ICC for CCT11

[bob]

That's crazy. How does premove speed up the game except in those rare cases where you are trying to blitz your opponent when he is low on time, or when you are low on time???

Wow, Bob. Just hop on to playchess, and learn few things about premoves it DOES speed up the game. In Dasher, you can make premove upto to 1 move, never more than that. You have to wait until your opponent makes a move, then click on the piece and drag it to the other square which is a daunting task because some seconds are wasted for both the sides. Premoves are the MAIN reason why there is huge number of players at playchess (number of GM's included)

Let me say this again. I have been playing chess for over 50 years. I can hardly remember a game where I would have made 2-3-4 moves without having a clue of why my opponent would play. I have played postal games where I used the postal equivalent: I play Nc5, if you play dxe4 I play xxx. But otherwise, I would consider this an absolutely worthless feature that has the only goal of giving you a way to move very quickly and try to burn up your opponent's clock or else get into a quick-move duel and hope he makes a serious mistake. In real games it is simply pointless, sorry.

I just talked to a GM friend of mine and I posed that question. He said "that is important in 1 0 to 3 0 bullet games, not for serious chess. I concur.

In a real game you can't do that. And I would not want to except for the one game in one thousand where you are absolutely certain of your next 3 moves regardless of what your opponent plays.

There are a lot of games where one arrives at the wining endings, and they can be sure of 4 or 5 moves in advance regardless of what their opponent times.

I'd love to play you games if you use premove in the opening. Get ready to get ripped.

You wouldn't want to bet

If you promise to play a game where you will premove 4 moves in a row somewhere in the first 10 moves, I'll play you any time you want, and for money. As I said, "prepare to get ripped." No way you can queue up moves to be played without knowing what I am going to do "in between" them.

In any case, this is not a critical feature. It is not a useful feature for normal chess since normal chess can't use it. It is a hack for ultra-fast time trickery, nothing more.

[bob]

Yes, their main software is Dasher and it's graphics is second rate compared to the chessbase GUI.

I was very impressed with Dasher actually. Very nice piece of software

I have asked around, but it seems the premoves can't be made 2, 3 or 4 moves ahead when playing human games in Dasher. In Playchess one can make 5 or more moves in advance via a premove function thereby saving time.

In ICC, a lot of people kibitz therefore it's lively. In playchess, only few registered people can kibitz, that's their limitation with free accounts.

You can't make pre-moves in real chess over the board, so what's the point of it anyway, except to cheat the time control?

So Morozevich, Nigel Short, Nakamura and several other GM's are cheating by premoving?

It's a playchess feature. Everbody makes premoves, so it's not cheating. Everbody knew how to make premoves - help file from playchess teaches you how to do that.

All I'm saying is that it's not real chess. It's a variant called playchess chess.

Bob says: "I would not want to except for the one game in one thousand where you are absolutely certain of your next 3 moves regardless of what your opponent plays.".

He can make premoves in one of the games in real life chess when he's so sure about it, but he wouldn't want to have an option of premoving in the software. Interesting...

Let's come back to reality, for a moment, can we? How can I make "premoves" in real life chess, anywhere but in extremely simple endings and even then I can't really do it. Yes, I can decide what moves I am going to play, and I might even decide "I am going to play these no matter what, there's nothing my opponent can do to change my mind." And that happens how often? Once in a hundred games? Once in a thousand games? it is rare. And I am _not_ "pre-moving". I can't move until my opponent moves. So even if I have made up my mind, I get the input from his move before I can legally move anyway and can throw my plan out the window.

Premoving is for idiots that are trying to create a timing problem. And I can't count the number of games I have seen FM/IM players lose games because of it. Never seen a GM bite on this. Players have tried to play 3 0 games and try to lock things up and start shuffling a rook. Very quickly. And suddenly, to avoid the 50 move rule, Crafty pushes a pawn and they ignore it because of the premove, and the game is over shortly because their premove became a pre-blunder.

