The Secret of Chess

[carldaman]

I'd cut the guy some slack - he's written some fine material, although hard to digest for most. He's clearly an independent thinker, with a stubborn streak, who sticks to his guns, perhaps to a fault. Don't forget, even theorists like Steinitz and Nimzowitsch drew a lot of flak in their day and were unpopular for a while. Even Kmoch was criticized for the terms he introduced in his Pawn Power book.

Really? Now you're drawing that comparison?

Here's some Lyudmil Tsvetkov's "fine material, although hard to digest for most" outrageous claims:

He claims that 1.c4 is the best opening for white by far.
He claims that 1. e4 e6?? is a blunder and black is almost lost already.
He claims that Magnus Carlsen and other GMs of such level are actually very weak compared to him, and that they wouldn't be able to crush chess engines like he does, unless they read his books.
He claims that you improve 100 elo instantly by just reading the table of contents of his book.

And I can go on an on.

This isn't to be taken with a grain of salt, Lyudmil is dead serious with such claims, and really means them. Requesting people to stop using Stockfish is no different.

And, anyway, you claim he was "obviously upset"... is that so? With trolls they actually are laughing their ass off at all the attention they get, and pretend they're upset to get even more attention. Unless he is deranged, but I'm moving towards the troll part after seeing evidence he actually uses sock-puppets to praise his own book, you can recognize them as Lyudmil doesn't even take the time to thank them for all the praise...

EDIT:duplicate removed

[carldaman]

I'd cut the guy some slack - he's written some fine material, although hard to digest for most. He's clearly an independent thinker, with a stubborn streak, who sticks to his guns, perhaps to a fault. Don't forget, even theorists like Steinitz and Nimzowitsch drew a lot of flak in their day and were unpopular for a while. Even Kmoch was criticized for the terms he introduced in his Pawn Power book.

Really? Now you're drawing that comparison?

Here's some Lyudmil Tsvetkov's "fine material, although hard to digest for most" outrageous claims:

He claims that 1.c4 is the best opening for white by far.
He claims that 1. e4 e6?? is a blunder and black is almost lost already.
He claims that Magnus Carlsen and other GMs of such level are actually very weak compared to him, and that they wouldn't be able to crush chess engines like he does, unless they read his books.
He claims that you improve 100 elo instantly by just reading the table of contents of his book.

And I can go on an on.

This isn't to be taken with a grain of salt, Lyudmil is dead serious with such claims, and really means them. Requesting people to stop using Stockfish is no different.

And, anyway, you claim he was "obviously upset"... is that so? With trolls they actually are laughing their ass off at all the attention they get, and pretend they're upset to get even more attention. Unless he is deranged, but I'm moving towards the troll part after seeing evidence he actually uses sock-puppets to praise his own book, you can recognize them as Lyudmil doesn't even take the time to thank them for all the praise...

Some of those comments may be tongue-in-cheek, we just can't be sure, but we probably shouldn't take everything so literally. He should realize that over-the-top statements that can't be readily backed up will draw a lot of negative scrutiny, however. He's leaving too many people antagonized and that should give him some pause for some (re)thinking of the general approach. It may not have been his original intent, since he is trying to sell a product [and doing it for the first time, he's new at it], after all. Would you purposely tick off your potential customers with 'trollish' postings if YOU were selling chess books?

[Ovyron]

Some of those comments may be tongue-in-cheek, we just can't be sure, but we probably shouldn't take everything so literally.

I'm reporting things that he claims on his books themselves.

So now his entire books should be taken with a grain of salt because they contain outragous nonsensical claims?

Nope, I've never seen Lyudmil Tsvetkov making comments like the ones you claim, he's always very serious about the claims that he makes.

You're playing devil's advocate for the wrong devil, here, it's clear he has just learned that the best way to promote his book is to get people talking about them and that for doing that nothing beats trolling, as trolls attract a lot of attention, and attention increases his book's sales.

It's as simple as that.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

As far as I can tell, smooth scaling makes it weaker (sometimes significantly), but has a habit of suggesting interesting analysis moves. I put it in there mostly just because I could and it can be handy for analysis, but it for sure has a negative Elo value (which is why it's off by default). The parameters for it could be tuned a bit, maybe we can get something useful from it.

Is that your contribution?

