"Dr A. N. Walker" wrote in message
...

Even though most, if not all, of the criticisms in this thread
are addressed by the authors in a peer-reviewed paper?
Are their "peers" up to our standards here, I wonder?

It's a bit of a stretch to assume that they are not.
ICGAJ may not be "Nature", but it's the leading journal for
computer game theory, and some pretty bright people write
and review for it.

technical badinage eliminated

I think it will be interesting to read both forthcoming reviews of the MAMS
title;

{{both forthcoming at chessville, the first next weekend from Dr. Stephen
Dowd}}

since overall, I feel 2 issues are raised in this Usenet correspondence:

1) I think the first writer above, has a good point, which is not quite my
own, therefore, a-paraphrastically;

does the result make sense to strong chess players?

Perhaps the most obvious factor in my reading of the MAMS title, was that
very often the program didn't have a clue, and the 'Man' intercession
dramatically re-oriented the game and its result. Allowing programs and
programmers to declare 'objective' results is thereby more than a little
problematic.

In watching this correspondence I think it is fair comment to say that when
the program's activities depart from chess terms to enter into the abstract
complexity of programming terms, all claims become more difficult to
substantiate by such desegregation.

2) I thought Adorjan's response [this weekend, Chessville] to Garry
Kasparov, which among other things mention effect of computer use at high
level play, as a direct commentary on creative aspects of the game, is
something well-worth taking in.

As well as Adorjan's overall evaluation of what this has done to chess
playing this past quarter century. Of course, I do not expect programmers to
like what he says, yet intellectually perhaps they will admit it is a fair
point! Adorjan is not so much blaming programs, as commenting on a false
reliance on programs and data-bases by strong-players.

Cordially, Phil Innes

"raylopez99" wrote in message
oups.com...

Means nothng. And the list presented does correlate very well with
ELO. Jeff Sonas' work found that Capa was #1 using ELO, and Kramnik
beat Kasparov and has a high Elo. Not the brightest bulb in the room,
are ya?

Here is some danger of abstracting, using statistical method.

Rather famously, and in his own words, Capablanca declared the sort of
modern chess technique with which Alekhine beat him entirely not to his
taste, and said if that [technical study method] was chess, you could keep
it!

Therefore, in terms of any posited engagement Capa : AnyModern IGM, Capa
would be at a substantial disadvantage, since he was not psychologically
able to engage modern chess, and actually directly said he wouldn't be
interested in acquiring 'the habit'.

Speaking again of players as if they were real, rather than virtual
entities, other players have also talked about what gets them juiced up -
that is, what fuels their own high performances in chess, and this has to do
with their specific 'chemistry' with their opponent.

What people who speak of ELO can forget is that ELO it is not /predictive/
in any specific case, and is an average over most cases, given sufficient
'X' exposure to a broad group of players.

So, not only are individual : individual encounters not predictable by ELO,
even as averaged result except perhaps if the differential is so great as to
be 250 points or more; time has evolved varieties of understanding of the
game which are also not fungible - that cannot be abstractly mixed and
matched.

Capa was #1 for quite other reasons. He was the best player of his time;
given approximately equal opportunity and resources as other strong players,
he was /psychologically/ capable of beating them all.

Phil Innes

On May 19, 9:27 am, "Chess One" wrote:

Rather famously, and in his own words, Capablanca declared the sort of
modern chess technique with which Alekhine beat him entirely not to his
taste, and said if that [technical study method] was chess, you could keep
it!

Therefore, in terms of any posited engagement Capa : AnyModern IGM, Capa
would be at a substantial disadvantage, since he was not psychologically
able to engage modern chess,

If you define "modern GM" as excluding such players
as Larry Evans, maybe. But don't underestimate the
innate talent of the "lazy, vain, and invincible" Cuban.

"I would be in a lot of trouble." -- a modern GM, speaking
of his theoretically facing players such as GMs Capablanca
or Alekhine, even with his openings knowledge advantage.


and actually directly said he wouldn't be
interested in acquiring 'the habit'.

Where did he say this, and in what context? Was he
just attempting to psychologically justify his loss? Or
was this his deeply-considered opinion on the issue,
period?

This point is important when you consider anecdotal
material which seems to skewer the idea that JC
"never" studied, that he was just a natural-born genius,
who snatched the right moves out of thin air, using
magic or alchemy.