There's no other purpose for this except to manipulate time.

In real life game also, you can make premoves (by essentially not losing seconds) when only you're trying to push a pawn and no opposing pieces are within a distance to capture that pawn.

No you can't. You touch a piece before I press the clock and I'm going to stop the clock and call the TD over. This is clearly explained in the rules of chess.

Many GM's love the variant called playchess chess... It's advanced form of chess available on the internet. It saves one's time...

GM's like to play. But I'll bet you won't find many of them using this nonsense except for meaning bullet-type games.

[bob]

Bob, just two correction for you.

I call us all patzers who are without mastergrade in chess. Ok, what about calling you experienced patzer if you prefer?

Then I am astonished that you still didnt get the DB criticism. Against all the propagandists like you, Benjamin and others, I always claimed that also a program with weaknesses big like Swiss Cheese Holes can get a point against a human GM if it was hidden safely/long enough so that even the GM has no fair chance to get a clue. Not to speak of preparation. Not to mention that a human player had to change his complete chess adaption against a machine and he normally wont do that. I always said that taken a GM would prepare and use all the dirty tricks of Man and taken the program would be known in advance that then such a program could never be playing on the high Elo level. In a longer match or in a tournament serie.

Not going there. Pointless discussion. Kasparov lost in 1997, and nothing is going to change that. Even worse, he showed the world that he has no class either. So he lost twice in 1997..

But Amir for his Junior and you for DB have claimed the contrary. As if now the machine could be called "stronger" than Kasparov. In 1997. That is wrong.

Only if one ignores the result. As a general rule, if someone beats you, they are better than you. That's what a contest between two players is designed to show.

And today you gave the answer that any programmer could get the 2800 level with the known features. If you mean testing then I agree but this is not the Elo of human players. Therefore I tend to agree with Fern.

First you have to understand what he asked. Then you have to understand my answer. Until you do, there's nothing to discuss. There is more than enough public information available to produce a 2800+ program given a reasonable amount of time, and good hardware.

2800 just looks odd because we are talking about autistic, handicapped cripples who cant even decide themselves if they start a game or not and where against whom.

So now we are turning the conversation toward you? This was about playchess vs ICC. I see no comparison. Fortunately, neither does anyone else that matter.

Change that and I will reconsider my judgement. Make a self-playing robot, but get rid of the human hands of the operators!

That's _exactly_ why we use a server for CCT events. We _have_ a robot and no human hands...

[Rolf]

So now we are turning the conversation toward you? This was about playchess vs ICC. I see no comparison. Fortunately, neither does anyone else that matter.

...

Again, this is about reading qualities in such a forum. I was saying that the continual compairing of veritable GM with such things is already insultive because these things are like autistic handicapped people who dont either know when to start a game against whom. It takes some chuzpah to call such a thing a 2800 GM. Ridiculous.

You are taking things too personal. Here we have an international forum and as one of the hosting nation you should better behave more politely. If you dont understand the difference between a cultured human super GM in chess with a rating of 2800, what besides Fischer no other American ever attained, and an artificial creation that you filled up with the whole history of human chess to prevent it to play nonsense in the opening or ending, then you dont understand what I'm talking about.

Where are the many games Benjamin had promised us on the stage in New York? How many games of DB2 we know in sum? Almost none IMO. Kasparov could well have lost a game against a 2600 player if he suddenly appeared on the stage. That's how Aronian suddenly appeared BTW. The way the IBM people (alleged scientists) quickly deconstructed the machine tells its own story about the whole fake.

If you are able to create a true 2800 GM maxhine player, create it, lock it up in a unit and give it to the public. Then let human players examine the thing and I hold all bets against you that in a period of say 3 or 6 months the 2800 entity will be shown as a say 2500 or even less standard IM player. Perhaps then you hopefully feel sorry about how they mistreated Kasparov, that genius of chess!

[swami]

I just talked to a GM friend of mine and I posed that question. He said "that is important in 1 0 to 3 0 bullet games, not for serious chess. I concur.

