David Richerby wrote:
[ . . . ]
David Richerby Expensive Sushi (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ raw fish but it'll break the bank!

Hey! I've eaten there! ;-/

--
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On May 1, 5:33 am, Martin Brown
wrote:

That its shape broadly correlates with the rms error graph of the
players lends credence to the possibility that Crafty might have been
adequate for the task.

Q: How would you like it if we were to assign a player weaker
than you to "rate" your games, to assess your play and compare
it to that of your peers? I suspect your gut reaction would be to
object on the basis that a weaker player is not qualified for the
job, and indeed, it would be better to select the strongest player
available for this task.


And to be fair to the authors they did say that
others with access to the internals of stronger engines should repeat
their tests to see how they compare.

And, to be fair, it may well be determined that crippled-
Crafty wasn't quite up to the task of ranking moves in
perfect order. I expect is is up to the simpler task of
spotting tactical blunders, provided the 12 plys cutoff
did not account for tactical search extensions for
checks and captures.


I would have liked to see the rms error graph with blunders excluded.
That might have shed some more light.

According to what you say below, this would make
very little difference as the blunder rate is almost
infinitely small.



Capablanca maintained a blunder rate of 0.01% (1 blunder in every
10000 moves)

I don't believe that. If this were really true, then I
might go over all of his games and come up empty-
handed, having not seen enough moves to find the
one-in-ten thousand. In fact, knowing little of his
games I can easily recall a gross blunder without
any trouble, though it may or may not have
occurred in world championship play.


and the worst performer was Steinitz at 0.054% (blunder
every roughly every 2000 moves).

How about defining what you mean by "blunder"?


These are interesting numbers and
right at the limits of human error rates for purely trivial mechanical
tasks like punch key data entry.

Balderdash. Show me a data entry person who can
go 9,999 keystrokes without a blunder and I'll show
you a computerized robot/android! Back in the days
of punched cards, everything was run through twice,
the second time by a different operator, just to cut the
error rate down to size.


To put it into perspective commercial programming has an effective
error rate around 1-2% (and in some shops 10% is not unknown). Much
greater than 0.2% acheivable by the best formal development methods.
But competitive GM level chess is more than an order of magnitude more
accurate still.

I don't buy that. The articles I saw focused only on
world championship play, which likely has a lower
error rate because: 1) the players are the very best
in the world, and 2) the time controls and playing
conditions are close to ideal.

In any case, it is very difficult to have meaningful
discussion without a firm definition of what is to be
considered a blunder, and what not.

-- help bot

On May 1, 11:25 am, JohnnyT wrote:

Usually moves where engines evaluations radically disagree are well
worth investigating to see why.

This is a worry, but you really need to play with Rybka some, to
understand what I am saying. You need to follow several games with
Rybka and your engine of choice. You will find numerous positions
where the programs will disagree violently (over 100cp) over the
favorite moves. (Realize that many times it is not that different).

It is precisely that difference where "strength" lies. Different
engines simply do not come up with the same moves given enough time.
Rybka seems to dramatically show that, and it is dramatically stronger.

I don't have a working copy of Rybka, but I went over the
articles at the Web site and found some examples of what
you are saying there.

In one game, it was shown that a game between GMs
Kasparov and Anand, along with others which soon
followed that one, wrongly assessed a very simple
line involving -- ...O-O, B-h6 threatening mate, ...g6, Bxf8
winning the exchange -- which was rejected outright by
all the human GMs and by other programs, with one
exception (Rybka). For this discussion, Rybka would
have been penalysed by crippled-Crafty for being the
only one strong enough to correctly evaluate this
exchange sacrifice! LOL


That alone should provide enough of a question as to the results here.
The fact is that we don't know when the engines will be strong enough to
represent the "truth".

