CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

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Peter Berger
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CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

Post by Peter Berger »

Can anyone share some information on this event and what could be experienced there (other than the announcement itself)?
shadyantra
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Re: CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

Post by shadyantra »

More details please
Regards,

Vishnugupt alias Chanakya alias Kautilya.
  • I am the Guru of ChandraGupt Maurya 300+ BCE.
  • Popularised Shad Yantra game and made it more lethal on Dashpaad (10x10) board game.
Gian-Carlo Pascutto
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Re: CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

Post by Gian-Carlo Pascutto »

There should be recordings of the event up on the ICGA site soon. I'm fairly sure because they asked some help with the video editing yesterday :-)
Peter Berger
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Re: CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

Post by Peter Berger »

Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: Thu Nov 07, 2024 9:57 am There should be recordings of the event up on the ICGA site soon. I'm fairly sure because they asked some help with the video editing yesterday :-)
The recordings have since been posted: https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan/ICGA/CHESS.mp4

Unfortunately the technical level of presentation is partly low (some parts are OK though). It is also a bit unclear who all this stuff is aimed at. Some parts were at a level that was clearly even too low for me content-wise.

Much of the presentation is also extremely boring. So I just skimmed through it. I have a hard time imagining someone looking at all of this without having been present in Spain.

Were there any highlights I should have seen? I would be grateful for a hint then.

Peter
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Ajedrecista
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Re: CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium.

Post by Ajedrecista »

Hello Peter:
Peter Berger wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 1:10 pmThe recordings have since been posted: https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan/ICGA/CHESS.mp4

Unfortunately the technical level of presentation is partly low (some parts are OK though). It is also a bit unclear who all this stuff is aimed at. Some parts were at a level that was clearly even too low for me content-wise.

Much of the presentation is also extremely boring. So I just skimmed through it. I have a hard time imagining someone looking at all of this without having been present in Spain.

Were there any highlights I should have seen? I would be grateful for a hint then.

Peter
Thank you very much! I had completely forgotten that. The video can be downloaded, with a size of 3.45 GB and a duration of 3:24:22.

There are other related documents at the parent directory of the video, this is:

https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan/ICGA/

Code: Select all

World Computer Chess Championships and CHESS event

ECAI, Santiago de Compostela, October 2024
I jumped over the video to get a quick glance of it. There are some nice photos; old newspaper clippings summarizing participants, hardware, etc.; and so on. I would highlight a short, original footage from 2nd WCCC Toronto 1977, which can be downloaded standalone from:

https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonatha ... C-1977.mp4

With a size of 9.65 MB and a duration of 0:02:16 (starting at 0:35:19 in the main 3+ hours video), which features the end of the last-round game BELLE — CHESS 4.6, won by checkmate by black, which confirmed CHESS 4.6 as the champion of the event:

Position guessed from the low resolution footage, might be partially wrong:
[pgn][Event "Second World Computer Chess Championship"]
[Site "Toronto (Canada)"]
[Date "August 9th, 1977"]
[White "BELLE"]
[Black "CHESS 4.6"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "8/7R/4p3/3pk1p1/1n3pr1/5b1K/8/8 w - - 0 1"]
[Result "0-1"]

1. Kh2 Nd3 2. Rh3 Rg2+ 3. Kh1 Nf2# 0-1[/pgn]

Right after (from 0:37:39), the long video focused some minutes on a position from the same 2nd WCCC Toronto 1977 between DUCHESS and KAISSA (slide 29 of this presentation). KAISSA was losing and sacrificed a whole rook in order to avoid a shocking checkmate in few moves, like noted at page 33 of January 1978 issue of Chess Life & Review magazine (page 38 of the following PDF):

https://uscf1-nyc1.aodhosting.com/CL-AN ... 978_01.pdf
David Levy wrote:[...] The DUCHESS-KAISSA game was a positional crunch followed by a material carnage. At one point KAISSA gave up a whole Rook, and neither Botvinnik nor I could understand why; but later KAISSA pointed out that we had missed a three-move mate (which KAISSA had seen) if the Rook had not been sacrificed!
[pgn][Event "Second World Computer Chess Championship"]
[Site "Toronto (Canada)"]
[Date "August 7th, 1977"]
[White "DUCHESS"]
[Black "KAISSA"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "Q5k1/4rp1p/1p1q1bp1/1B1n4/3Pp1P1/4B2P/PP3P2/2R3K1 b - - 0 34"]
[Result "1-0"]

