is the single most important skill of a chess player, and using every opportunity to practice this skill is the best way to improve for all but the top few percent of all tournament players. I think the main reason why using computers for analysis at sub-GM level is laziness. Analyzing without a computer is hard work. Tournament chess players feel that they should do something to improve their chess, and analysing games or openings with a computer gives them the nice feeling that they are doing something, but in reality they would be better served by doing some difficult non-computer-assisted analysis.

I'm a mathematician by education, and have spent most of my adult life doing and teaching mathematics. One of the recurring discussions regarding mathematical education is the use of calculators. Many people feel that at least at the college/university level, doing basic numerical calculations by hand is a waste of time, and that using calculators should therefore be allowed at all exams. In my experience (and most other pure mathematicians I have discussed this with agree) students who are used to using calculators turn out to be severely handicapped in practice: They make far too many stupid mistakes in all sorts of moderately complex symbolic calculations where the calculator can't help them. They lack the precision and mental discipline which those who are used to calculating everything by hand have developed.

Even using a calculator just to check that something is computed correctly is harmful: It is important to develop the ability to calculate sufficiently precisely that you know the answer is right, without any method to check it with external help. I think this is even more important when playing chess than when doing mathematics, because when you discover that you have miscalculated something when making your last move in a game of chess, there is no way to go back and correct the mistake.

For players at GM level and above, for book authors, and for people who write about chess in magazines or on the Internet, chess programs are obviously useful analysis tools. For everybody else, I think they do more harm than good.

Perhaps people should not use computers for analysis, and perhaps they should (just not as much). Same with calculators...maybe people should use them less, but if my life depends on someone's calculations, I want them using a calculator. Particularly my wife. I find her Ph.D. in mathematics has done nothing for her basic arithmetic.

Same thing goes for playing against computers instead of playing against people. Maybe they do it too much, maybe not. Hardly worth arguing about. Whether people should be doing whatever they are doing to have fun is not very important. Saying we should not given them better analysis tools because they are bad for them is like saying its a waste of time making a better tasting hamburger because no one should be eating meat. Maybe its true they should not eat meat (maybe not)....but the fact is people do use computers for analysis, and do eat meat, enjoy both, and making better computer programs and better hamburgers is as good a use of ones time as anything else.

-Sam

[michiguel]

Well, just to play devils advocate, there are a pretty large number of people that use computers for things like analyzing their own games, or opening ideas and such.

Sure, many players do. I am fairly sure almost all of them would be better chess players if they never or just very rarely used computer programs for analysis.

You started your argument based on what you observed is more popular from your users. Whether they are doing the right thing or not, then, becomes irrelevant with that logic. You can't have it both ways. But following this new logic, I keep disagreeing. Analysis tools are just like that, tools. You can use them well or not.

Being able to analyze quickly and precisely without any external tools is the single most important skill of a chess player,

True

and using every opportunity to practice this skill is the best way to improve for all but the top few percent of all tournament players.

Not always, and not necessarily. For instance, you can run all your games in pgn to automatically detect whether you missed something. Later, you can analyze on your own what were the reasons. Later, you can check if you were right. You can start finding patterns or start understanding why certain things always turn out wrong in certain openings that apparently you do not understand. Without the computer help, you did not even know there was a problem. Only a good player can help you but not everybody has access to it. This is one of the many uses of computers as analysis tools.

I think the main reason why using computers for analysis at sub-GM level is laziness.

Then I can argue that playing on the iPhone is also a sign of laziness or worst.

Analyzing without a computer is hard work. Tournament chess players feel that they should do something to improve their chess, and analysing games or openings with a computer gives them the nice feeling that they are doing something, but in reality they would be better served by doing some difficult non-computer-assisted analysis.

Not necessarily. Some people may not want to improve but they may want to understand certain things.

I'm a mathematician by education, and have spent most of my adult life doing and teaching mathematics. One of the recurring discussions regarding mathematical education is the use of calculators. Many people feel that at least at the college/university level, doing basic numerical calculations by hand is a waste of time, and that using calculators should therefore be allowed at all exams. In my experience (and most other pure mathematicians I have discussed this with agree) students who are used to using calculators turn out to be severely handicapped in practice: They make far too many stupid mistakes in all sorts of moderately complex symbolic calculations where the calculator can't help them. They lack the precision and mental discipline which those who are used to calculating everything by hand have developed.

It may not be a waste of time to use calculators in Mathematics, but it is a waste of precious time in experimental science. You have to develop the skill to quickly get an approximate answer IN YOUR HEAD, not in paper. The actual calculation you better do in a spreadsheet, which are faster and better than calculators (which are still error prone and slower to operate).

Even using a calculator just to check that something is computed correctly is harmful:

Not doing it in experimental science is irresponsible...