Speaking again of players as if they were real, rather than virtual
entities, other players have also talked about what gets them juiced up -
that is, what fuels their own high performances in chess, and this has to do
with their specific 'chemistry' with their opponent.

And let's not pretend that the addition of a sizable
prize fund has no effect. Or the huge ego "fix".


What people who speak of ELO can forget is that ELO it is not /predictive/
in any specific case, and is an average over most cases, given sufficient
'X' exposure to a broad group of players.

In this particular case, the authors took a rather small
sample of games from some players, such as GM Fischer,
who faced only a single opponent in his world championship
match.


So, not only are individual : individual encounters not predictable by ELO,
even as averaged result except perhaps if the differential is so great as to
be 250 points or more; time has evolved varieties of understanding of the
game which are also not fungible - that cannot be abstractly mixed and
matched.

My earlier suggestion was to utilize a sufficient
sample size so that this sort of problem would be
averted. GM Steinitz is a perfect example, for he
played a number of such matches against a
number of different opponents, and both won and
lost some matches.


Capa was #1 for quite other reasons. He was the best player of his time;
given approximately ?equal opportunity? and resources as other strong players,
he was /psychologically/ capable of beating them all.

I had the general impression that JC did not have to
really work for a living, and that therefore his situation
put him at an advantage to most other people.

During the time in which GM Lasker was mostly
inactive, it seems a bit of a reach to give JC full credit
for being "the best of his time", especially when he
went on to lose the title so quickly after gaining it.

OTOH, we do not know for certain if and when the
Cuban grandmaster first superseded his great
predecessor. Still, you would have to assume that
"his time" did not extend into the realm of GM
Alekhine's reign, though he still was far from old.

What bugs me is the way in which JC's record is
presented, always mentioning the period of years
"without a single loss" while at the same time,
deliberately omitting the fact of his relative inactivity
during the very same time-frame. This smacks of
cheapness and deception -- things which are rarely
required when a stunning record can be recounted
matter-of-fact-ly.

I'm not down on GM Capablanca; it's just that any
man who cannot see the brilliance of GM Alekhine's
play is obviously a patzer. In fact, I might go so far as
to say that such brilliance was *required* in order to
defeat a player such as GM Capablanca.

-- help bot

"help bot" wrote in message
oups.com...

and actually directly said he wouldn't be
interested in acquiring 'the habit'.

Where did he say this, and in what context?

In the same place that he said anyone who played chess instead of going out
on a date, was nutz@!

Was he
just attempting to psychologically justify his loss? Or
was this his deeply-considered opinion on the issue,
period?

The trouble with 'what we know' about Capa is that almost all writing about
him is by chess fans. It is therefore interesting to read the Cuban exile
[London] Infante, and his book Mea Cuba, which has a good essay on Capa in
it, from the cultural point of view. Probably more insight into Capa there
than any other single source.

This point is important when you consider anecdotal
material which seems to skewer the idea that JC
"never" studied, that he was just a natural-born genius,
who snatched the right moves out of thin air, using
magic or alchemy.

But we know that this 'magic' is the result of lessons learned - that is, of
things sufficiently pre-digested. It is a new idea these days, so that time
at the board is not spent figuring out what to do, but instead figuring out
how to solve it as 'elegantly' as possible. Chess as art more than chess as
craft.

Interestingly, and somewhat in support of your point, Adorjan says to
Kasparov, that it is not his opinion that moderns are as creative or
inventive as the previous generation. I see from his note that he
particualrly admires [on the subject of the Opening Revolution]:-

Fischer, Larsen, Korchnoi, Portisch, Petrosian, Fridrik (Olafsson),
Gligoric, Geller, Smyslov, Bronstein, Mecking, Timman, Stein, Karpov,
Hort, Spassky, Ribli, Sax, Ivkov, Keres, Tal, Kasparov, Tseskovsky,
Polugaevsky, Andersson, Belyavsky, Romanishin, Ljubojevic,Miles, Hübner,
Uhlmann.

-----

And let's not pretend that the addition of a sizable
prize fund has no effect. Or the huge ego "fix".

But also the artistic 'fix'. What a shame that the final of Master Game was
canned because of a BBC strike, since Miles beats Karpov. No sizeable prize
on that occassion, and Tony was no big head - though he probably enjoyed
beating an adult [lol!]

What people who speak of ELO can forget is that ELO it is not
/predictive/
in any specific case, and is an average over most cases, given sufficient
'X' exposure to a broad group of players.