34. ... Re8 (34. ... Kg7 35. Qf8+ Kxf8 36. Bh6+ Bg7 (36. ... Kg8 37. Rc8+ Qd8 (37. ... Re8 38. Rxe8+ Qf8 39. Rxf8# 1-0) 38. Rxd8+ Re8 39. Rxe8# 1-0) 37. Rc8+ Qd8 (37. ... Re8 38. Rxe8# 1-0) 38. Rxd8+ Re8 39. Rxe8# 1-0) 35. Qxe8+ * 1-0[/pgn]

Please note that Levy wrote about KAISSA seeing a 3-move checkmate, while is a 5-move checkmate according to SF.

https://lichess.org/iZ7hDLNI#67

Regards from Spain.

Ajedrecista.
Last edited by Ajedrecista on Sun Jan 19, 2025 9:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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towforce
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Re: CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

Post by towforce »

Peter Berger wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 1:10 pm
Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: Thu Nov 07, 2024 9:57 am There should be recordings of the event up on the ICGA site soon. I'm fairly sure because they asked some help with the video editing yesterday :-)
The recordings have since been posted: https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan/ICGA/CHESS.mp4

Unfortunately the technical level of presentation is partly low (some parts are OK though). It is also a bit unclear who all this stuff is aimed at. Some parts were at a level that was clearly even too low for me content-wise.

Much of the presentation is also extremely boring. So I just skimmed through it. I have a hard time imagining someone looking at all of this without having been present in Spain.

Were there any highlights I should have seen? I would be grateful for a hint then.

Peter

Thank you for finding that!

Gian-Carlo Pascutto: Please suggest uploading this video to YouTube. There would be big positives coming from that:

* smoother video replay

* sections

* able to skip backwards and forwards easily

* YouTube would generate a transcript for it, which would be very helpful
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shadyantra
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Re: CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

Post by shadyantra »

I initially thought that this thread was for Chess History and archaelogical and folklores related to ancient chess. But the title was for some video presentation by someone.

Thank god, I saved my time.
Regards,

Vishnugupt alias Chanakya alias Kautilya.
  • I am the Guru of ChandraGupt Maurya 300+ BCE.
  • Popularised Shad Yantra game and made it more lethal on Dashpaad (10x10) board game.
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towforce
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Re: CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

Post by towforce »

shadyantra wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 1:13 pm...the title was for some video presentation by someone.

It's a cultural treasure for this website: the great computer chess people of old talking about the golden years of this activity.
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shadyantra
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Re: CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

Post by shadyantra »

Yes. But that video diverted from its objective.

Talkchess and chess.stackexchange.com are also becoming saturated. One day will come and Software Engines will gain ELO of 8000 for modern chess.
Regards,

Vishnugupt alias Chanakya alias Kautilya.
  • I am the Guru of ChandraGupt Maurya 300+ BCE.
  • Popularised Shad Yantra game and made it more lethal on Dashpaad (10x10) board game.
Peter Berger
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Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:56 pm

Re: CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

Post by Peter Berger »

shadyantra wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2025 10:01 am Yes. But that video diverted from its objective.

Talkchess and chess.stackexchange.com are also becoming saturated. One day will come and Software Engines will gain ELO of 8000 for modern chess.
No idea what chess.stackexchange.com even is and talkchess is besides the topic. Most obviously there also isn't that much ELO in classical chess anymore.

But I think you do have a valid point nevertheless. This video and conference is completely pointless IMHO. No one needed it, and it wasn't even done well -to put it mildly.

You'd expect some summary of scientific advances that came out of computerchess at least. Or +anything+ scientific for that matter. Why should ICGA subscribers/members would have wanted to pay for this kind of event?