There may not be a "the truth" to be found...only successive
approximations to it given our computational limitations. Like
peeling an onion each time you make the engines an order of magnitude
more powerful or add enhanced heuristics you allow deeper searching of
the game tree that may alter the outcome. However, we have now crossed
the point where the best computer programs are demonstrably better at
match play than humans.

This in no way demonstrates that crippled-Crafty is
capable of correctly scoring the moves from W.C.
games. The fact is, chess programs are superior
not because they are always right about move
scoring, but because when humans are wrong, they
are usually fatally so. Take the recent match
where world champion Kramnik overlooked a mate
on the move, for instance (something no program
does); there is no fighting one's way back after
this typically human error.



Don't let physics get into the way. We will probably be storing stuff
into the strings by then!

It is not physics that gets in the way here, but human
ignorance and stubbornness. I am already working on
a process to store the fifteen man table bases inside
Alpha Centuri, although there are still some technical
difficulties in retrieval times... . ;D

-- help bot

On May 1, 7:31 pm, raylopez99 wrote:
On Apr 30, 1:56 am, help bot wrote:

Even if all this were done, it would still be a simple
matter to skewer the idea of determining "the greatest
player of all time" in this manner. I could easily
produce an example where playing a bad move was
not only intentional, but necessary in order to win.
Where a "blunder" is a thousand times more effective
than the "best" move. Where the room is filled with
gossip about a certain player having allowed his
inferior opponent a certain-lock on a draw, but
where they all have to re-figure the pairings when the
actual result is posted.

-- star bot

Are you're talking about grandmaster draws, and how (as Fischer
complained) the Soviets would prearrange who would win? If so, you
make a good point.


No. The grandmaster draw is the polar opposite of
what I'm talking about here. The fact remains that
in many positions, a crippled-Crafty program would
penalize, not reward, the winning plan, because it
is not "sound" in the sense of working perforce.

The specific position I had in mind was a dead
draw, where the opponent had a blockade on the
only usable file, and all other pawns were locked
up. He could not be forced to give up his blockade,
but he could be -- and was -- enticed to do so by
the offer of a couple of tasty, "free" pawns.


Thanks for your input star bot. What is your rating?

At GetClub, I am the highest-rated player of all time,
so to speak (1400+). :D

At RedHotPawn, where I compete against a wider
variety of opponents, I seem to be stuck between
1600 and 1700, which is absurd. The explanation
must be that some of my opponents are taking these
game seriously, using books and separate boards
for analysis instead of playing them like an OTB
game, the way I normally do. My most recent loss
could have been a win if I had dragged out some
book on the (trappy) opening we played, for I just
know he did something wrong early on, where we
were still in the book.


BTW I am a true patzer. Today, against my PC (Fritz on a Pentium), I
was up a WHOLE ROOK!!! (I trapped the black queen and won it for a
rook) and I STILL LOST!!!

Ah, Fritz 1.0 on the original Pentium I, with 128K and
some kind of bug, I expect. That is the program I keep
telling Sanny to get for GetClub. ;D


I can't believe it. I got so overconfident I drifted, got frustrated,
and eventually lost (I was actually down 2 pawns, but out of disgust I
resigned).

One weakness of many chess programs is their
objectivity. That is, they may have trouble creating
messy positions where the human player can throw
away an easy win, if doing so requires obviously
sub-optimal moves. When up a Rook against a
computer, it is best to be very careful and try to
simplify if possible. The less material left on the
board, the less likely you will hang something due
to a tactical oversight. Remember: if you are up a
piece, there are more of your pieces to hang!

-- help bot

On May 1, 7:51 pm, raylopez99 wrote:


Ponder this: if Crafty, Fruit, Toga, Shredder, Rybka, and other VERY
strong UCI engines *ALL* rate the best players ever as Capa, Kramnik,
Karpov, Kasparov, *in that order* (cuz 'puters don't lie!), what does
that say?

It says that all these programs contain the same or
very similar flaws; that their overall results mimic
one another as a result of what HAL9000 might refer
to thus: "weak minds think alike".