Nah, I depicted some weird behavior for analysis, using of Transposition Table also in Principal Variation nodes solved what I was talking about, and made the engine +8 elo stronger. That was my contribution. Smooth scaling was Dann Corbit's contribution, it greatly helped for analysis for version 1.6s and I was using it alongside default Stockfish up to version 2, I believe.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, what matters is Stockfish is using a patch I suggested, and now you're using Stockfish with my patch without my persmission. I don't really mind, but I'd like if you stopped telling people to stop using Stockfish without your permission because you have suggested patches that are used in it. It doesn't give you any right.

In any case, in his penultimate post Brendan mentioned some things about you I wasn't aware of, so congrats on gaining +10% chance on just being a scammer, now up to 95%. And most of the other 5% is just the chance that you're delusional, but actually believe everything that you say. You actually perceive a different reality from the rest of us.

Just arrange a match against Brendan on lichess, surely he's weaker than you and you'd have no problems. I'm certain that he'd destroy you with ease (like he did with me... heh).

But if you continue your pattern, you're going to claim you can't play Brendan because you're too busy, or some other excuse. Or maybe you're going to accept and will cheat against him. Or maybe you will not play him at all and doctor a game where you supposedly beat him. At this point I have no idea, but there's some circumstances that would confirm you 100% scammer.

Now, I understood only after your 3rd attack.
Same style, same arrogance, same devious, sly behaviour.
Ulisses P, Lanzo Nazaire and VR are the same person, right?
You could have told so from the very beginning.

We ALL know WHO you are.
Did not you troll Talkchess all along the first half of 2015?

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Some of those comments may be tongue-in-cheek, we just can't be sure, but we probably shouldn't take everything so literally.

I'm reporting things that he claims on his books themselves.

So now his entire books should be taken with a grain of salt because they contain outragous nonsensical claims?

Nope, I've never seen Lyudmil Tsvetkov making comments like the ones you claim, he's always very serious about the claims that he makes.

You're playing devil's advocate for the wrong devil, here, it's clear he has just learned that the best way to promote his book is to get people talking about them and that for doing that nothing beats trolling, as trolls attract a lot of attention, and attention increases his book's sales.

It's as simple as that.

You are the biggest troll here, NO bigger troll than you.
You managed to make a good creative thread an antagonistic one, congratulations.
Is not that trolling in extreme?
How could anyone forbid the use of SF, I mean, are you in your right mind?
Yes, I have contributed some 20-30 green patches to SF, some vital for SF's further evaluation improvement.
Concerning my claims, yes, I fully subscribe to them:
- 1. c4 is the BEST first move for white.
- The French Defence is one of the weakest possible black responses to 1. e4

Now:
- in what way does that make me a troll?
- in what way does that make my books dubious or unsolid?

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Now, why should I not be drawing comparisons?
Hans Kmoch coined the term of levers(pawns attacking enemy pawns), although it passed a successful engine test ONLY with my suggested implementation: http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 14&t=52565.
Now, why should I not be drawing comparisons?

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

KC is a Candidate Master so should at least be 2200 - I estimate +2250, and I think he'd easily destroy Lyudmil, though my perceptions are mostly based on Bullet and Superblitz...

Anyway, chess videos in general don't need production quality at all, I've compared amateur videos from people with something interesting to say, with those of "high quality production" of people that worry more about applying a Color Temperature filter on their webcam so the colors of their video match those of movie theaters than about the chess lines they analyze, and people seem to care more about the quality of the chess analysis itself than about the wrapping of the video, and it shows by thousands of views of difference.

In extreme cases people will complain that the board is too small, or that it shows black bars, or that they just hate the sounds of pieces moving, but those are easy to fix, and I have even seen chess videos with thousands of views with terribile audio that crackles and a cheap microphone could do better, but nobody complains because the actual chess content is good.

Chess needs no presentation.

In this case though, after spending some couple dozen hours reading old threads by Lyudmil, I'm concluding he's a scam, with some 85% certainty of sorts. At points I have no idea if he's trolling, or if he's insane, but he just makes some claims that are the exact opposite from reality.

Say, a chess position that is lost for black is posted, and all engines claim it's lost, and people on the forum agree that it's lost, yet Lyudmil will go on and claim that it's white that is winning and that engines don't know what they're talking about and that all forum members are missing the critical lines by Lyudmil.