In this particular case, the authors took a rather small
sample of games from some players, such as GM Fischer,
who faced only a single opponent in his world championship
match.

OK, 'my' comments above are actually a paraphrase of Khalifman. In that case
he said that top GMs on the tour only played each other and if you were 100
points less it was almost impossible to get into the tour, for the
tautological reason, that you could never play anyone high enough to score
that extra 100 points. Therefore, if you stalled at 2625, its very difficult
to refind any momentum. The few exceptions seem to be players who go back
'to the provinces' slaughter everyone there by massive win/lose margins,
then re-enter a tournament with the big boys that way. But its hard for them
to stabilise themselves there since other games have been relatively easy,
and they need more resilience at top levels which their sparcity of
experience hasn't provided them.

Capa was #1 for quite other reasons. He was the best player of his time;
given approximately ?equal opportunity? and resources as other strong
players,
he was /psychologically/ capable of beating them all.

I had the general impression that JC did not have to
really work for a living, and that therefore his situation
put him at an advantage to most other people.

Once he made it to the top [which I think means as a result of his work, and
performance] /then/ he was awarded a sort of diplomatic salary. Not quite
the same as Russian system, when only rarely did top players fail to gain
support. Even though Botvinnik gained an engineering degree, its rare to
hear how much he deployed it - but as Champion I think it is much mentioned
since it made him 'one of the people', rather than a pampered games-player
whose success was at the cost of atypical life-support in the USSR.

During the time in which GM Lasker was mostly
inactive, it seems a bit of a reach to give JC full credit
for being "the best of his time", especially when he
went on to lose the title so quickly after gaining it.

I wonder? Staunton ducked Morphy, but I think there is no doubt that Morphy
deserved the accolade of world champion, as an active player rather than as
was-once credential. Chess is a show me game, not a tell me game.

Pity JC had to play AA twice. I wonder what would have happened if Alekhine
had to display his repetoire by fighting 3 tough pre-amble matches [a la
Fischer] and so disclose his repetoire? Or perhaps more importantly to alert
JC that this was going to be a real fight. Isn't this why we think Garry
lost to DeepDuh, in terms of being psyched, he seemed to be sleep-walking!

OTOH, we do not know for certain if and when the
Cuban grandmaster first superseded his great
predecessor. Still, you would have to assume that
"his time" did not extend into the realm of GM
Alekhine's reign, though he still was far from old.

He became isolated from the Euro scene, especially the Russian one, and
though New York was a powerhouse of chess, it suffered from insufficient
players and ideas to stimulate a top player to further effort. After all, if
you have been world champ already, and also beaten most of your
contemporaries, what is there left to prove to anyone, to yourself?\

What bugs me is the way in which JC's record is
presented, always mentioning the period of years
"without a single loss" while at the same time,
deliberately omitting the fact of his relative inactivity
during the very same time-frame. This smacks of
cheapness and deception -- things which are rarely
required when a stunning record can be recounted
matter-of-fact-ly.

Because everyone like to beat on Alekhine, I think Capa also put up rather
stringent barriers, inhibiting much contact with himself.

I'm not down on GM Capablanca; it's just that any
man who cannot see the brilliance of GM Alekhine's
play is obviously a patzer. In fact, I might go so far as
to say that such brilliance was *required* in order to
defeat a player such as GM Capablanca.

In that no one else even looked like doing it - I think you are right.
Alekhines technique was, after all, not to refute Capa's style of play, but
to study it so deeply that he could out-Capa Capa.

That imitation is no insult to either of them.

Phil Innes

-- help bot

In article WHC3i.1755$xP.1292@trndny04,
"Chess One" wrote:

does the result make sense to strong chess players?

The problem here is what's known as confirmation bias.

The test agrees with what our intuition tells us, therefore it must be a
good and valid test. You use the test to check your intuition and your
intuition to check the test - it's perfectly circular reasoning.

But our intuition can be wrong.

You avoid confirmation bias by setting up rigorous standards for a test
before you run it, which was clealry not done in this case.

eg, if I was going to run this test, this is how I'd do it.