I would be willing to bet that the programs listed
above would not all rank the world champions in
the same was as crippled-Crafty, provided we can
cut out the middleman, the human who tweaks
and fiddles with the objective results. An example
was the guy who called it a "tie" when GM Steinitz
crushed everyone in one category, but he "felt"
that GM Fischer should get a freebie for coming in
a distant second. (BTW, GM Steinitz was the only
player whose sample size was probably adequate.)


If Fruit, Toga, Shredder, Rybka *ALL* rate the very best players as
"Capa, Kramnik, Kasparov,Karpov, *in that order*", but Crafty puts
Karpov before Kasparov, does this mean that the top two players are
indeed Capa and Kramnik?

No.


If, like another poster says, Tal won a match by playing complications
(but lost the rematch BTW), does this make Tal the 'best' player at
that point, or, over his career, or, do we analyse ALL his games,

Good idea! Sample size is crucial.


including game played when he first learned chess, or do we just count
the 20 games where he became champion? Some players can "peak", but
should not the test be over the player's career (like Lasker)?

Um, all players can peak. Obviously, there was no
good reason to exclude top-level tournament games
which are comparable to the W.C. matches in many
ways.


If Kata Kamsky becomes champion by spiking Nigel Short's orange juice,

I believe it was GM Fischer who drank OJ. And it's
Gata, not Kata. You may have gotten these confused
if while you typed here you were looking at a picture of
the Kama Supra -- Toyota's "sexy" new convertible.


does that make Kamsky the better player, because he used "shock"
tactics?

No.


Is Tal's 'unsound' sacrifices good chess, or shock tactics?

A false dichotomy.


If "Fischer Fear" where 6 great players all choked and got
whitewashed, in Fischer's championship run, a true test of Fischer?

Six? Can you list all these chokers?


Or just good players choking?


These championship matches are peculiar in
that each yields a single "winner" and one "loser".
If it should happen that the weaker of the two
players falls behind at the start, the result can
be a freaky whitewash, because of desperation
in conjunction with the superior player's ability to
exploit it to the max. In sum, a shot at the title
throws out any consideration for protecting one's
rating. Even with a forced draw in hand, a player
might well try something stupid, if he thinks he
has even the slightest chance for a comeback.


Long story short: we need further research, to the extend anybody is
motivated to do it

For those who support the crippled-Crafty method,
I would suggest beginning by taking the weakest
chess program available, and comparing its results
on the same data set to crippled-Crafty's. If you
get a "match", this would seem to confirm the thesis
that even patzers can rank world champions alike.


(since let's face it, computer chess outside of
writing chess programs for the masses is not exactly the best funded
field anymore), but at the moment, the tentative research shows:

!!! Greatest chess players ever? Capa, Kramnik, Karpov, Kasparov, *in
that order* (cuz 'puters don't lie!) !!!

No, it doesn't. Crippled-Crafty did not demonstrate
anything whatever about the "greatness" of those
players, but it may possibly have determined which
ones were most prone to blunder. In order to check
this, we would need to see how the results were
handled.

-- help bot

On May 2, 6:27 am, David Richerby
wrote:

Like peeling an onion each time you make the engines an order of
magnitude more powerful or add enhanced heuristics you allow deeper
searching of the game tree that may alter the outcome.

I'm not sure exactly how this is `like peeling an onion' but that
doesn't really seem to be important. :-)

Let me try.

Chess programs are like ogres: they have layers.

The top layer is the GUI; next there is the user-
selected options and level; then comes the analysis
engine, deeper within. Cutting off the search at only
12 plys means you cannot see any of the deepest
layers, the ones which can truly differentiate between
shallow world championship play and subtle, world-
class strategy. Without these deepest of layers, the
whole ship sinks like the Titanic, because it hasn't
got enough layers to its hull. All you're going to see
is the outermost analysis layer, the tactics and the
simplest positional factors.

