Finally TCEC is matching FRChess960 Engines......

[Nordlandia]

It's not so easy for adult people to adapt and change when they've played chess for a lifetime. And with age follows conservatism.

[jp]

I remember Gary Kasparov saying he was a chess player when asked about FRC. I took that to mean he wasn't interested in FRC.

No, he plays it and cares.

In August, he accused someone of cheating in the online qualifier:

I'm a proponent of online play & Chess 960 ("Fischerandom"), but if important events like world championship qualifiers are online, security must eliminate the potential for cheating.

I'm preparing for my own Chess 960 match in St. Louis in a few days, so I was watching some matches in the FIDE online qualifier. An unknown guy beating two strong GMs & taking Grischuk to armageddon is curious at best, but then you look at the games and it's a joke.

[Chessqueen]

I predict less people will watch frc

Then that's their loss.

But I wonder why Alliestein is NOT playing ? https://tcec-chess.com/

So far the attendance is average with the Normal standard Chess, there are 210 viewers at the moment, probably the match between GM Carlsen Vs GM So promoted FRC Chess960 to a higher level.

[Chessqueen]

I remember Gary Kasparov saying he was a chess player when asked about FRC. I took that to mean he wasn't interested in FRC.

According to Bobby Fischer Chess960 is a higher form of Standard Normal Chess which requires more intellect and less memorization of the Openings, furthermore the standard Normal Chess Position is simply one out of 959 more possible complex and less Known Positions than Normal chess, which makes it more demanding for the player to become more creative and less dependent on Memorization of Opening Chess Lines and variations.

PS: My amazement with the poor performance of GM Carlsen, makes me realizes that Carlsen memorizes more Openings than any other top players up to the middle game stages deep deep enough, in which as GM Nakamura stated recently that in order to beat Carlsen you will have to really prepare your opening and take it deep into the middle game.

[S.Taylor]

I remember Gary Kasparov saying he was a chess player when asked about FRC. I took that to mean he wasn't interested in FRC.

Maybe it meant he was!

[AndrewGrant]

And they use now 256 cores! But only 128 for Ethereal and Fire. No support to higher value?

Was using 256 threads at first. I dropped to 128 to go from hyperthreads to realthreads.
Could be a slight elo loss, but I don't have that data.

[Chessqueen]

And they use now 256 cores! But only 128 for Ethereal and Fire. No support to higher value?

Was using 256 threads at first. I dropped to 128 to go from hyperthreads to realthreads.
Could be a slight elo loss, but I don't have that data.

In FR Chess960 Ethereal or Komodo could possibly give Carlsen a pawn Odds in most positions and probably two pawns in some positions and still get a draw

[Modern Times]

But I wonder why Alliestein is NOT playing ? https://tcec-chess.com/

Yes - that is a bad omission. Yes it plays up to 100 Elo weaker I'd estimate through not being trained on chess960 games, but still it was worth including.

[Chessqueen]

But I wonder why Alliestein is NOT playing ? https://tcec-chess.com/

Yes - that is a bad omission. Yes it plays up to 100 Elo weaker I'd estimate through not being trained on chess960 games, but still it was worth including.

When you go to this website https://tcec-chess.com/ on the bottom of the GUI Chess Board it say 2080TI 7 Men TB, but none of these engines are using 2080Ti unless Alliestein is analysing on the background

[Ovyron]

I play three kinds of chess:

-"Just me" chess: Where I bring only my brain to the board, and match it against someone else's brain.

-"Centaur" chess: Where I play the absolute best moves that I can find, with my brain, engines, databases, and whatever I have access to. Unfortunately this takes much more effort and time than anything else, so games are played in time controls that make them take years, and by the time they're over I might have already forgotten what happened in them or why I played some moves (sometimes it happens that I transpose into a new position I hadn't seen before, but that it has plenty of analysis done by myself, that I don't remember doing. Games just take too long.)

-"No me" chess: In this one my only influence is the book that tells the engine what to play in the opening, after it's over the engine is on its own. My challenge is to reach positions where my engine will perform well. The fun part is realizing that at this level, if I was playing as Centaur with 1 hour per move I'd be winning all my games against other engines, so I'm not doing it because my book doesn't include the moves I'd play as Centaur. It means to be the best I just need to put the winning moves in my book, because the opponents only starts with 5 minutes, if I include in my book 5 minute moves I'm already playing each move at the level of the entire game.

All these 3 have in common the opening position of chess, which is what is it for a reason. No matter what, there's always a way to get the pieces where you want them to, you make your choices about the kind of positions you want to reach, and depending on what the opponent allows, you make compromises, but generally you can develop your pieces to reasonable places, and when the opening ends, it's like a new game starts where the pieces are like players in the field, they have their roles, they want to "score a goal" against the enemy king, you could have blocked an enemy's piece with pawns, you could be ready to launch a sacrifice against pawns protecting the enemy's king, you could try to force exchanges that leave you with a passed pawn... but whatever plan you have, you can try to carry it out.

That doesn't happen with most positions of FRC, they seem badly designed, you have to destroy a flank just to develop your bishop, or a knight just doesn't have a reasonable space to go to, rooks can't just get into the game unless you move their pawns two spaces, or, in normal chess you can decide to move the c pawn and move you queen to the b file, if you want to use it, but on some FRC positions the queen is pretty much stuck and the only way to use it is to exchange piece or pawns to make way for her...

But everything is fine, right? Because your opponent is facing the same problems. Except, in the normal opening chess position there's no inherent weakness, the weakest thing about it is its f pawns, but it is relatively easy to defend it against an opponent that goes for it. In a random FRC position there can be some big weakness, maybe several, you can't just develop your pieces as in normal chess, because that could lead to your opponent to play something that exploits your weaknesses, breaking opening principles of chess just because they can force a win of a pawn, unless you play a perfect defense in a position you've never seen before.

The best parts of chess happens after pieces have been developed, a quiet position is reached where the sides have castled or decides not to and whoever is ahead in their plan has the edge. In a random FRC position doing this might be impossible, it can be so contrived that a piece might be doing worse where you developed it than in its starting square, fights for control or gaining a material advantage can start before development ends. You may come up worse from the opening not because your opponent is superior, just because they exploited weaknesses you didn't notice better.

Players knowing what they're doing in chess can play the opening relatively quickly and only start thinking when something new is happening, but always from a position they chose to play. In a random FRC position something new is happening from the start, you have to think already, but always from a position you were forced to play from.

What would happen if before the game started players in secret picked one of the 960 positions and then they revealed simultaneously and the game started from an Asymmetric Chess position? If both would pick the opening position from chess it'd speak volumes about how most of the other opening positions are garbage.

To be interested in a game you have to get engaged with it, I could never get engaged with FRC, I would much rather play normal chess or even Atomic chess, it's because of some of these reasons, that's why I have zero interest in FRC, and why I won't be following its TCEC games.