1. Select the players to be tested.
2. Since we're trying to measure player at their peak, pick five major
tournaments which they won (or slightly more, or slightly less, to even
out the sample size, aiming for the same number of games). A public
consensus of each player's best tournaments would be a reasonable
starting point. Tournaments - as opposed to matches - should give us
more variability in the types of positions reached, and thus help wash
out the bias if the computer struggled with some positions more than
others.
3. Analyze the game with the strongest available engine, with enough
analysis time that it would be expected to be competitive with top
Grandmasters today. Probably you would not include analysis of the first
5-10 moves of each game (although we'd have to find a logical, objective
methodology to mark the starting point of each game, which is not easy.
You want to be very careful about not scoring a player down because his
taste in openings is different from the computer's, and you want to
avoid giving later players credit for working in an era of higher
quality opening theory).

If you wanted to test this test, before you ran it, you could pick
specific tournaments and matches, and see how you did. Running all the
games from, say, the Zurich, 1953 candidates tournament and seeing if it
picked out Smyslov as the best player would be very interesting. If it
didn't, we'd be stuck with an interesting decision, to decide if the
program was inaccurate, or if the tournament did a poor job of selecting
the best player.

"Ron" wrote in message
...
In article WHC3i.1755$xP.1292@trndny04,
"Chess One" wrote:

does the result make sense to strong chess players?

The problem here is what's known as confirmation bias.

The test agrees with what our intuition tells us, therefore it must be a
good and valid test. You use the test to check your intuition and your
intuition to check the test - it's perfectly circular reasoning.

But our intuition can be wrong.

You avoid confirmation bias by setting up rigorous standards for a test
before you run it, which was clealry not done in this case.

eg, if I was going to run this test, this is how I'd do it.

1. Select the players to be tested.
2. Since we're trying to measure player at their peak, pick five major
tournaments which they won (or slightly more, or slightly less, to even
out the sample size, aiming for the same number of games). A public
consensus of each player's best tournaments would be a reasonable
starting point. Tournaments - as opposed to matches - should give us
more variability in the types of positions reached, and thus help wash
out the bias if the computer struggled with some positions more than
others.
3. Analyze the game with the strongest available engine, with enough
analysis time that it would be expected to be competitive with top
Grandmasters today. Probably you would not include analysis of the first
5-10 moves of each game (although we'd have to find a logical, objective
methodology to mark the starting point of each game, which is not easy.
You want to be very careful about not scoring a player down because his
taste in openings is different from the computer's, and you want to
avoid giving later players credit for working in an era of higher
quality opening theory).

If you wanted to test this test, before you ran it, you could pick
specific tournaments and matches, and see how you did. Running all the
games from, say, the Zurich, 1953 candidates tournament and seeing if it
picked out Smyslov as the best player would be very interesting. If it
didn't, we'd be stuck with an interesting decision, to decide if the
program was inaccurate, or if the tournament did a poor job of selecting
the best player.

We already have a ranking system (ELO). Like any ranking system,
it has weaknesses, but ELO's errors can be minimized by picking
games between contemporaneous players who played regularly
against each other during a short period of time. This gives us something
that we can use to test rating-by-move-analysis. What we should then
do is put forth trial move-rating algorithms and see which ones (if any)
predict results as well or better than ELO does, being careful to make sure that
the time control is controlled for in the sample games. We should not
prejudge that 12-ply Crafty is adequate or inadequate based on some
vague intuition. We should empirically determine how well n-ply Crafty
works for a variety of n. That way we can learn something. If, for example,
12-ply Crafty predicts results as well as 14-ply Crafty, then that would
mean that sample games are resolved by shorter combinations. On
the other hand, if we see the predictive power of rating-by-move-analysis
increase as we increase the strength of the rating tool, then we'd also have
useful information as to how to proceed.

We should never expect perfect correspondence between different
rating methods. All rating methods have error bars, and will have different
ranges of validity. That said, there should be domains where they
overlap and can be compared. The interesting thing is that once you have
the rating-by-move-analysis tool, you can think about answering
questions like: How good was Morphy compared to modern players?,
What happens to the quality of play when you change the time control?,
Is the quality of rated games different from unrated games? How
much does an influx of young improving players deflate ELO ratings?
These are questions that either in principle or in practice cannot be
adequately answered by ELO alone.

In article .com, says...
On May 17, 1:27 pm, "David Kane" wrote:


If you are proposing a methodology (ranking players
according to move analysis), you can't simply
pull an algorithm out of thin air and pretend that it means
something. The burden is on the authors to *show* that
it is meaningful.

They have you idiot. It was a peer reviewed paper.