-- Shrek bot

Let me close this thread by making some observations that will shed
some light on the two warring camps in this thread.

The first camp argues that a computer has to be (1) very, very strong
and (2) play like a GM, before it can be used to rate champions.

The second camp, myself included, argues that (1) any consistently
applied ("normalized") computer can be used, even a 'weak' computer
like Crafty, since the engines of computers

are largely the same (based on the MinMax and A/Beta algorithm, with
pruning and the like, and a decent evaluation function for position
evaluation of candidate moves), and (2) the

requirement that the program 'play like a GM' is not necessary (though
it is sufficient).

In truth, neither side has all the facts to make their case, but on
balance I believe the second camp is more persuasive.

A brief hypothetical will illustrate my point better.

Suppose that a version of Crafty favors "defensive" players like Capa
and Kramnik, while penalizing "attacking" players like Tal and
Fischer. Call this version of Crafty "Defensive

Crafty".

(Note the final results seem to give some credence to this view that
Crafty favors defensive or conservative players: from the Chessbase
article, Capa scored first at 0.1008 error rate,

followed by Kramnik at 0.1058, Karpov (another 'defensive' or
'positional' specialist) at 0.1275, Kasparov at 0.1292 (perhaps from
an Elo point of view the best player ever, but

remember the paper only looked at Championship match games), then
Spasky (a very well rounded player) at 0.1334, Petrosian (positional
God!) at 0.1343, Lasker at 0.1370 (best

player over the length of a career ever, one study found; perhaps
coincidentally he was known for finding great resources in defense),
Fischer at 0.1383 (an attacking player),

Alkehine at 0.1402 (another 'attacking' player), Smyslov at 0.1403,
Botvinnik at 0.1581 (a 'weak' World Champion some have argued, and
this study bears it out), Euwe at 0.177 (a

very underrated player), and Steinitz, from an earlier era where the
competition was weak and you could win more games with 'cheapos' so no
need to play flawless chess, at 0.23

(some have argued Steinitz was in fact, for his time, the best player
ever--same argument has been advanced for Morphy. THe point being, as
an aside, that if your competition is

weak, why bother playing perfect chess? It's like being the great
athlete Jim Thorpe or Jesse Owen--you have no competition so your
competition is yourself, which ultimately means

you fail to reach your highest potential).

Anyway, back to my hypothetical. Assume Defensive Crafty favors the
defense, not the offense. Let's throw in a few more players and
hypothetical championships: Janowski

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Janowski) and Tartakover (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksawery_Tartakower) for the offense, and Ulf
Andersson

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulf_Andersson) and Carl Schlecter
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Schlecter) for the defense, the
last two players known for their defensive skill.

Let's throw in four more hypothetical players: Class C Defensive Putz
(CCDP) and Class C Offensive Putz (CCOP) which we deem to be ELO 1500
players that are good at defense and

offense respectively. Also same distinction but with Master Defensive
Player (MDP) and Master Offensive Player (MOP) (strong national
masters)

Let's do a ranking of these players, using centipawns (cpawns), and
assume that Camp 1 is correct, in that Defensive Crafty is penalizing
offensive players (or to be more precise, let's

assume Crafty rewards players that play like it, and for purposes of
our discussion let's assume Crafty favors defensive players). We'll
assume that a 100 cp difference is a 'big deal'

(however you want to define that, perhaps like ELO 200 is a 'big deal'
as a difference in performance.

