Freestyle Chess is Coming Home

[Steamhammer]

Post by Ozymandias » Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:45 pm

In the cases mentioned it's quite predictable that William will miss a game, in a minor tournament, on the long run, and that Olivier will give away a game with an extravagant opening, in the not so long run. You yourself implicitly acknowledged the latter, in the quote I posted.

If they keep withdrawing silently it's easy to assume it's for another reasons. I'm not saying there aren't other factors, just that this one is more important than you think. What you see here or on the IC chat is just the top of the iceberg. Most people won't voice their opinion to you, but many have expressed this POV to me in private. You shouldn't really be surprised, Olivier's behavior is appalling. I'll never find it funny.
Top

As for William, you mention examples from 2012 and 2015, but don't take into account that he played 21 rounds without dropouts at our big tournament in 2017. Olivier has been playing engine tournaments for a long time and has apparently improved his behavior, although this does not yet give a guarantee for the future. But these are factors that I have taken into account. This is just to complete the information. I don't think we should continue to talk much about people.

[Vernon Crawford]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Nickel

It's completely clear to me that you have done an enormous amount for correspondence and freestyle chess Arno.
You have my abundant respect and gratitude for your efforts all these years.

[Ozymandias]

[...] don't take into account that he played 21 rounds without dropouts at our big tournament in 2017 [...] has been playing engine tournaments for a long time and has apparently improved his behavior

I was talking minor tours, that was my point.

Engine tours are played with a book, it must be tricky to teach it to play nonsense when it suits you.

PS: no names named.

[mbabigian]

Dear Friends,

I will not comment on everything, but I would like to clarify a few points.

1. It is mainly about individuals. Their behavior is not always predictable, but I generally assume that they have good intentions and are trying their best. For each one could also list many positive things that are largely missing here. Their behavior is not professional and that will affect their chances of qualifying.
I don't think that a significant number of freestylers have decided not to participate in tournaments because of the behavior of Olivier or other players. There are many different reasons for not doing it, mainly because the motivation for freestyle chess is lacking or has been lost. Many consider it "work" rather than a hobby.

2. @Mike
When I asked you whether you would be willing to make up for the game with William, it was out of concern about the tournament, which, given the expected high draw rate, will be affected by non-fighting victories. I did not put any pressure on you and accepted your decision without further discussion. You should know, however, that other players have behaved differently in similar situations because they did not want a point without a fight.
You expect a tournament to start on time. That depends primarily on the behavior of the players, although o-t-b tournaments cannot be used as a benchmark for online tournaments. Starting a freestyle tournament is technically much more complicated. Even so, our delay was only 15 minutes. Btw, in previous ChessBase tournaments, the delays before the first round were often much longer.
You expect games to start even if the opponent has not yet appeared. This is not possible with our server technology. To start a game, both players must be in the room with the correct settings. As I told you, we correct the clocks after a late appearance of a player so that the one who was there on time does not suffer any disadvantage. - You have received your point after 30 minutes of waiting - according to the rules.
Of course we have to work on technical improvements, but we must not forget that this is a free server and therefore requires a lot of patience.

3. About "stalemate wins and "material wins" I added an appendix on the IC website: http://www.infinitychess.com/Page/Publi ... spx?id=348
In the previous games of the first three rounds, no player has managed to achieve one of the two minor victories on his own (not even against an engine). Only in one game we saw a material win due to a black out of one player.
That shows how difficult it is still to gain such an advantage. All in all the games show that normal chess is played and no one plays artificially differently just because he hopes for a minor victory.
I am convinced that we will see many more interesting games and that we will get off to a good start in the league in 2022.
In a few days I will publish an interim report.

Arno, penalties in the rules serve an important purpose. They are there to reduce bad behavior and if not enforced, they encourage it. This player has been in every event I can remember. He is not inexperienced. He should have made every effort to understand the schedule and the rules. After a failure, for whatever reason, the rules should be applied as written for the good of everyone in the event and future events. If I or someone in my position, felt so strongly about not getting a free point, I (and I'm sure others), would contact you directly asking for an exception to play out the game. Asking me in chat, left others to comment and conclude I'm just trying to gimmick my way up the ladder when in reality I much prefer to earn my victories. However, it is more important that this loss eliminated this player from being competitive in this event to prevent future similar behavior. This would have been the case if not for the bizarre win in the next round.

