$20,000 ICUC - a report on wins

[Ron Langeveld]

I can understand that prescribing openings would be welcomed by the complaining in-crowd but it would surely chase away any potential new members. When lack of spare time keeps me from participating now, the 'itch' would be completely lost once prescribed openings are introduced. In my opinion in the category of dubious ideas this might well be the very last one the organizer can try

Ron

[carldaman]

I can understand that prescribing openings would be welcomed by the complaining in-crowd but it would surely chase away any potential new members. When lack of spare time keeps me from participating now, the 'itch' would be completely lost once prescribed openings are introduced. In my opinion in the category of dubious ideas this might well be the very last one the organizer can try

Ron

Wouldn't it be a better idea to draw (select) the openings randomly from a large pool of prescribed openings? That way, most openings would still be a possibility for any given game. Why call an idea dubious before it's even been tried?

Regards,
CL

[jefk]

Why call an idea dubious before it's even been tried? Regards, CL

because opening theory is becoming more and more important
in computer chess ; first at slow levels (correspondence), now also in freestyle chess like the last infinity tourn (with 90/30 time control);
the usual chessbase .ctg books generally are not good enough
if you want to win some games (and don't lose any). For the rest, (opening) playhabits are anyway moving away from milked out openings as eg the Anti-Marshall, and we see many new anti-Berlin lines with d3 Bc5.
chess960 would be an idea, but simply forbidding some opening lines (or specifiying some specific lines) doesn't seem to be a general solution to the drawing problem; in correspondence chess there already are opening 'theme ' tournaments, eg. Sicilian Smith Morra, or whatever; join them i would suggest if you like to explore such options.

[Ron Langeveld]

Why call an idea dubious before it's even been tried?
CL

Like most players I like to chose my openings; it's part of the package that ultimately decides games. Introducing a random component in order to address the 'problem' of certain openings leading to draws 'all the time' is called dubious in my book. Pun intended.

Ron

[Ozymandias]

I can understand that prescribing openings would be welcomed by the complaining in-crowd but it would surely chase away any potential new members. When lack of spare time keeps me from participating now, the 'itch' would be completely lost once prescribed openings are introduced. In my opinion in the category of dubious ideas this might well be the very last one the organizer can try

Ron

When you say that it would “chase away any potential new members”, you’re talking in absolutes. I’m 100% sure that, at least one of them, would welcome such a measure. On the other hand, not everyone among the “complaining in-crowd” has been favourable towards that solution, so that argument has already been proved wrong.

A selection of openings to start the games from, is at the bottom of my barrel, but it would always be better (if done properly) than the way things stand now.

Wouldn't it be a better idea to draw (select) the openings randomly from a large pool of prescribed openings?

Define “large pool”.

chess960 would be an idea, but simply forbidding some opening lines (or specifiying some specific lines) doesn't seem to be a general solution to the drawing problem; in correspondence chess there already are opening 'theme ' tournaments, eg. Sicilian Smith Morra, or whatever; join them i would suggest if you like to explore such options.

I must admit that, the way the thread has developed, even I sometimes forget what it really is about: irregular wins becoming decisive, because of the raising number of draws. The “drawing problem” is just a part of the main issue.

Neither chess960 nor correspondence chess, have much to do with Freestyle chess, so there’s nothing to explore there.

Why call an idea dubious before it's even been tried?
CL

Like most players I like to chose my openings; it's part of the package that ultimately decides games. Introducing a random component in order to address the 'problem' of certain openings leading to draws 'all the time' is called dubious in my book. Pun intended.

Ron

That “package” won’t be worth much, once you start facing serious opponents and a 100% draw rate. As for randomness, how about throwing a few weak players into the mix? Where will go your “itch” go, once your only hope becomes being paired against one of them?

[jefk]

That “package” won’t be worth much, once you start facing serious opponents

well as former ICCF world champion i presume Ron L did already
face some serious opponents you know..

as for the difference between correspondence and freestyle chess,
well, during the second half of the Infinity tourn i approached the game in a similar way as i'm doing correspondence chess on ICCF; only this freestyle games were much faster, ofcourse.