OK, we run the simulations, and if Camp 1 is correct, they'll look
something like this (best to worse players ranked by Defensive Crafty,
given our above assumptions):

[For brevity I'll leave out some of the above names, but you'll get
the idea]

1. Capa +200 cp
2. Kramnik +180 cp
3. Karpov +170 cp
4. Petrosian +160 cp
5. Lasker +155 cp
5.1 Andersson +150 cp
5.2 Schlecter +150 cp
6. Kasparov +75 cp (note the big drop! because he's an attacking
player)
7. Fischer +60 cp (" ")
8. Euwe +55 cp (Euwe ranked ahead of Alekhine since Euwe is
defensive!)
9. Alekhine +50 cp
9.1 Tartakover +33 cp
9.2 Janowski +31 cp
10. MOD +30 cp
11. MOP +10 cp (big difference between masters since MOD plays more
like our defensive minded hypothetical Crafty)
12. CCDP +9 cp
13. CCOP -25 cp (note CCDP nearly as good as a MOP, who is three or
four classes in ELO performance strength higher, simply because the
CCDP defense putz plays closer to our

hypothetical Crafty, meanwhile the CCOP offensive putz is heavily
penalized, even though both CCDP and CCOP are in the same ELO class
C.)

Does the above ring true? (Try and conceptualize what I'm getting at,
without referencing the actual Crafty in the article, since I'm making
a point based on hypotheticals. In fact

that's why we call the above "Defensive Crafty").

The above does NOT ring true, if you've ever played with different
chess engines. You know that playing with the parameters will not give
such a large change in state for the same

group of players. For example, there is no way Lasker is going to
come before Kasparov, I don't care how defensive minded he is, or that
our CCDP is going to nearly equal the MOP.

Nor that Andersson and Schlecter rank before Kasparov and Fischer. Nor
that the strong attacking GMs Janowski and Tartakover are only
slightly better than a mere national master

who plays good defense.

Before you squack about my making up the numbers, bear with me since
I'm not at the punch line yet.

We now assume that a version of Crafty --Offensive Crafty--favors the
offensive players.

Our hypothetical rankings:

1. Kasparov +500 cp
2. Fischer +450 cp
3. Janowski +200 cp
4. Tartakover +150 cp
5. Capa +50 cp
6. MOP +49 cp
7. Kramnik +45 cp
8. Andersson +10 cp
8. Schlecter +10 cp
9. CCOP +9 cp
10. MOD +5 cp
11. CCDP - 500 cp

Do you see where I'm going with this? If so, pat yourself on the
back. If not, keep reading. Obviously this list by our hypothetical
"Offensive Crafty" is as ridiculous as the first ranking

list, by "Defensive Crafty". No way, and no how, is this feasible, if
you know anything about chess and chess playing engines.

Now let's continue with a third and final hypothetical. Assume that
instead of the above scores, you got the following rating list
rankings, using EITHER the same hypothetical

"Defensive Crafty" OR "Offensive Crafty", but call it "Reasonable
Crafty", since it's the same program as the above, but it's a 'real
world' program IMO that will yield something that

resonates close to the truth, as we intuitively know it:

1. Capa +200 cp
2. Kramnik +200 cp
3. Karpov +199 cp
4. Petrosian +199 cp
5. Lasker +198 cp
6. Kasparov +196 cp (note the 'real good' players, that we know are
good, are bunched together)
7. Fischer +196 cp (" ")
8. Alekhine +188 cp
9. Euwe +130 cp
9.1 Schlecter +130 cp
9.2 Tartakover +100 cp
9.3 Janowski +100 cp
9.4 Andersson +100 cp

10. MOD +30 cp
11. MOP +29 cp
12. CCDP -25 cp
13. CCOP -25 cp

Now, does this list 'ring true'? Yes. You can quibble about the
ranking of the 'closely bunched up rated players' but the list rings
true overall--and if you know anything about chess,

you know it rings true. Master ranks ahead of patzer, no matter how
the program is 'tweaked', whether defensive or offensive.

Which gets to the punchline: if in fact Crafty produces an ordering
that rings true (our "Reasonable Crafty" above), based on what we
know, from historical ELO, and how humans play

chess, and the fact you know a good player when you analyze their
games, then you can make the claim that this Craft is not clearly
wrong. The program may be wrong in how it ranks

the players when the players are closely bunched together (i.e. the
first 7 players of the third list above), butthe program is not
clearly wrong overall.