Your GM friend is absolutely right! In servers such as playchess, ICC, FICS, a _lot_ of people either play 1/0 or 3/0 blitz. When you seek a game on 3/0, you will know how many people received the seek, it's plenty.

Dasher is missing this key feature that would have otherwise been beneficial. Certainly your friend would have preferred such a feature when he was playing blitz. I've actually seen 1/0, 3/0, 3/1 games from Morozevich, Bologan, Nigel Short and several other GM's making the premoves at any point of their game, some times 2 moves in advance... in cases where forced recaptures occur. 3/0 is the most used time control on any server. Therefore premove feature is really needed. Many such GM's/IM's never played longer time controls, only blitz with an increment of few seconds.

If you promise to play a game where you will premove 4 moves in a row somewhere in the first 10 moves, I'll play you any time you want, and for money. As I said, "prepare to get ripped." No way you can queue up moves to be played without knowing what I am going to do "in between" them.

Well, it's easier to make premoves in opening, I'd probably just play reverse modern shortcut of 1.Nf3 2.d3 (then hold the premoving feature and look to see if any pawn or Bishop can threaten my pieces) then proceed 3.c3 4. g3. There are many such openings: 1.Nf3 2.e3 (holding the feature and scanning the board) 3.b3 4.d4

When you and your friend are going to practice the specific variation over the net, premoving would be useful. You just tell him to play this line, and make quick premoves until certain point and take it from there.

[swami]

Let's come back to reality, for a moment, can we? How can I make "premoves" in real life chess, anywhere but in extremely simple endings and even then I can't really do it. Yes, I can decide what moves I am going to play, and I might even decide "I am going to play these no matter what, there's nothing my opponent can do to change my mind." And that happens how often? Once in a hundred games? Once in a thousand games? it is rare. And I am _not_ "pre-moving". I can't move until my opponent moves. So even if I have made up my mind, I get the input from his move before I can legally move anyway and can throw my plan out the window.

Premoving is for idiots that are trying to create a timing problem. And I can't count the number of games I have seen FM/IM players lose games because of it. Never seen a GM bite on this. Players have tried to play 3 0 games and try to lock things up and start shuffling a rook. Very quickly. And suddenly, to avoid the 50 move rule, Crafty pushes a pawn and they ignore it because of the premove, and the game is over shortly because their premove became a pre-blunder.

There's no other purpose for this except to manipulate time.

GM's like to play. But I'll bet you won't find many of them using this nonsense except for meaning bullet-type games.

If you've been on playchess, you'd see that GM's/IM's are the expert premovers. They usually play a lot of blitz and make premoves in all of their games. That includes GM's like Nakamura (easily the best blitzer), Nigel Short, Bologan, Morozevich, Gashimov, Howell, Svidler and many I've simply forgotten. I've actually followed many GM's games. They nearly play everyday on that server.

So this feature is not just for patzers trying to win the game on time. In real life chess, you can't make moves in advance, but you cannot afford to lose few seconds...so you just play quicker without caring what your opponent plays because you know that those moves are the only moves left regardless of whatever your opponent plays. In internet, you premove to save time, in real life chess, you play quicker without losing seconds.

This feature has actually been explained on playchess helpfile, they even went to the detail of explaining how to make best use of it, and many GM's knew how to do it, therefore it's not time manipulation. It's a special feature, not any kind of manipulating tool. If many GM's resort to using this feature, then according to you, they are manipulating one anothers time even though playchess encourages and promotes this? Doesn't make sense. If you create a software with long range premoving possibility and ICC extend the trial account to 30 days just like playchess, or more. You'd see a huge increase in number of players online within few years.

[CThinker]

Let's come back to reality, for a moment, can we? How can I make "premoves" in real life chess, anywhere but in extremely simple endings and even then I can't really do it. Yes, I can decide what moves I am going to play, and I might even decide "I am going to play these no matter what, there's nothing my opponent can do to change my mind." And that happens how often? Once in a hundred games? Once in a thousand games? it is rare. And I am _not_ "pre-moving". I can't move until my opponent moves. So even if I have made up my mind, I get the input from his move before I can legally move anyway and can throw my plan out the window.