Having acted on both sides of the peer review process I can assure you that, because a paper has been published in a
peer-reviewed journal, it does not mean that the authors have necessarily:
a) proved the point of their thesis;
b) correctly applied statistical methodologies;
c) used logically correct methods of analysis to reach their conclusions; or
d) provided sufficient information, corroboration, or references within the paper to allow others to determine if they
have met all or any of a), b), or c) above.

Mike

On May 20, 7:57 am, "Chess One" wrote:

In the same place that he said anyone who played chess instead of going out
on a date, was nutz@!

A false dichotomy; only handsome players like JC or
Boris Spassky have to choose between these; the rest
of us are playing chess *because* we cannot get a date!


Was he
just attempting to psychologically justify his loss? Or
was this his deeply-considered opinion on the issue,
period?

The trouble with 'what we know' about Capa is that almost all writing about
him is by chess fans. It is therefore interesting to read the Cuban exile
[London] Infante, and his book Mea Cuba, which has a good essay on Capa in
it, from the cultural point of view. Probably more insight into Capa there
than any other single source.

Am I going to rush out to buy this book? No.
I want *free* information, like I get every day at
Wikipedia [ducks for cover].


This point is important when you consider anecdotal
material which seems to skewer the idea that JC
"never" studied, that he was just a natural-born genius,
who snatched the right moves out of thin air, using
magic or alchemy.

But we know that this 'magic' is the result of lessons learned - that is, of
things sufficiently pre-digested. It is a new idea these days, so that time
at the board is not spent figuring out what to do, but instead figuring out
how to solve it as 'elegantly' as possible. Chess as art more than chess as
craft.

Maybe. But some would argue that JC's (among others)
talent for drawing is the antithesis of artistic creation,
pointing instead to players like Anderssen (sp? Not Ulf)
or GM Bronstein as "artistic".


Interestingly, and somewhat in support of your point, Adorjan says to
Kasparov, that it is not his opinion that moderns are as creative or
inventive as the previous generation. I see from his note that he
particualrly admires [on the subject of the Opening Revolution]:-

Fischer, Larsen, Korchnoi, Portisch, Petrosian, Fridrik (Olafsson),
Gligoric, Geller, Smyslov, Bronstein, Mecking, Timman, Stein, Karpov,
Hort, Spassky, Ribli, Sax, Ivkov, Keres, Tal, Kasparov, Tseskovsky,
Polugaevsky, Andersson, Belyavsky, Romanishin, Ljubojevic,Miles, Hübner,
Uhlmann.

Offhand, I don't recall JC having severe troubles in
the opening against his rivals; this seems to indicate
a reasonable level of preparation on his part.


And let's not pretend that the addition of a sizable
prize fund has no effect. Or the huge ego "fix".

But also the artistic 'fix'. What a shame that the final of Master Game was
canned because of a BBC strike, since Miles beats Karpov.

I recall a pair of loony chess matches, one of them
between GMs Karpov and Timman, the other between
GMs Kasparov and Short. Talk about an ego fix for the
winners!
Maybe the "artists" should have focused more on
correspondence play, like GM Keres did.


No sizeable prize
on that occassion, and Tony was no big head - though he probably enjoyed
beating an adult [lol!]

Wait a minute. Not too long ago, small-head TM was
caught bashing Ray Keene for having the temerity to
claim he was the world's foremost authority on chess;
maybe this was wholly deserved criticism; or maybe
there is an ego thing here; or maybe a little of both.

Okay, I know that in theory, there are maybe a few
top level GMs out there who have not got an overblown
ego, but I have yet to meet one who is still living.


What people who speak of ELO can forget is that ELO it is not
/predictive/
in any specific case, and is an average over most cases, given sufficient
'X' exposure to a broad group of players.

In this particular case, the authors took a rather small
sample of games from some players, such as GM Fischer,
who faced only a single opponent in his world championship
match.

OK, 'my' comments above are actually a paraphrase of Khalifman. In that case
he said that top GMs on the tour only played each other and if you were 100
points less it was almost impossible to get into the tour, for the
tautological reason, that you could never play anyone high enough to score
that extra 100 points.

Wrong. As was demonstrated by such players as
GMs Fischer and Bogolubov, it is possible to "get in"
by simply beating the tar out of the rabbits! Look: my
GetClubbed rating was the highest of all time, and did
I play anybody good? No! I simply beat Sanny's
program over and over, and the rating slowly but
steadily climbed until it superseded even players such
as a famous nearly-an-IM, and a "towering" 2300+!