Yet--here's the punchline--if Camp 1 above is to be believed, then
programs such as "Defensive Crafty" and "Offensive Crafty" exist, and
they will produce rankings as ridiculous and

clearly wrong as our first two examples. But in fact, not only does
that defy logic (if you've ever played with the parameters of a chess
program, making it more or less aggressive, and

noted that the best moves found are often not that different from
other parameter settings), but it also defies the *actual* rankings of
the Crafty in the original article reported in

ChessBase. As per the original article, the rankings were 'reasonably
bunched' as per our third hypothetical above and as I reported above
in the paragraph "Note the final results

seem to give some credence to this view that Crafty favors defensive
or conservative players".

Camp #1 wants you to believe that there are huge differences between
chess playing engines, that will give radically different rankings.
Camp #2 says the opposite--that this is not

true.

Yet here is a paradox: Camp #2 does not deny that the choice of who
is champion can be influenced by the chess engine, but ONLY IF THE
RANKINGS ARE CLOSE. In other words, if

you are using a "Defensive Crafty" to score games, and Defensive
Specialist #1, a very strong player, edges out an equally strong
(based on ELO) Offensive player #2 by 0.001 cp, then

yes, Camp #2 will acknowledge this ranking perhaps was due to the
"defensive bias" of the chess program. But the difference between the
players has to be minute and subtle.

Back to the actual article then: are the differences subtle?
Honestly, as a Camp #2 member, I don't know. But neither does Camp
#1. You have to play with numerous engines and see

if the rankings change. But just eyeballing the ranking, (see the
above paragraph "Note the final results seem to..."), I see certain
"breakpoints" in the rankings that indicate there are

clear demarcations in the list, and the list is not subtle.

Some breakpoints:

I. Capa and Kramnik. Clearly, their error rates are in the 'tens',
while the next group is in the 'twelves'--a clear class by
themselves. Perhaps Kramnik is better than Capa, depending

on the program used, but again that's a nit.

II. Karpov and Kasparov. Again, with "twelves" (0.1275 and 0.1292)
they are equal to one another (as evidenced by their nearly equal
match record) and in a class by themselves

III. Spassky, Petrosian, Lasker and Fischer (all about equal in
scores)

IV. Alekhine and Smyslov (though you can probably lump them with
group III)

V. Botvinnik

VI. Everybody else.

That's the way I see it, and until we get more research any rebuttal
to the contrary will simply be speculation, since the data is just not
there.

RL

help bot wrote:
David Richerby wrote:
I'm not sure exactly how this is `like peeling an onion' but that
doesn't really seem to be important. :-)

Let me try.

Chess programs are like ogres

I think you were supposed to wait a moment to allow me to interject,
``They stink?''


Dave.

--
David Richerby Incredible Mexi-Puzzle (TM): it's like
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ an intriguing conundrum that comes
from Mexico but it'll blow your mind!

help bot wrote:
The articles I saw focused only on world championship play, which
likely has a lower error rate because: 1) the players are the very
best in the world, and 2) the time controls and playing conditions
are close to ideal.

I see your `close to idea' and raise you a Toiletgate.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Devil Ghost (TM): it's like a haunting
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ spirit that's possessed by Satan!

On May 3, 3:35 am, raylopez99 wrote:
Let me close this thread by making some observations that will shed
some light on the two warring camps in this thread.

You cannot "close" a thread that I already won.
Only I can do that. ;D


The first camp argues that a computer has to be (1) very, very strong
and (2) play like a GM, before it can be used to rate champions.

This is a lowly "poisoned well" rhetorical trick.

Try reading what was actually written and you will
see that one of "us" stated flatly that, had Rybka
(presumably because it was rated nearly 3000) been
utilized in place of crippled-Crafty, he would have no
objection whatever.