Finally, yes the drawing rate is going up, and to avoid that the top ranking is determined by luck of having face a weak opponent (or someone with a disconnect or so), it's probably better to split such a tourn in two or three pools. Something for Infinity/Arno to decide, next time. A 'themed' freestyle tourn with openings restrictions can be an idea ofcourse, as an alternative, justl ike chess960 is an alternative (chess variant).

Nevertheless it will be useful to think further about the 'drawing problem', both for ICCCF (comp allowed) correspondence chess and freestyle. For normal human GM chess the problem is less urgent but the ideas for coresp. and freestlye might have some spinoff for them as well.

Some ideas are in the field of scoring systems, a win with Black could/should be rewarded higher than a win with White, i suggest.
Yet after a while there will hardly be any wins with Black left, i predict.
Also we can think of some slight endgame rule modifcations, and some, eg with different stalemate scoring can be experimented with just as another chess variant (or computer program). More suggestions still welcome ofcourse; preferably by some creative (computer) chess players

[Nelson Hernandez]

I think reflex negative reactions are to be expected whenever any change is proposed, especially in this fractious hobby. However, the TD is ultimately the decision maker and players can take or leave the conditions offered. It is only natural that some will find the conditions uncongenial to their style of play, resources or general principles.

Re selecting openings. There are a tremendous number of positions that have been seen in human and engine games over 1,000 times. Each of these positions has its own statistical profile. Someone could specify a set of selection criteria ensuring ECO variety, draw-rate, human vs. engine popularity, move-length, etc. and come up with however many unique positions that met all requirements. If there were, let's say, 800 games that needed to be completed these positions could be randomly (or some other way) populated into those game-slots. These positions could be kept secret from the players until right before the game started, or the day before. Allotting one day to prep would offer the analysis kings ample time to prepare for the game correspondence-style and possibly spell doom for those who couldn't devote sufficient time and resources to preparation. Voila, draw-rate improved.

Now, maybe that would discourage some who would rather draw than be victimized. That's understandable. Okay, then no prep time at all. Or maybe one hour.

The point is that all these things are negotiable and only require some creative thinking and a lot of work.

[Leo]

Some notes about the current state of computer chess.

About one and a half year ago, while adding new calculated lines to Cerebellum, I noticed for the first time, that something would change in computer chess.
I realised that in contrast to what came before, there was no position problematic enough that could not be solved by calculating and adding some lost games and critical lines.
That includes positional and tactical problems.

The exceptions where very closed positions, fortresses and some wrongly evaluated endgames, but that did not happen very frequently, so it did not play a big role.
That meant that for all remaining notoriously difficult openings it became clear how to defend them as black or even get an advantage if white overplays the position.
The last one of this openings was the Giuoco Piano.

In the time that followed, I saw how this materialized also in the IC tournaments, till it could be finally seen in the Ultimate tournament.
Most games where won because of book errors or playing against someone out of the small group of weak players (Engine and/or weak hardware).
Some of the the weakest ones played most of their games as centaurs, so I'd leave this out.

I see basically three different ways to still win a game.

1.) The way Cerebellum + Brainfish does it:
Try to play as good as possible (good opening, strong engine and medium to good hardare), without too much consideration of statistics and engine tweaks.
This still leads to regular successes (I won two IC Tournaments this week), but it also becomes more and more difficult.
Therefore I'm already mixing a bit statistics (2.) into Cerebellum.

2.) The statistical way:
Play lines which where successful in the past, hoping that your opponent repeats errors from the past.
This still can be surprisingly successful, as it has been seen in the Ultimate tournament.

3.) The extreme hardware way:
Use a very fast computer, let's say with 16 - 44 Cores, and a strong engine.
Then try to lead your opponent into unknown terrain, best into a semi closed position where something like a slow developing king atack is possible,
An example for this is 1.e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. g3

But of course, it still becomes more and more visible, that chess is finally a draw.
The best engines on fast hardware with enough time (rapid) are often playing nearly flawless games, finding their path into a drawn endgame.

