>> This was the article I was thinking of, per my earlier post, not the >> Jeff Sonas article.
>> RL
> The biggest flaw with that study is that they used Crafty for > their analysis. They should have used a much stronger engine.
> All this study shows is that Capablanca played moves that > agrees with a relatively weak chess engine.
> J.Lohner
Lohner, you're a 1300 rated IMBECILE! You're in no position to call a program that plays 2600 elo "weak". You will never in your life even BEGIN to understand the rudiments of any of Capablanca's games.
> This was the article I was thinking of, per my earlier post, not the > Jeff Sonas article.
That article is, frankly, junk: I'm surprised it was ever accepted for an academic conference.
They haven't determined the strongest champion of all time: they've determined which World Champion plays most like a crippled version of Crafty. That's better than working out which World Champion plays most like me but not much better. See Soren Riis's rebuttal
>> This was the article I was thinking of, per my earlier post, not the >> Jeff Sonas article.
> That article is, frankly, junk: I'm surprised it was ever accepted for > an academic conference.
> They haven't determined the strongest champion of all time: they've > determined which World Champion plays most like a crippled version of > Crafty. That's better than working out which World Champion plays > most like me but not much better. See Soren Riis's rebuttal
I don't think Riis or you understood the original article. The researchers addressed in detail the objection that Crafty is not the ultimate in determining the best move - obviously we can find some specific positions where the version of Crafty used in the analysis is wrong, but that is not a fundamental objection.
There is much very interesting and original work in the article - perhaps the Chessbase synopsis concentrates excessively on the findings rather than on the methodology, since it makes a better story. Certainly there were analyses that they didn't do which should get done. That's just the normal way that research advances. In any case, the approaches investigated in the article are far preferable to the "historical ELO" or "chessmetics" nonsense, which are *completely* lacking in rigor of any kind.
On Apr 24, 7:55 pm, "Inconnux" <everin...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> All this study shows is that Capablanca played moves that > agrees with a relatively weak chess engine.
So does this mean that if you could find a chess engine weak enough, my moves would agree even more? Then I would rate even higher than all these world champions, right?
> > This was the article I was thinking of, per my earlier post, not the > > Jeff Sonas article.
It seems likely that whatever conclusions may be drawn from such studies are largely determined by the way in which the study is constructed, which is just the opposite of what is supposedly desired (i.e. computer-like objectivity).
For instance, had the study shown "desirable" results right off the bat, the need to compensate for the simplicity of position would never have even occurred. If it turned out that, say, GM Capablanca was more accurate because he preferred simple positions, this could have been interpreted as meaning he was simply the strongest player; instead, there arose an "emotional need" to compensate for some assumed flaw, as if his choice of style were somehow unfair to the other contenders.
What is never shown and rarely mentioned is all the tweaking of the various formulae that goes on before finalizing the charts and results presented to us as readers, and this invisible stuff is precisely what determines the final rankings.
> > That article is, frankly, junk: I'm surprised it was ever accepted for > > an academic conference.
> > They haven't determined the strongest champion of all time: they've > > determined which World Champion plays most like a crippled version of > > Crafty. That's better than working out which World Champion plays > > most like me but not much better. See Soren Riis's rebuttal
> I don't think Riis or you understood the original article. The > researchers addressed in detail the objection that Crafty is not > the ultimate in determining the best move - obviously > we can find some specific positions where the version of > Crafty used in the analysis is wrong, but that is not a > fundamental objection.
You know, if you took the games of a typical (1300) rated player and checked them with a dumbed-down-Crafty (1500), you might get some useful information, but not nearly as much as hoped for. But when you take the games of the world champions and check them with a program which is short of 2800, you get mainly garbage, combined with many instances where a tactical oversight is correctly pinpointed.
You also penalize those players who *deliberately* chose to play what they knew to be sub-optimal moves, for whatever reason. I just did this myself at RedHotPawn, choosing to grab a Knight rather than leap in with another piece to set up a 95%-certain mating net. Why? Because while the mating net was around 95% certain, the capture of the free piece was 100% certain (unless I have lost my mind)! When I spot another mating net, things should be simple enough for me to get the 100% certainty I desire, and having captured yet another piece, this is all but inevitable, barring my opponent's resignation.
Another item which these statistical analyses overlook is the deliberate gift of, say, a half-point. These have been known to occur in world championship level play, and of course the "nice guys" will be penalized for not being "tough players", despite clinching the match with their action.
In short, what can be learned is who was least prone to tactical blunders, and apparently, whose style leans most toward a sizable gap between what the program sees as the #1 optimal move, and #2 -- something I think may be termed the sharpness of play. For one example, I am playing a game at RedHot now where I had to decide whether to develop my QB "normally" via ...d6 and then B-moves somewhere, or fianchetto via ...b6 and B-b7. It was a toss-up, since it makes no difference whatever to the outcome. I expect a computer would see both moves as being nearly equal, weighing them in such a way as to slightly favor the move which gives the Bishop immediate control of squares, though this immediacy is quite irrelevant to the true value of the moves.