The second camp, myself included, argues that (1) any consistently
applied ("normalized") computer can be used, even a 'weak' computer
like Crafty, since the engines of computers are largely the same

You clearly have a lot to learn. Take GetClub, for
instance; it is hardly "the same" as most other chess
programs. (I will say though that Crafty is a typical
program, not unlike many others.)


(based on the MinMax and A/Beta algorithm, with
pruning and the like, and a decent evaluation function for position
evaluation of candidate moves),

Clearly, my above example refutes this theory.
GetClub uses none of that stuff. Perhaps it
could be utilized to rank the world champions
in *reverse* order?


requirement that the program 'play like a GM' is not necessary (though
it is sufficient).

It seems irrelevant whether or not a given program
plays "like a GM". What matters most is that the
program is sufficiently strong to *correctly* rank the
possible moves, so its scoring will be meaningful.
The weaker the program, the more likely it will rank
moves in the wrong order, yielding garbage as output.


In truth, neither side has all the facts to make their case, but on
balance I believe the second camp is more persuasive.

Did you just say that you considered yourself to
be in one of these two "camps"? I think you did.
Perhaps this personal bias slipped your mind... .


A brief hypothetical will illustrate my point better.

Suppose that a version of Crafty favors "defensive" players like Capa
and Kramnik, while penalizing "attacking" players like Tal and
Fischer.

It's not that simple. For one example, GM Fischer
would quite often greedily snatch a pawn, then hang
on for dear life (i.e. defend). And although GM
Capablanca liked to trade pieces with his patented
....N/f6-d5 as Black, he was not exactly a defensive
player on the whole, nor is GM Kramnik. Probably,
it is nearly impossible to have a glaring "style" and
yet still manage to attain the world championship,
unless your name is GM Tal. Most of them were
flexible enough to attack or defend, as the position
dictated. Two players, GMs Fischer and Kasparov,
may seem to have been attackers largely because
they were so much better than their typical
opponents. Heck, at RedHotPawn, even I look
like a rabid attacking style player in most games.


Call this version of Crafty "Defensive Crafty".

(Note the final results seem to give some credence to this view that
Crafty favors defensive or conservative players: from the Chessbase
article, Capa scored first at 0.1008 error rate,

This only shows that you are *assuming* GM
Capablanca was a defensive player, and that
you wish to pretend the data backs up your
whim. Where's the substance?


followed by Kramnik at 0.1058, Karpov (another 'defensive'

You sure have a lot to learn about chess!

Only in the context of the marathon matches
against GM Kasparov would it be reasonable to
describe GM Karpov as "defensive". Have a
look at his match with Polugaevsky, for instance,
and you will see that it is his victims who were
always running for cover. I noted that despite
the fact that 1.e4 players are typically described
as attackers, and their games as "open", when
the American press decided to strongly dislike
the man this all flew out the window; suddenly
GM Karpov was "defensive", his style abhorrent.
Clearly, what we learn is that the press cannot
be trusted with the facts.


or 'positional' specialist) at 0.1275, Kasparov at 0.1292 (perhaps from
an Elo point of view the best player ever,

That would probably be Deeper Blue, as it defeated
GM Kasparov in a match. BTW, did you notice how
quickly the man's style changed when he was up
against someone his in own class (at least)? Truly,
I cannot recall anything to match GK's horrid play as
Black; there was the Caro-Kan suicide, and the
Ruy Lopez roll-over-and-die. (I suppose if you were
desperate enough, you might interpret these as GK
"attacking" himself.)


but remember the paper only looked at Championship match games), then
Spasky (a very well rounded player)

Who might very easily be classed as an
attacking player, if it suited your current whim.


at 0.1334, Petrosian (positional
God!) at 0.1343, Lasker at 0.1370 (best
player over the length of a career ever, one study found; perhaps
coincidentally he was known for finding great resources in defense),

And in attack. You sure have a lot to learn about
chess history.