Premoving is for idiots that are trying to create a timing problem. And I can't count the number of games I have seen FM/IM players lose games because of it. Never seen a GM bite on this. Players have tried to play 3 0 games and try to lock things up and start shuffling a rook. Very quickly. And suddenly, to avoid the 50 move rule, Crafty pushes a pawn and they ignore it because of the premove, and the game is over shortly because their premove became a pre-blunder.

There's no other purpose for this except to manipulate time.

GM's like to play. But I'll bet you won't find many of them using this nonsense except for meaning bullet-type games.

If you've been on playchess, you'd see that GM's/IM's are the expert premovers. They usually play a lot of blitz and make premoves in all of their games. That includes GM's like Nakamura (easily the best blitzer), Nigel Short, Bologan, Morozevich, Gashimov, Howell, Svidler and many I've simply forgotten. I've actually followed many GM's games. They nearly play everyday on that server.

So this feature is not just for patzers trying to win the game on time. In real life chess, you can't make moves in advance, but you cannot afford to lose few seconds...so you just play quicker without caring what your opponent plays because you know that those moves are the only moves left regardless of whatever your opponent plays. In internet, you premove to save time, in real life chess, you play quicker without losing seconds.

This feature has actually been explained on playchess helpfile, they even went to the detail of explaining how to make best use of it, and many GM's knew how to do it, therefore it's not time manipulation. It's a special feature, not any kind of manipulating tool. If many GM's resort to using this feature, then according to you, they are manipulating one anothers time even though playchess encourages and promotes this? Doesn't make sense. If you create a software with long range premoving possibility and ICC extend the trial account to 30 days just like playchess, or more. You'd see a huge increase in number of players online within few years.

Premove happens to be a client feature, and not a server feature.

In this regard, ICC has the advantage, because anyone can write a client for ICC - the ICC protocol is open. If you send a request to Harm, he might be able to add the most innovative premove implementation in Winboard.

You cannot say the same for Playchess. You are stuck with whatever client feature they have now. Their current client may have a good premove feautre, but you can't improve on that.

Now, for computer tournaments, like CCT, premove is irrelevant of course. Protocol availability is more important. This allows for diverse hardware and software participation (Windows, Linux, OSX, Pocket PC, iPhone, etc).

Checkout FICS for example. There you will find an engine that runs on a Router. You will also find Thinker there running on a Pocket PC. And if Tord decides to do it, we might also find there an engine running on an iPhone. That of course is in addition to the many other engines running in various desktop OS.

[sje]

According to at least one chess historian, our common chess has an atavism of a thousand year old version of today's pre-move server option.

Yes, you've guessed it. It's the rule allowing a double pawn advance. Before the rule came into play, only single square advances were permitted. But this was too slow for the impatient players eager to start the battle early in a game and so double square initial motion became accepted.

In fairness, the en passant rule was created sometime thereafter to allow the respondent player an opportunity to squeeze in a capture halfway through a double square pawn advance.

[bob]

I just talked to a GM friend of mine and I posed that question. He said "that is important in 1 0 to 3 0 bullet games, not for serious chess. I concur.

Your GM friend is absolutely right! In servers such as playchess, ICC, FICS, a _lot_ of people either play 1/0 or 3/0 blitz. When you seek a game on 3/0, you will know how many people received the seek, it's plenty.

Dasher is missing this key feature that would have otherwise been beneficial. Certainly your friend would have preferred such a feature when he was playing blitz. I've actually seen 1/0, 3/0, 3/1 games from Morozevich, Bologan, Nigel Short and several other GM's making the premoves at any point of their game, some times 2 moves in advance... in cases where forced recaptures occur. 3/0 is the most used time control on any server. Therefore premove feature is really needed. Many such GM's/IM's never played longer time controls, only blitz with an increment of few seconds.