When he shows these lines it turns out they are full of blunders by both sides, or they lead to positions where black clearly is still losing or Lyudmil was missing some variation because in some line he clearly didn't check with an engine at all, and when faced with this he'll backtrack and claim those lines don't matter, and it's THESE OTHER ONES that should be analyzed, but he runs into the same problems.

And then he'll give up claiming he's right but that he doesn't have time for this, or that it's just unfair for him to be defending his position against the entire forum alone.

People can check at home and see Lyudmil's analysis makes no sense, and conclude that either he's the perfect troll (his best ability is to gather people to attack his chess views), or there's some actual worrying problem if he actually believes what he says, and nothing will make him change his views to one that matches reality.

His "magic" is that he can look at a position for 10 seconds and in that time he'll be able to tell you who's winning, and why, and no matter how much time you spend analyzing the position deeply with the best engines or hardware, Lyudmil will have been ahead, and there will be no way to convince him otherwise.

I think this video of him beating Stockfish would be a miracle, unless he does as H.G.Muller suggests and fakes it, as I have seen evidence that he faked things for his book.

So what's the goal here? Increase Lyudmil's sales? Why? Isn't it better that people save their money instead of buying into the scam? Or should we just give him the benefit of the doubt until he provides the proof?

People here are too kind and do not always give their opinion. IMHO, you are absolutely right, >95% of Ludmil's posts are pure bullshit.

Then why would GMs and IMs think othewise?
https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-secret-of-chess
https://www.chess.com/blog/Swordfish55/ ... t-of-chess
http://www.secretofchess.com/files/1777 ... 0Chess.pdf

ALL you can not understand I am at least 2700 in strength, although not competing.

95% BS, but 30 successful evaluation patches in SF.
Somehow does not make sense, does it?
I suggest you apologise.

Do you see what both Smerdon and Welling write:
- revolutionise chess
- revolutionary knowledge

Those are STRONG statements, are noth they?

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

You probably need to publish about 50-200 videos before you create a good one. First videos are usually crap unless you got talent.

Much work and once you start don't give up.

Are you speaking from experience? Or could we just take the word "probably" in your statement as meaning that you're guessing?

The guy isn't trying to get rich from adsense revenue (which requires VOLUME of videos).

He is trying to bring attention to a single book, build interest and direct traffic to an amazon landing page.

This is easier because the goal is already clear and each video can be directed around it and make mentions to passages in the book to build curiosity in the viewers.

He can also give away maybe 2 chapters for free via PDF, and place the link in the description of the videos.

A ton of people will grab it and those interested will purchase.

This is very basic direct response marketing strategy.

It is made MUCH MUCH easier by the fact that an obscure, middle-aged 2100 guy is outplaying Stockfish (3450Elo) live on camera.

An engine that even 2700 GMs recently said "I'd be happy to draw 1 game in 100 with Stockfish!"

If Lyudmil's claims are proven true, his videos will go viral overnight in the chess scene.

They'll be shared and sites like Chessbase will do articles on this amazing guy who "hacked" the computer chess algorithm.

And.... His book sales will soar.

Assuming he has this ability, a Youtube channel is a no-brainer.

All the negative thinking in the world won't change this fact.

If I could draw or beat Stockfish (any version!) at will, I'd be rich within a year - easily.

Unfortunately, I'm far too weak.

And back to Lyudmil...

Without concrete proof, everybody is going to see the reviews which Lyudmil didn't email strong players pleading for - which say things like this:

"Throughout the book, Lyudmil is trying to show how he plays better chess than Stockfish, an 3000+ ELO chess engine. We don't know if the games are real, in fact my Stockfish 8.0 don't agree the Stockfish moves in the book. Apparently, the games are fake - anybody with a laptop can make a PGN with some random moves, then change the player name to "Stockfish"."

The only way to overcome this skepticism is to play some live games against Stockfish and turn these non-believers (probably 99.9% of chessplayers) into believers.

And if Lyudmil indeed does this, proves existence of such an amazing talent, and silences the skeptics - there is no limit to what he can acheive.

It'll only take ONE or TWO videos to prove this, not 50-200.