If you took someone like GM Fischer or GM Kasparov
today, and took away 500 rating points, it would be
maybe a year before they would both be back in the
Linares tourneys, having regained 400 points apiece.
[I secretly replaced the fillings in BF's teeth and can
now use KGB-developed mind control to force him to
play chess again.]


Therefore, if you stalled at 2625, its very difficult
to refind any momentum.

But if you stall at only 2625, then you don't really
belong at Linares, do you? Go back to the USA and
take your U.S. Open prize money, and quit whining!


The few exceptions seem to be players who go back
'to the provinces' slaughter everyone there by massive win/lose margins,
then re-enter a tournament with the big boys that way. But its hard for them
to stabilise themselves there since other games have been relatively easy,
and they need more resilience at top levels which their sparcity of
experience hasn't provided them.

Then, lacking both the rating (i.e. results) and the
experience, they really didn't belong at Linares any
more than the other low 2600's. I expect that the
REAL complaint is that the very top players are
getting the vast majority of the money in chess.
But I still find it hard to feel sorry for those who can
and do charge a hundred bucks an hour for mere
chess lessons. Whiners!


Capa was #1 for quite other reasons. He was the best player of his time;
given approximately ?equal opportunity? and resources as other strong
players,
he was /psychologically/ capable of beating them all.

I had the general impression that JC did not have to
really work for a living, and that therefore his situation
put him at an advantage to most other people.

Once he made it to the top [which I think means as a result of his work, and
performance] /then/ he was awarded a sort of diplomatic salary. Not quite
the same as Russian system, when only rarely did top players fail to gain
support. Even though Botvinnik gained an engineering degree, its rare to
hear how much he deployed it - but as Champion I think it is much mentioned
since it made him 'one of the people', rather than a pampered games-player
whose success was at the cost of atypical life-support in the USSR.

One famous story is that for his first appearance at a
famous chess club -- frequented by the well-to-do -- he
rented a fancy carriage and emerged in full view of the
occupants dressed, well, a bit like a King! He didn't
really need a carriage to get there, it was just for show.
This smacks of what I said before. Let me tell you, that
never in my life have I even considered doing such a
thing with my hard-earned money; I just drive up and
park my Huffy bicycle somewhere near the door, then
tie it to a post using a piece of twine I foraged out of
a rusty dumpster behind the McDonalds where I work.
;D


During the time in which GM Lasker was mostly
inactive, it seems a bit of a reach to give JC full credit
for being "the best of his time", especially when he
went on to lose the title so quickly after gaining it.

I wonder? Staunton ducked Morphy, but I think there is no doubt that Morphy
deserved the accolade of world champion, as an active player rather than as
was-once credential. Chess is a show me game, not a tell me game.

But you are comparing apples to oranges; saying that
Paul Morphy deserves to be considered world champ
is not comparable with saying that a man is "the best
of his time", unless you want to narrow the "time" part
down to the period of his demonstrated superiority
over all others.

IMO, it was GM Lasker himself who contributed most
to this problem by not defending his title on a regular
basis, and against all worthy comers. But even after
the title shifted to JC's possession, it is not entirely
clear who among the top three was the best; some
argue that it was grossly unfair for AA to deprive JC
of a rematch, and further, that he would likely have
won it. But that aside, the tournament results during
the time were such as to confound the issue further,
for the world champions did not always dominate
these any more than GM Steinitz did in his heyday.

The championship title was disposed of in a relatively
few matches, but there are also the major tournaments
to be considered here.


Pity JC had to play AA twice. I wonder what would have happened if Alekhine
had to display his repetoire by fighting 3 tough pre-amble matches [a la
Fischer] and so disclose his repetoire?

Who do you propose as being "tough"? (GMs Lasker,
Lasker, and Lasker again?)

And what were these mystery matches of GM Fischer,
which you tell us were "tough"? I know about the one
with GM Reshevsky, and the one that never happened
against a Russian lady at Knight odds (**VERY** tough!),
and of course the match with GM Petrosian.

Or perhaps more importantly to alert
JC that this was going to be a real fight. Isn't this why we think Garry
lost to DeepDuh, in terms of being psyched, he seemed to be sleep-walking!

I think possibly he threw the match. Look at Chess
Life magazine, where patzers like us are instructed not
to fall for obvious book traps like... well, like the one
GK fell into in an opening he practiced often against AK.
Very suspicious. And his commentary afterward included
remarks about how much money it would take for him to
do this sort of thing; not surprising, in his case. Then
there was the resignation in a drawable position -- just
a little odd. I suspect that he would have thought a
lucrative rematch to be automatic, should he lose.