I wonder just how much time, and to what depth the moves were analyzed before scoring them. I recall that often a player's move may be scored poorly, but if executed and stepped forward, a program may change its mind completely about this, suddenly realizing it had overlooked something.
> > This was the article I was thinking of, per my earlier post, not the > > Jeff Sonas article.
> That article is, frankly, junk: I'm surprised it was ever accepted for > an academic conference.
I am in the process of reading this article now, and just noticed a laughably absurd claim by the authors: that the truncated Crafty used would naturally rank all superior programs in reverse order. LOL! This is the most ignorant comment I have seen since before I began ignoring many recent postings by the Evans ratpack.
Of course, it is not the strength, but rather the *similarity in style* which would actually determine how truncated Crafty ranks *all* other programs. It is theoretically possible for Crafty to rank Rybka near the top, penalizing it (unfairly) only for the few moves which it correctly sees but where Crafty would blunder horribly. All this would require is that Rybka *usually* agree with Crafty, but when they disagree, for Rybka to always be right. The gap in ratings could easily be 400 points, if the key differences of opinion were instant game-losers.
I am beginning to get the impression that people who play around with statistics in an attempt to demonstrate something, are loony, as well as utterly incompetent in applying statistics rationally.
> On Apr 24, 7:55 pm, "Inconnux" <everin...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> All this study shows is that Capablanca played moves that >> agrees with a relatively weak chess engine.
> So does this mean that if you could find a chess engine > weak enough, my moves would agree even more? Then > I would rate even higher than all these world champions, > right?
> -- help bot
lol its too bad Sannys Getclubbed program doesn't do analysis :p
> >> This was the article I was thinking of, per my earlier post, not the > >> Jeff Sonas article.
> > That article is, frankly, junk: I'm surprised it was ever accepted for > > an academic conference.
> > They haven't determined the strongest champion of all time: they've > > determined which World Champion plays most like a crippled version of > > Crafty. That's better than working out which World Champion plays > > most like me but not much better. See Soren Riis's rebuttal
> I don't think Riis or you understood the original article. The > researchers addressed in detail the objection that Crafty is not > the ultimate in determining the best move - obviously > we can find some specific positions where the version of > Crafty used in the analysis is wrong, but that is not a > fundamental objection.
> There is much very interesting and original work > in the article - perhaps the Chessbase synopsis concentrates > excessively on the findings rather than on the methodology, > since it makes a better story. Certainly there were analyses > that they didn't do which should get done. That's just the normal > way that research advances. In any case, the approaches > investigated in the article are far preferable to the "historical > ELO" or "chessmetics" nonsense, which are *completely* > lacking in rigor of any kind.- Hide quoted text -
I tend to agree with you David Kane.
I find the rebuttal by Dr. Søren Riis, Oxford, UK unconvincing for a number of reasons.
- it was clearly written with a popular audience in mind (witness the exclamation point! It's been said that no serious article has ever been written with an exclamation point! Unless the author did so deliberately)
- it fails to understand the simple argument of 'normalization'. The Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko original article pointed out that Crafty was used since it was open source and could be modified; the stronger programs are not, but in any event Crafty is hardly a weak tactics program and the authors are looking for a standardized (normalized) way of spotting blunders.
-The fact that Riis found positional sacrifices not evaluated by Crafty is not convincing since: (1) such positional sacrifices are rare--as computers have shown, chess is largely tactics; (2) everybody will be judged equally by Crafty, so others pos sacs are also scored 'badly', so nobody will lose relative standing to one another, and (3), as long as assumption (1) is valid, Crafty will find the most "mistake free" chess player, or one that plays closest to being "tactics mistake free", which is a very good way to determine a good chess player IMO.
Now of course the surrebutter (rebuttal to the rebuttal) will be that players like Tal will score poorly--and indeed they (he) did--but let's face it, Tal was more of a shock player that relied on playing the man rather than the board. In a match of coolheaded Karpov or Kramnik versus Tal, all in their prime, the less emotional player is likely to win (unless he loses his cool and loses...haha... think of Topolov vs Kramnik). Also nobody ever became champion ignoring tactics. That is the lesson of chess. Think of all the bogus moves made by beginners, sacrificing knight for pawn, "to break up their pawn chain", with no positional advantage. If you believe chess is positional play more than tactics then such bogus moves should work more often than they do. They do not.
So, understanding how chess works, and how chess playing computers work, and having seen Crafty evaluate pretty good myself, I have to side with the original article.
raylopez99 <raylope...@yahoo.com> wrote: > I find the rebuttal by Dr. S=F8ren Riis, Oxford, UK unconvincing for > a number of reasons.