Miguel

It is important to develop the ability to calculate sufficiently precisely that you know the answer is right, without any method to check it with external help. I think this is even more important when playing chess than when doing mathematics, because when you discover that you have miscalculated something when making your last move in a game of chess, there is no way to go back and correct the mistake.

For players at GM level and above, for book authors, and for people who write about chess in magazines or on the Internet, chess programs are obviously useful analysis tools. For everybody else, I think they do more harm than good.

[Uri Blass]

Well, just to play devils advocate, there are a pretty large number of people that use computers for things like analyzing their own games, or opening ideas and such.

Sure, many players do. I am fairly sure almost all of them would be better chess players if they never or just very rarely used computer programs for analysis. Being able to analyze quickly and precisely without any external tools is the single most important skill of a chess player, and using every opportunity to practice this skill is the best way to improve for all but the top few percent of all tournament players. I think the main reason why using computers for analysis at sub-GM level is laziness. Analyzing without a computer is hard work. Tournament chess players feel that they should do something to improve their chess, and analysing games or openings with a computer gives them the nice feeling that they are doing something, but in reality they would be better served by doing some difficult non-computer-assisted analysis.

I'm a mathematician by education, and have spent most of my adult life doing and teaching mathematics. One of the recurring discussions regarding mathematical education is the use of calculators. Many people feel that at least at the college/university level, doing basic numerical calculations by hand is a waste of time, and that using calculators should therefore be allowed at all exams. In my experience (and most other pure mathematicians I have discussed this with agree) students who are used to using calculators turn out to be severely handicapped in practice: They make far too many stupid mistakes in all sorts of moderately complex symbolic calculations where the calculator can't help them. They lack the precision and mental discipline which those who are used to calculating everything by hand have developed.

Even using a calculator just to check that something is computed correctly is harmful: It is important to develop the ability to calculate sufficiently precisely that you know the answer is right, without any method to check it with external help. I think this is even more important when playing chess than when doing mathematics, because when you discover that you have miscalculated something when making your last move in a game of chess, there is no way to go back and correct the mistake.

For players at GM level and above, for book authors, and for people who write about chess in magazines or on the Internet, chess programs are obviously useful analysis tools. For everybody else, I think they do more harm than good.

I agree with Miguel A. Ballicora

I can add that computers can be used not only to check tactical calculations but also to improve positional understanding.

Chess players often make positional mistakes when they even do not understand that their moves are positional mistakes(especially when we do not talk about GM's).

Analyzing their games with chess programs can help them to detect their positional mistakes based on looking at the evaluation of the programs that are better than their evaluation and thinking about reasons why the computer move is better than their own move.

They may still not understand why the computer consider their move as a positional blunder but at least in part of these cases going forward and backward with the computer with different lines may help them.

I also disagree about the comparison between arithmetic and chess.
In arithmetic it is easy to be sure about the correct answer without a computer.
It is often not the case in chess and you are often not sure about the best move.

Uri

[bob]

The problem is that 64-bit hardware is currently not relevant for computer chess, and seems unlikely to ever be relevant. Today, only desktop and full-featured laptop computers use 64-bit CPUs, and these computers are invariably so fast that any half decent

Actually I doubt you could easily buy a laptop that didn't have a 64 bit chip in it these days. I just checked Dell's lowest entry laptop right now (Celeron 743) and that's 64 bit.

True, but the trend today is away from laptops, as they are too expensive and unnecessarily powerful for the majority of users. Netbooks are more popular these days, and these are still much slower.

10 years ago everyone was telling me my parallel search stuff was irrelevant as nobody would have more than one CPU on a home computer. "Never say NEVER". 64 bits will become the norm. It isn't _that_ far off. Nor is more than one core on a PDA-type device.

[mcostalba]

10 years ago everyone was telling me my parallel search stuff was irrelevant as nobody would have more than one CPU on a home computer. "Never say NEVER". 64 bits will become the norm. It isn't _that_ far off. Nor is more than one core on a PDA-type device.

64 bit is _already_ the norm from an hardware point of view because Intel Core 2 and AMD Athlon and all the newer processors (possibly more then 90% of CPU out there) support 64 bit natively.

The point is that Windows ships in 32 bit mode by default and if you want the 64 bit Vista you need to spend a lot.

So, currenlty in 2009, the spread of 64 bit systems (cpu+os) is bottlenecked almost entirely just by marketing reasons of a single software company, no other reasons.

If Vista 64 would have been at the same price of the 32 bit counterpart now we would already running only 64 bit engines.

[tano-urayoan]

I could relate with Mr. Romstad's idea. Since I discovered computer chess my rating has dropped 300 pts. My problem is I have become lazy in front of the board, analysing superficially or not depth enough.

Also I do not understand Mr Uri Blass remark that engines could teach us positional chess, if I seldomly understand why the engine suggests x or y move. How We learn from them?