OTOH, we do not know for certain if and when the
Cuban grandmaster first superseded his great
predecessor. Still, you would have to assume that
"his time" did not extend into the realm of GM
Alekhine's reign, though he still was far from old.

He became isolated from the Euro scene, especially the Russian one, and
though New York was a powerhouse of chess, it suffered from insufficient
players and ideas to stimulate a top player to further effort. After all, if
you have been world champ already, and also beaten most of your
contemporaries, what is there left to prove to anyone, to yourself?\


Uh, that you can in fact take the title back, because
you are the greatest chess player alive? I can't explain
it, but something about being the top player in the
entire world is powerfully addictive. (I know this because
I was the greatest player of all time at GetClubbed.)


What bugs me is the way in which JC's record is
presented, always mentioning the period of years
"without a single loss" while at the same time,
deliberately omitting the fact of his relative inactivity
during the very same time-frame. This smacks of
cheapness and deception -- things which are rarely
required when a stunning record can be recounted
matter-of-fact-ly.

Because everyone like to beat on Alekhine, I think Capa also put up rather
stringent barriers, inhibiting much contact with himself.

Halitosis, eh? Or maybe frequent methane gas
emissions.


I'm not down on GM Capablanca; it's just that any
man who cannot see the brilliance of GM Alekhine's
play is obviously a patzer. In fact, I might go so far as
to say that such brilliance was *required* in order to
defeat a player such as GM Capablanca.

In that no one else even looked like doing it - I think you are right.
Alekhines technique was, after all, not to refute Capa's style of play, but
to study it so deeply that he could out-Capa Capa.

I seriously wonder just how much truth there is to this
idea. Did those writers who came up with this really
understand his style well enough to say that all AA did
was copy it and add a bit of improvement? Maybe AA's
style was different, in the same way that his choice of
openings was different. For instance, as Black AA
seemed to like playing to win using the Queen's Indian,
whereas JC looked to be trying to draw using a certain
line of the QGD which led to quick piece trades.

In two games (at some time in their careers), GM
Capablanca lost both sides of the French Defense, as
White and as Black. As White, he was out-calculated
in a relatively open position, costing him a pawn. As
Black, he remained cramped because AA deliberately
avoided any piece trades. IMO, the impression was that
AA's style was no mere copy of JC's, but rather it was
more like working very hard at the board against a man
who was extremely talented, but a bit lazy.

I recall something akin to this from one of my own
experiences, in which I found myself in a bad way in
a cramped position against an opponent who seemed
to effortlessly whip off his opening moves in the
expectation of spotting some winning combination
when we reached mid-game. Unfortunately for him,
his big chance to cash in came just one move sooner
than expected, and he didn't even look before whipping
off a routine developing move instead. By the time he
decided to have a serious think, I had already fixed the
problem and when it came his turn to err, I pounced.
It seems to me that I took the game a bit more
seriously, and worked harder at the board, thinking
on every move. This is the general impression I got
from replaying *some* of their games as well.

-- help bot

On May 20, 7:20 pm, Ron wrote:
In article WHC3i.1755$xP.1292@trndny04,
"Chess One" wrote:

does the result make sense to strong chess players?

The problem here is what's known as confirmation bias.

Indeed. And now I think I know know why their scoring methodology
using Crafty-12ply correlates so well with GM level play. It has
nothing at all to do with its strength or suitability for the task and
everything to do with its lack of adequate discrimination between
scoring the top N best moves in a complex position.

Elsewhere in the thread Andrew Walker suggested trying the "How Good
is Your Chess" scoring scheme against various chess engines. I
deliberately picked one that I thought might separate the goats from
the sheep. On reflection I think one including a nice long endgame
would be a much better choice.

The game chosen was N. Legky-E.Bacrot, French Team Championship 2007
(May 2007 edition Chess,UK)

It needs a few more people to do it with some other GM scored/
annotatated games to get some statistical significance but the results
are *very* interesting. I also tried the weakest engine I can think of
to determine a floor.

Turing at 2min/ply (effective search 5ply + quiessence) made 35% of
the same moves as a GM !

All of the serious engines managed about 60-70% of the same moves as a
GM.

Crafty-12ply (and at deeper levels too) scores the top few moves
(somethime 6+) as X +- 0.02
It should be no surprise that one of those is the GMs choice of move.