What are you blabbering, Brendan, what reviews?
I have no official review like that, where did you get that from?
This is some scammer, spoofer or something.
Who has not read the book.
Because, PLEASE NOTE, there are NO games in 'The Secret of Chess', only patterns.
Video channels.
Sounds easy.
Many are doing this, so what?
This is a book, after all, not a video presentation.
Audiences are different.
Book-readers are more thoughtful.
Everything could be faked online, videos, time of broadcasting, etc., so the doubts will always persist.
Only thing that will really help me is getting the IM or GM title OTB, but that takes a lot of time.

I think you didn't understand the point in Brendan post. A Youtube video purpose is not to be a "proof" of something in mathematical sense. It's just a simple marketing thing. You say "Sounds easy." Then why don't you try it?

Because most book authors are just what they are: book authors.
And most video-makers just video-makers.
In the same way as most mathematicians are just mathematicians and most programmers just programmers.
One can not do everything.
I would appreciate if someone makes a video on some of my published games, for example.
As a teaching/learning tool, I don't have very high opinion of videos, they are generally not made for thinkers, to learn, you have to stop for a while and think sometimes, you can certainly do that with a book, how are you going to do that in a video?
You are not going to wind it back 100 times to dwell on specific points, are you?
So that, I don't believe very much in videos.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

What are you blabbering, Brendan, what reviews?
I have no official review like that, where did you get that from?
This is some scammer, spoofer or something.
Who has not read the book.
Because, PLEASE NOTE, there are NO games in 'The Secret of Chess', only patterns.
Video channels.
Sounds easy.
Many are doing this, so what?
This is a book, after all, not a video presentation.
Audiences are different.
Book-readers are more thoughtful.
Everything could be faked online, videos, time of broadcasting, etc., so the doubts will always persist.
Only thing that will really help me is getting the IM or GM title OTB, but that takes a lot of time.

You know exactly what I'm "blabbering" about Lyudmil.

I tried to offer you sincere advice when you began to launch this book, but instead you used your own dishonest marketing methods (read: scamming tricks).

1. You made outrageous claims (such as "the only person on earth stronger than me is Carlsen!"), but refused to back them up - just telling people to buy the book.

2. You posted on message forums doctored games against Stockfish to pretend that they were head to head encounters played on fair terms (and thus increase your perceived credibility).

3. You emailed a whole slew of strong/titled players and prominent computer chess people, begging for reviews (playing the odds game, definitely some people will be altruistic)

4. You continued to troll around message forums on chess.com, Tc. Rybkachess, Hiarcs chess and elsewhere, and made more outrageous claims - claiming to be GM strength and the "only person on earth who can beat SF".

5. I work in chess marketing and have earned tens of thousands of dollars in a single week for chess companies, and offered you FREE advice for how to build credibility - and this is "blabbering"? F*#k you, you ungrateful rat.

Your method of marketing your book is scammy and disingenuous and preys upon the naivety of chess learners.

And this is why you have attracted negative criticism around the web and become a laughing stock, despite the endorsed reviews of decent players.

Because you chose the deceptive way to market your book, instead of some honest (and longer enduring) ways I proposed originally, you have lost the trust of the market.

This is your own fault - and this is what I'm "blabbering" about.

You should take this as a lesson, but like so many on this site with similar temperaments, you likely won't.

You are not in your right mind, that is for sure.
Doctored games? Any proof?
Otherwise, you are just LYING.
That is what you are, Brendan, a LIAR.
Plain and simple.
If you know my games are doctored and consequently my book a scam, why would you like to help a scammer?
Does not make sense, does it?
This ONLY goes to show how insincere you are.
I asked Smerdon and he reviewed: https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-secret-of-chess
Welling found me HIMSELF, he found the book interesting: https://www.chess.com/blog/Swordfish55/ ... t-of-chess
And Herman Grooten was contacted by a person, who liked my book and whom I did not know at all: http://www.secretofchess.com/files/1777 ... 0Chess.pdf

So, as you see, all reviews by strong titled players are generally positive.
If GMs and IMs think highly of me and my book, then I have been fully right and even modest at presenting my book on different outlets.
It deserves much more, of course, but the world is unjust.

Its FULL value will be appreciated in 20 years' time.

[Henk]

Use video as an advertisement of your book. Watched videos about deep learning. Starting stopping it and winding back many times. Winding back on a computer is much easier than on tele.