3 0 is not the most common type game on ICC by a factor of four:
916521 - Number of Blitz games played.
81504 - Number of Standard games played.
290623 - Number of Bullet games played.

I didn't include another quarter of a million odd games (various wild games, crazyhouse, etc). So 3 0 is far from the most used time control on ICC. Can't speak for others. BTW that is the total number of each type of game since the last reboot, which was 16 days ago...

If you promise to play a game where you will premove 4 moves in a row somewhere in the first 10 moves, I'll play you any time you want, and for money. As I said, "prepare to get ripped." No way you can queue up moves to be played without knowing what I am going to do "in between" them.

Well, it's easier to make premoves in opening, I'd probably just play reverse modern shortcut of 1.Nf3 2.d3 (then hold the premoving feature and look to see if any pawn or Bishop can threaten my pieces) then proceed 3.c3 4. g3. There are many such openings: 1.Nf3 2.e3 (holding the feature and scanning the board) 3.b3 4.d4

And that is not a "pre-move". Which was my point. If you want to "hold" it, then you are not "making" it. And normal move strategy will work just fine.

When you and your friend are going to practice the specific variation over the net, premoving would be useful. You just tell him to play this line, and make quick premoves until certain point and take it from there.

[bob]

So now we are turning the conversation toward you? This was about playchess vs ICC. I see no comparison. Fortunately, neither does anyone else that matter.

...

Again, this is about reading qualities in such a forum. I was saying that the continual compairing of veritable GM with such things is already insultive because these things are like autistic handicapped people who dont either know when to start a game against whom. It takes some chuzpah to call such a thing a 2800 GM. Ridiculous.

You are taking things too personal. Here we have an international forum and as one of the hosting nation you should better behave more politely. If you dont understand the difference between a cultured human super GM in chess with a rating of 2800, what besides Fischer no other American ever attained, and an artificial creation that you filled up with the whole history of human chess to prevent it to play nonsense in the opening or ending, then you dont understand what I'm talking about.

If you would do a little research _before_ posting, you would be much better off. We don't use an opening book to prevent the program from playing nonsense. In fact, computers are finding opening novelties all the time. We use a book to save time, to play on an even footing with humans that have memorized openings and play the first moves instantly.

Where are the many games Benjamin had promised us on the stage in New York? How many games of DB2 we know in sum? Almost none IMO. Kasparov could well have lost a game against a 2600 player if he suddenly appeared on the stage. That's how Aronian suddenly appeared BTW. The way the IBM people (alleged scientists) quickly deconstructed the machine tells its own story about the whole fake.

It wasnt a "fake" since it obviously existed, and beat the jerk in front of a lot of people. This was a major development project. It was completed _just_ prior to the 1997 match. it would be hard to play games with something that doesn't yet exist. We won the 1983 WCCC with a new parallel program, on a prototype parallel machine (Cray XMP), and while I was driving to NYC from Hattiesburg MS (A 24 hour drive) Harry was in Mendota Heights at Cray trying to get the program to work correctly as we had found a problem in Cray's multitasking library that was causing us to hang. We played round 1 of that tournament, never having played a complete game with that hardware/software. DB2 was completed within a couple of weeks of playing Kasparov. It would have been a headache to play games and get them to him. Not that they should have done that. I doubt Kasparov sent them information that might reveal part of _his_ preparation for the match either..

This is all crap. Coming from your head.

If you are able to create a true 2800 GM maxhine player, create it, lock it up in a unit and give it to the public. Then let human players examine the thing and I hold all bets against you that in a period of say 3 or 6 months the 2800 entity will be shown as a say 2500 or even less standard IM player. Perhaps then you hopefully feel sorry about how they mistreated Kasparov, that genius of chess!

:%s/genius/jerk/g

For those that know ex commands on unix, that, applied to this post, will make it much more correct.