TalkChess.com

There seems to be an extremely low interest rate in human chess, in the w hole of talkchess, ctf/ccc etc.
Not even the world championship of FIDE attracts much interest in these forums, and i now realize that my recent posts posts into the chess players forum have been up near the top for days and maybe weeks.

What is the point of Computer chess, for people who are not passionate about human chess first?

(By the way, anyone who would like to watch Gelfand live now (details in other adjoining thread about WC), would find it really fascinating! I'm now busy listening to every word, spellbound. Better than GM's on FIDE and Chess24!]).

S.Taylor wrote:There seems to be an extremely low interest rate in human chess, in the w hole of talkchess, ctf/ccc etc.
Not even the world championship of FIDE attracts much interest in these forums, and i now realize that my recent posts posts into the chess players forum have been up near the top for days and maybe weeks.

What is the point of Computer chess, for people who are not passionate about human chess first?

(By the way, anyone who would like to watch Gelfand live now (details in other adjoining thread about WC), would find it really fascinating! I'm now busy listening to every word, spellbound. Better than GM's on FIDE and Chess24!]).

Everyone now has a better-than-world-champion inside their computer. Nobody is willing to put-up with fallible, petulant super-GMs anymore just to see top-level chess. They can do that looking at tournaments run in some guy's basement.

I don't think lack of conversation here necessarily means low interest. I've been watching every game live and reading/watching different post-game analyses. It's been an exciting nail-biter.

mhull wrote:

S.Taylor wrote:There seems to be an extremely low interest rate in human chess, in the w hole of talkchess, ctf/ccc etc.
Not even the world championship of FIDE attracts much interest in these forums, and i now realize that my recent posts posts into the chess players forum have been up near the top for days and maybe weeks.

What is the point of Computer chess, for people who are not passionate about human chess first?

(By the way, anyone who would like to watch Gelfand live now (details in other adjoining thread about WC), would find it really fascinating! I'm now busy listening to every word, spellbound. Better than GM's on FIDE and Chess24!]).

Everyone now has a better-than-world-champion inside their computer. Nobody is willing to put-up with fallible, petulant super-GMs anymore just to see top-level chess. They can do that looking at tournaments run in some guy's basement.

But that misses out on psychology and on actual personal work to understand what is going on. It becomes more like a fetish to watch computers playing chess.
No one can be much motivated in trying to understand all the computers thoughts, but watching humans in the WC and Gelfand commentating right this moment, should really give an appetite for thinking into it.
But all this is only true if we have time and patience right this moment, which i hardly have enough of it to study it deeply for these few hours. And if not now... It will just be like one of the other many chess videos out there, waiting to be seen some time, ie never.

zenpawn wrote:I don't think lack of conversation here necessarily means low interest. I've been watching every game live and reading/watching different post-game analyses. It's been an exciting nail-biter.

So watch Gelfand with Tal Baron also!

Only about 5-10 people even clicked on my link.

S.Taylor wrote: So watch Gelfand with Tal Baron also!

Only about 5-10 people even clicked on my link.

It's among the live commentaries I've tuned into today. Mostly been watching chess24 and the official broadcast.

mhull wrote:

S.Taylor wrote:There seems to be an extremely low interest rate in human chess, in the w hole of talkchess, ctf/ccc etc.
Not even the world championship of FIDE attracts much interest in these forums, and i now realize that my recent posts posts into the chess players forum have been up near the top for days and maybe weeks.

What is the point of Computer chess, for people who are not passionate about human chess first?

(By the way, anyone who would like to watch Gelfand live now (details in other adjoining thread about WC), would find it really fascinating! I'm now busy listening to every word, spellbound. Better than GM's on FIDE and Chess24!]).

Everyone now has a better-than-world-champion inside their computer. Nobody is willing to put-up with fallible, petulant super-GMs anymore just to see top-level chess. They can do that looking at tournaments run in some guy's basement.

Wrong! People still watch humans run the 100-metres at the Olympics when they know a motorized vehicle can win. There is certainly more interest in human v. human chess than bot v. bot chess.

Personally, I enjoy both and rate them equally

Sean

S.Taylor wrote:Not even the world championship of FIDE attracts much interest in these forums

Wouldn't say so, I've been watching all the games. The live commentary was utterly necessary for me to even understand (a bit) what's going on.

Now, what to discuss about the moves of these super GMs? Comparing engines' spew at various points of the game and calling that a discussion would feel.. ridiculous.

I got an autobiography by the young Karpov, right from 1974. A touching point was when Petrosjan was asked repeatedly what the next moves would be and how to play this and that variation. Until Petrosjan, half in joke and half in sadness, said that when he had had the knowledge to answer all this, he had been sitting on stage and not among the audience.

What is the point of Computer chess, for people who are not passionate about human chess first?

I'm getting out chessbooks, which I havn't been doing in a long time. Reason is, I didn't make the CT800 just for dedicated chess computer tournaments (where it did well enough), but for actually playing it. I know how it evaluates because I've (more or less) done a complete rewrite of the eval function.

And now that I'm trying 30 minutes games, I'm totally lost. I realise that I have been making a machine for a level of play that I don't have (WTF). That's rewarding from a programming point of view, but not from the player's.

goal 1: teach a microcontroller to play chess and be beaten by it. Check.

goal 2: learn myself and beat the machine. Not check, but challenge taken.

Which in turn might yield better ideas what to put into the code, and the cycle starts anew. Sort of a co-evolution.

Would be great for stuttering people if Kajarkin wins. Seen Kajarkin stuttering during these press conferences.