Sitting in Europe gives one a completely different perspective, and I'm in Nevada. Try to imagine an old fart getting up and in front of his computer at 1:30am and sitting there for nearly two hours until his opponent is forfeited. Or sitting there in the dark while rounds are delayed from starting - for whatever reason. I wanted to wring the no shows neck, not reward their bad behavior with a game. This nonsense sucks the fun right out of the experience. I want to play games. I don't want to sit trying to stay conscious while I wait for no shows. Did the two late players both get a 15 minute minimum time penalty in round one? I'm curious.

I realize you are doing what you think best as TD, so take this commentary knowing I understand that. In addition, dumping InfinityChess and their half baked software would be a huge plus for future events. Rounds need to start on time and time/no show losses should happen automatically. InfinityChess is just a horrible option for chess events.

Mike

[Eduard]

I bought a new laptop for this tournament. The intention was to run a kibitz engine on the current position while I analyze on the second PC. Unfortunately, I had to give up this plan. I never used the Kibitz engine in any game. The InfinityChess software is to blame.

In contrast to the normal analysis mode, the Kibitz mode engine behaves differently. The engine rates differently. It is a mystery to me how this is possible?

Example: If white is better, let's say +0.30, then in Kibitz mode the engine evaluates this as -0.30. If Black is better, the engine also evaluates -0.30. Totally weird.

When I played with Black in practice, my engine evaluates everything as negative. If white was +2 better, the engine showed -2 ​​and said "Black is winning". Incredible!


[fen]rnbqkbnr/pp3ppp/2p5/3PN3/8/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKB1R b KQkq - 0 4[/fen]


Black is winning -+ -2,21 Depth: 28 00:00:12 71790 kN
4...Bd6 5.d4
Black is winning -+ -2,34 Depth: 28 00:00:12 74308 kN


White is winning, not black.

[Eduard]

Or this:


I had this position on the board in a training game on InfinityChess. It was not possible for me to switch off the display of legal moves for the queen. It is not possible! I was irritated here with every move and had to be careful not to make a mouse mistake.

[marsell]

Infinity software is bad software and has been for years and even though Arno keeps insisting that it will continue to improve, it never has. Updates have not been available for years.
If it wasn't free, no one would play there anymore.At least I wouldn't!

[Steamhammer]

post by mbabigian » Tue Nov 16, 2021 1:19 am

Arno, penalties in the rules serve an important purpose. They are there to reduce bad behavior and if not enforced, they encourage it. This player has been in every event I can remember. He is not inexperienced. He should have made every effort to understand the schedule and the rules. After a failure, for whatever reason, the rules should be applied as written for the good of everyone in the event and future events. If I or someone in my position, felt so strongly about not getting a free point, I (and I'm sure others), would contact you directly asking for an exception to play out the game. Asking me in chat, left others to comment and conclude I'm just trying to gimmick my way up the ladder when in reality I much prefer to earn my victories. However, it is more important that this loss eliminated this player from being competitive in this event to prevent future similar behavior. This would have been the case if not for the bizarre win in the next round.

Sitting in Europe gives one a completely different perspective, and I'm in Nevada. Try to imagine an old fart getting up and in front of his computer at 1:30am and sitting there for nearly two hours until his opponent is forfeited. Or sitting there in the dark while rounds are delayed from starting - for whatever reason. I wanted to wring the no shows neck, not reward their bad behavior with a game. This nonsense sucks the fun right out of the experience. I want to play games. I don't want to sit trying to stay conscious while I wait for no shows. Did the two late players both get a 15 minute minimum time penalty in round one? I'm curious.

I realize you are doing what you think best as TD, so take this commentary knowing I understand that. In addition, dumping InfinityChess and their half baked software would be a huge plus for future events. Rounds need to start on time and time/no show losses should happen automatically. InfinityChess is just a horrible option for chess events.