[Uri Blass]

I could relate with Mr. Romstad's idea. Since I discovered computer chess my rating has dropped 300 pts. My problem is I have become lazy in front of the board, analysing superficially or not depth enough.

Also I do not understand Mr Uri Blass remark that engines could teach us positional chess, if I seldomly understand why the engine suggests x or y move. How We learn from them?

I think that the first thing to improve positional understanding is to know when you make a mistake.

Without a computer you may not know when you make a mistake.

After you know what are your mistakes then you can discover positional rules in part of the cases.

I can give some extreme examples.
Suppose total beginner who did not read books develop his queen in the opening.

After looking at computer analysis he can find that all his queen moves are positional mistakes based on computer analysis and generalize and learn that it is a bad idea to develop the queen.

The same principle may hold also for better players and intelligent players
may use computers to help them to discover things that they do not know(for example if they overevaluate some positional factor).

Uri

[Carey]

The point is that Windows ships in 32 bit mode by default and if you want the 64 bit Vista you need to spend a lot.

So, currenlty in 2009, the spread of 64 bit systems (cpu+os) is bottlenecked almost entirely just by marketing reasons of a single software company, no other reasons.

If Vista 64 would have been at the same price of the 32 bit counterpart now we would already running only 64 bit engines.

I really hate to defend Microsoft, but I think I have to.

Vista 64 was the same price as Vista 32.

OEM's chose to install Vista32 due to so many drivers and programs not working properly with Vista64.

If you think Vista32 compatability was bad, you should have tried Vista64 when it was released.

Although Microsoft required drivers to be available in both 32 & 64 bits, the 64 bit drivers were often not kept current (or at least not made as readily available as the 32 bit drivers.) For example, for my laptop, the Vista64 graphics & chipset driver is more than a year out of date over the Vista32 one, plus it's a more generic one. (For that, and other reasons, my laptop is running V32 and my desktop is V64.)

And as somebody who runs Vista64 on the desktop, I can tell you from experience that many programs today *still* don't work properly with a 64 bit Windows.

Oh sure, a lot of generic programs do. But anything that's 32 bit and that wants to hook into the OS or Explorer still often doesn't work right.


Although XP64 existed, its pentration was practically zero and driver support wasn't much better. Vista64 was Microsofts first real consumer 64 bit OS. They could have pushed harder and encouraged developers to make 64 bit clean programs, but they haven't. (Better 64 bit specific tools would have helped. As would a MingW GCC64 for hobbiests.)

Part of the problem was a lack of need for 64 bits in general and part of the problem was the expletive-deleted known as Vista. People who could stay with XP often chose to do so, even if it meant limiting them to 32 bits and less than 4g of memory.

Only the truely adventurous or 64 bit needy tried Vista64 when it was released. (Although in the past year or two, V64 has begun apearing much more often in retail systems.)

As a result, Win7/64 is going to be the real transitional OS to 64 bits. (Hopefully.)

And it's going to be up to the driver writers and the application programmers whether Win7 will be the last 32 bit Windows or not.

We had many of the same things happening when we went from 16 bit DOS (& Win 3) to Win9x.

The only real differences back then were: 1) going to 32 bits had more benefits, so more people were in a hurry to do so. 2) More tools more quickly. 3) Win9x was better than Vista.

[tvrzsky]

Ditto here. Here are the moves/situations that I won't reduce:

-- First four moves in move ordering (includes the hash move)
-- remaining depth > 3
-- not a promotion, capturing or checking move
-- not a pawn move
-- not while in check
-- not in a mate threat situation as reported by the hash move

Very conservative. Don't like the depth > 3. Most of the advantage of LMR occurs when you reduce moves near the root, since this is an exponential gain based on depth. Ditto for pawn moves. Passed pawn moves, maybe. But there are a ton of totally hopeless pawn moves that can safely be reduced.

Perhaps John meant depth < 3?!

[bob]

10 years ago everyone was telling me my parallel search stuff was irrelevant as nobody would have more than one CPU on a home computer. "Never say NEVER". 64 bits will become the norm. It isn't _that_ far off. Nor is more than one core on a PDA-type device.

64 bit is _already_ the norm from an hardware point of view because Intel Core 2 and AMD Athlon and all the newer processors (possibly more then 90% of CPU out there) support 64 bit natively.

We were not talking about traditional PC boxes, but instead were talking about PDAs, cell phones, and the like...

The point is that Windows ships in 32 bit mode by default and if you want the 64 bit Vista you need to spend a lot.

So, currenlty in 2009, the spread of 64 bit systems (cpu+os) is bottlenecked almost entirely just by marketing reasons of a single software company, no other reasons.

If Vista 64 would have been at the same price of the 32 bit counterpart now we would already running only 64 bit engines.