CHESS: Chess History, Experiments, and Search Symposium

[Peter Berger]

Can anyone share some information on this event and what could be experienced there (other than the announcement itself)?

[shadyantra]

More details please

[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]

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

[Ajedrecista]

Hello Peter:

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 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

[...] 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.

[towforce]

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