Regarding the IC Ultimate Tournament, it becomes evident, that because of the high draw rate, you have to avoid any human or enviromental errors (like mouse slip, DC or even not playing), because otherwise these errors will dominate the engine results.

A possible solution to lower the draw rate in tournaments with a time control equal or above rapid could be to play some fixed openings changing every second round.
For example the Kings Gambit with white and black in the first two rounds, and then the Benko Gambit.
Those openings aren't lost for Black, the theory is not so advanced as in other openings, and it could lead to interesting and exciting games for some time.

Hi Thomas. I am looking forward to your Commercial Product with brainfish. Please put it out when your ready.

[Leo]

Does anyone know the most powerful hardware used in this tournament?

[Leo]

Using a blacklist wouldn't be less arbitrary than having a whitelist / set of starting positions. If you vote for the Marshall, a very next candidate is the Berlin Wall. Whats next? Petroff? French exchange? Semi-Slav-Moskau-System, ... And how to avoid move transpositions finding it way to the blacklisted positions directly or some moves afterwards? Defining openings for a whitelist seems easier, but still is hard enough. Especially when you try to find positions not only with low draw rates, but also balanced chances. Securing balanced chances would be easier by playing the position twice again each opponent with switched colours. Having a set of positions large enough to make preparation very, very effortful, and using a kind of randomness for the selection... for each game induvidually or for all games in the same round. Just brainstorming.

You raise some valid points. As long as a we don't have 27-men pieces available, there's no way to guarantee, that the position after 11... c6, is a draw, so yes, to a certain extent, saying that this position is solved, is arbitrary. But focusing on the game aspect of chess, I think it's quite safe to say so. More than 3 years ago, in the ICFB, it was already being chosen as the favourite weapon of choice for black, and I remember my last game against Alvin, when I also used it. Even though I played poorly against his a3 anti-Marshall, a draw was achieved, and that was back then, with much less theory on any of the various anti-Marshall attempts, with weaker engines and weaker HW. Believe me, if someone found a way to crack that nut, I'd be popping champagne, but I don't see anyone trying anymore. The other defences you mention, may also prove to be impregnable, but they'd need a longer track record.

If we look trough the history of engine-driven opening theory, we see a trend. Back in the golden days, everything was about the poisoned pawn. (Curiously enough, the fact that most of the games revolved around this position, was the very reason why, the chess professionals scoffed at Playchess engine games, as a serious source for their databases.) But after a long fight, 6 Bg5 was found to be a draw, so people turned their heads towards the English Attack, and that lasted quite some time, although not nearly as long. When 8 ...h5 seemed to improve black chances, people then sifted their focus towards the Queen's Gambit, (more or less around the same time that the Marshall was also "refuting" e4 Nf3). Strides were made in the Anti-Meran Gambit, specially with the Botvirnnik Variation, in a relatively short period of time. After that, the only thing worth mentioning is the Giuoco Pianissimo, which we can also agree is a draw, if played correctly.

And where does this all leave us? In a barren land where white desperately tries to find an edge where none exists. As with the Marshall, if someone finds a completely novel way of making the initial tempo worth a damn, that bottle of champagne is waiting.

Perhaps the thematic opening(s) could be randomly drawn from a pool of such pre-selected lines.

If you can propose a transparent, tamper-free random system, I'm up for it.

"Many show interest in what is to expect from 8-man endings. First, take note that the longest 6-man mate took 262 moves (KRN-KNN). Moving to 7-man endings doubled this value. Second, 8-man tablebases include much more endings with both sides having relatively equal strength. All this gives us a strong hope to discover a mate in more than 1000 moves in one of 8-man endgames. Unfortunately the size of 8-man tablebases will be 100 times larger than the size of 7-man tablebases. To fully compute them, one will need about 10 PB (10,000 TB) of disk space and 50 TB of RAM. Only the top 10 supercomputers can solve the 8-man problem in 2014. The first 1000-move mate is unlikely to be found until 2020 when a part of a TOP100 supercomputer may be allowed to be used for solving this task."