Fischer at 0.1383 (an attacking player),

And a defensive one. Try to recall the games
where GM Fischer was surprised by a prepared
line, and yet managed to defend so well that soon
he was on the offensive.

Really, the only champ who can be classed as
mainly defensive was Tigran Petrosian, since he
seemed to love drawing so much. And only GM
Tal can be considered an attacker, because he
leaned so heavily in that one direction; but then
again, it was probably his great success which
prevented him from adopting a more balanced
style.


Alkehine at 0.1402 (another 'attacking' player),

IMO, this does not do him justice. GM Alekhine
was not an *unsound* attacker, like GM Tal. If
he attacked, it was because the position justified
it.

Smyslov at 0.1403,

I really need to study this man's games.


Botvinnik at 0.1581 (a 'weak' World Champion some have argued, and
this study bears it out),

LOL! You really need to study chess history,
my friend. You are embarrassing yourself here.


Euwe at 0.177 (a very underrated player),

And here. Because of the (unusual) lack of hype,
GM Euwe is the most *forgotten* world champion of
all. But every account I have read quickly dismisses
any attempt to "underrate" him, rushing to his defense
instead. One famous quote asserts that among all
the world champions, GM Euwe is the only one to
have "never" played an unsound combination! How
silly is that? In fact, the only thing I have read
which could be considered as underrating ME was
by ME himself, when he modestly stated that he
was not up there with the big names (see below).


and Steinitz, from an earlier era where the
competition was weak

Tell that to GM Lasker, and then tell it to him
once more!
GM Steinitz was lucky to have played at a time
when the three monsters, Lasker, Capablanca and
Alekhine, were not on the scene simultaneously.
But the main reason his competition seems "weak"
to you is that he soundly defeated all of them, save
GM Lasker.


and you could win more games with 'cheapos' so no
need to play flawless chess, at 0.23

No one plays flawless chess even today. Back
then, the expectations were different. The draw,
for instance, was not simply accepted as the
natural result of strong play or home prep. which
failed to yield anything substantive right away.


(some have argued Steinitz was in fact, for his time, the best player
ever--same argument has been advanced for Morphy. THe point being, as
an aside, that if your competition is
weak, why bother playing perfect chess?

Nonsense. These guys were doing their best,
not sandbagging out of your projected laziness.


It's like being the great
athlete Jim Thorpe or Jesse Owen--you have no competition so your
competition is yourself, which ultimately means
you fail to reach your highest potential).


Once again, you are embarrassing yourself with
this rubbish. Paul Morphy, for instance, was
regarded by his peers as a man who put an
inordinate amount of focus and energy into the
game, taking it so seriously as to draw criticism
-- jealous criticism, most likely. Far from being
held back by a purported lack of competition, he
simply offered odds, as was the custom back
then. The truth is that far from being held back,
PM was *pushed forward* to go to Europe and
challenge everyone.

If you really want to lend support to the idea of
using a crippled-Crafty to rank the world champions,
you are going to have to show us how it manages
this feat without itself knowing the *correct* rank
order of the moves it is scoring. Nobody is
disputing that a chess program is "objective". On
the contrary, it is the handlers -- the people like
you who inject their own personal biases and whims
into the formula which is in doubt. I already gave a
cutting example where I showed that the awarding
of a "tie" between GMs Steinitz and Fischer was
absolutely comical in view of the former's clear-cut
win. But the main objection was, of course, that
since Rybka (and Hiarcs, etc.) is available, why
mess around with something vastly inferior, unless
ranking mere patzers?

One more criticism: in looking over a game at
one Web site, I noticed that the depth of search
DURING PLAY achieved by GM Kramnik's
opponent was around 18 plys. Now why on
earth would anyone try to rate the play of the
world champions by cutting of crippled-Crafty's
search at only 12 plys? I mean, get a REAL
computer, and a clue!

-- help bot


-- help bot