Other engines have more discrimination but are not always right in
their judgement. The scoring scheme penalised doing things the GM
thought was wrong and gave an 8 point bonus for seeing the brilliancy.
To my amazement none of the engines scored much more highly than I did
on this test.

Turing scored 21 = "strong club player" (but it was painful to watch
- couldn't find obvious winning combinations)
Crafty scored 34 = "county player"
CometB27 scored 39 = "national master" (~11ply and it was slightly
worse 38 at 2min than at 1min)
Rybka scored 44 = "national master" (may have been penalised for
inhuman moves)
Shredder10 scored 40, 46 = "national masetr" (12ply & 2min results)

On at least one move the engines all appeared to have found a better
move than the GM annotator Daniel King (and were duly penalised for
it) and now the most striking thing of all.

All of the engines (without exception) found the same 3 key positional
moves impossible to get right.

r1br2k1/1p3pp1/p1p2q1p/2Qp4/1P1P3n/2N1P3/P3BPPP/R4R1K b - - 0 16

The game continued: 16. ... Re8 17. a4 Bf5 18. Qb6 Re7

All of these moves for black mystified the engines - they mostly see a
flat featurelss landscape of similarly scored moves (exact values vary
each time you run the test) but it is especially flat at 12ply.

Only Rybka2.3.1, Shredder10 and CometB27!!! found the brillaincy
(extra 8 point boost).

The test agrees with what our intuition tells us, therefore it must be a
good and valid test. You use the test to check your intuition and your
intuition to check the test - it's perfectly circular reasoning.

But our intuition can be wrong.

It is a correlation does not imply causation problem. If you imagine
the most simple material balance at quiessent node evaluation function
and score GM play with that alone you will get a lot more than 50%
agreement! In fact it is very hard to find an engine that is weak
enough not to get at least a 33% agreement (perhaps Sanny's might).

If the 60-70% exact agreement shown in this game is roughly typical
for the middlegame tactical combinations with a few positional moves
the engines cannot grok then the overall 50% hit rate of Crafty12ply
may well be due to the engine being totally lost and confused in the
endgame.

You avoid confirmation bias by setting up rigorous standards for a test
before you run it, which was clealry not done in this case.

I will confess to a minor bias here in allowing the very weakest
engine, Turing up to 10 minutes at times just to see if it would ever
latch on to the winning possibilities of certain tactical combinations
(the answer was still no so it didn't actually gain any benefit from
my indulgence).

I would like to see what FritzX scores on this test (or any similar
one)

Regards,
Martin Brown

"help bot" wrote in message
oups.com...
On May 20, 7:57 am, "Chess One" wrote:

**let me digress a moment back to the nominal topic - I have read that the
top 5 players by ELO [I suppose retro calculated for some] in terms of
/actual performance ratings/ were otherwise than the thread title. I think
it goes something like 3,000 for Fischer, but wait - let me dig up both sets
of numbers and who calculated them:

Here is Kevin O'Connell's analysis, as published by Ray Keene:-

Fischer, US Champ 1963, = 3,000
Karpov, Linares, 1994 = 2977
Kasparov, Tilburg 1989 = 2913
Alekhine, San Remo, 1930 = 2906
Sophia Polgar, Rome 1989 = 2879

Okay - according to 'a different and older source [1986]' the list is:-

Fischer, Buenos Aires 1970 = 2850
Karpov, Waddinxween 1979 = 2848
Capablanca, Hastings 1919 = 2826
Torre, Manila 1975 = 2826
Kasparov, Niksic 1983 = 2814

What is immediately noticeable is Fischer at #1 and Karpov at #2 fna
Kasparov at #3 & #5 resp - and for /entirely different events!/ I also note
that the Fischer differentail is 7 years, Karpov's is 5 years, Kasparov's 6
years. Certainly no 'flash in the pan' scores - but persistent high level
performance over half a decade.

It would be interesting to compare both Alekhine and Capa's top performances
over a similar period - say 10 years, and to assess both concistancy and
degree of domination in world chess.

The other interlopers to these 'top 5' charts are Torre, and Sophia. Polgar.
I don't know what increment Torre managed with that performance rating of
2826 [200 points?] against his overall rating, but I do know Polgar's was
2299 when she scored 2879, which is an increment in performance of 580
points. I think that happens to be the largest ever 'jump' in performance
for an established player at this level. Does anyone know of anything even
slightly similar?

Phil Innes