Mike

Thank you for your detailed reply with strong arguments. Two small additions for the sake of completeness:
1. the two players who showed up late at tour start were, to my knowledge, not late for the game, but for sure too late to ensure punctual pairings and game starts.
From a formal point of view, this could or should have been penalized, but due to the previous history at other tournaments, I didn't want to unpack the hammer right away here (as they say in German) and thus dampen the mood at the start of the tournament. However, I will now in my next newsletter explicitly point out that the rules will be strictly applied in rounds 4-11.
2. I think all participants understood that you did not want to replay the game against PublicEnemyN1. No one made a negative comment.

Btw, we have at least two things in common: not only chess, but I am also grandfather (3 grandchildren).

Arno

[Ozymandias]

The second week of the tournament left more of the same, a no show and an "experimental" opening from the same players and draws for the rest.

Promises of solving this in the future. How and why it hasn't been addressed before, considering this isn't the first time, remains unclear to me.

Speaking of which, he tried the same opening the next day and held the game altering move 10. The position after 2. Qb3 had only been seen once in a 3 minute 2009 game from the engine room, white lost:

[pgn][Event "Long 60' + 30'', Rated, Freestyle Chess League Qualification Tour (starts 13thNovember, 1830 ST)"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "2021.12.12 7:04 PM"]
[Round "?"]
[White "OlivierEvan [ct]"]
[Black "ChessLion [ct]"]
[WhiteEngine ""]
[BlackEngine ""]
[Result "0-1"]
[PlyCount "168"]
[TimeControl "0:0/0:0"]
[ECO "A11"]
[WhiteElo "2370"]
[BlackElo "2420"]

1.c4 c6 2.Qb3 e5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e4 Bc5 5.Be2 O-O 6.d3 a5 7.Nf3 d6 8.O-O Na6 9.Qc2 Bg4 10.a3 Nc7 11.h3 Bxf3 12.Bxf3 Ne6 13.Qd2 Ne8 14.Rb1 Nd4 15.Bd1 Nc7 16.Kh2 g6 17.b4 axb4 18.axb4 Bb6 19.Ne2 Nce6 20.Nxd4 Bxd4 21.Bg4 f5 22.exf5 gxf5 23.Bf3 Rf6 24.b5 Qc7 25.Kh1 Kh8 26.Qb4 c5 27.Qe1 f4 28.Qe4 Rb8 29.Qd5 Qg7 30.Bb2 Bxb2 31.Rxb2 Rh6 32.Re2 Nc7 33.Qe4 Ne6 34.Qd5 Ng5 35.Bg4 f3 36.Re3 e4 37.Rg1 Rg8 38.Qf5 Rf6 39.Qd5 Rh6 40.Qf5 Rf8 41.Qd7 Qb2 42.dxe4 Qxf2 43.Rxf3 Nxf3 44.Bxf3 Qg3 45.e5 d5 46.Bxd5 b6 47.Bf3 Qxe5 48.Qd1 Rd6 49.Qa1 Qxa1 50.Rxa1 Rd4 51.Bd5 h5 52.Kh2 Kg7 53.Kg3 h4+ 54.Kh2 Rf2 55.Re1 Ra2 56.Re7+ Kf8 57.Re1 Rf4 58.Kg1 Rd4 59.Kh2 Rf4 60.Kg1 Ra7 61.Kh2 Re7 62.Rg1 Kg7 63.Ra1 Kh7 64.Rd1 Kg6 65.Ra1 Kg5 66.Kh1 Re3 67.Rb1 Kf5 68.Kh2 Ke5 69.Ra1 Kd4 70.Rd1+ Kc3 71.Ra1 Re5 72.g4 Re2+ 73.Kg1 Kb2 74.Rf1 Rxf1+ 75.Kxf1 Re3 76.Kg2 Kc3 77.Kh2 Kd4 78.Kg2 Ke5 79.Bb7 Kf4 80.Bd5 Re2+ 81.Kg1 Kg3 82.Kf1 Re7 83.g5 Kxh3 84.Kf2 Kg4
0-1[/pgn]

[Damir]

You can just try and win your own games instead of critisizing others.. All you do is play draws... that is not attractive either..