> - it was clearly written with a popular audience in mind (witness the > exclamation point!
Obviously, anything written with a popular audience in mind cannot possibly be accurate.
> - it fails to understand the simple argument of 'normalization'. The > Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko original article pointed out that Crafty > was used since it was open source and could be modified; the stronger > programs are not, but in any event Crafty is hardly a weak tactics > program and the authors are looking for a standardized (normalized) > way of spotting blunders.
Just because they used the same system for everyone doesn't mean the system was good or useful. For example, they could declare that every king move is a blunder. That's consistent across all the players but would declare players who tend to win in the endgame (where the king gets moved more) to be weaker than players who tend to win in the middlegame. You need to apply the same *good* measure to everyone.
> -The fact that Riis found positional sacrifices not evaluated by > Crafty is not convincing since: (1) such positional sacrifices are > rare--as computers have shown, chess is largely tactics; (2) everybody > will be judged equally by Crafty, so others pos sacs are also scored > 'badly', so nobody will lose relative standing to one another
No. A player who plays more positional sacrifices will be penalized for playing moves that crafty doesn't understand.
> and (3), as long as assumption (1) is valid, Crafty will find the > most "mistake free" chess player, or one that plays closest to being > "tactics mistake free", which is a very good way to determine a good > chess player IMO.
But World Champions make very few tactical mistakes.
> Now of course the surrebutter (rebuttal to the rebuttal) will be > that players like Tal will score poorly--and indeed they (he) > did--but let's face it, Tal was more of a shock player that relied > on playing the man rather than the board.
I'm not convinced by that assertion. Tal played games that were sound enough that they were very hard to defeat over the board. I don't think that counts as playing the man rather than the board.
> In a match of coolheaded Karpov or Kramnik versus Tal, all in their > prime, the less emotional player is likely to win
Hmm... The two Botvinnik-Tal matches between them were only won by Botvinnik +12-11=19. Hardly a convincing victory for the cool head.
> Think of all the bogus moves made by beginners, sacrificing knight > for pawn, "to break up their pawn chain", with no positional > advantage. If you believe chess is positional play more than > tactics then such bogus moves should work more often than they do. > They do not.
This argument is bogus. Sacrificing a knight against one's opponent's pawn structure is hardly a prime example of `positional chess'. You might as well say that all the bogus tactical shots attempted by beginners to `win material' or `checkmate the king' show that tactics play a small role in chess.
Dave.
-- David Richerby Frozen Erotic Gerbil (TM): it's like www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ a children's pet but it's genuinely erotic and frozen in a block of ice!
In article <Pqq*QO...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, David Richerby <dav...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> > Now of course the surrebutter (rebuttal to the rebuttal) will be > > that players like Tal will score poorly--and indeed they (he) > > did--but let's face it, Tal was more of a shock player that relied > > on playing the man rather than the board.
> I'm not convinced by that assertion. Tal played games that were sound > enough that they were very hard to defeat over the board. I don't > think that counts as playing the man rather than the board.
The whole idea of judging a player by his "error rate" presumes that the way to win at chess is to commit no errors.
But a quick look at players like Lasker, Tal, and Bronstein shows that there's another way: make an error in order to induce your opponent to make a bigger error.
Many of Tal's sacrifices would be considered errors by a chess program (and that's just counting the ones where you could expect a program to see it through to the end, in all variations, in however much time you gave it - and if you're only giving even a top program ten minutes a move, you're not getting there on a lot of sacrifices) but Tal wasn't trying to play perfect chess. He was trying to win games.
And judging by his results (a world championship; the longest undefeated streak in tournament games) he did so incredibly well.
To say, therefore, that he was making errors strikes me as somewhat absurd.
If the "error" was never intended to be an irrefutable move, and it leads directly to victory against a top player, how can you call it an error?
> In article <Pqq*QO...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, > David Richerby <dav...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>> > Now of course the surrebutter (rebuttal to the rebuttal) will be >> > that players like Tal will score poorly--and indeed they (he) >> > did--but let's face it, Tal was more of a shock player that relied >> > on playing the man rather than the board.
>> I'm not convinced by that assertion. Tal played games that were sound >> enough that they were very hard to defeat over the board. I don't >> think that counts as playing the man rather than the board.
> The whole idea of judging a player by his "error rate" presumes that the > way to win at chess is to commit no errors.
> But a quick look at players like Lasker, Tal, and Bronstein shows that > there's another way: make an error in order to induce your opponent to > make a bigger error.
> Many of Tal's sacrifices would be considered errors by a chess program > (and that's just counting the ones where you could expect a program to > see it through to the end, in all variations, in however much time you > gave it - and if you're only giving even a top program ten minutes a > move, you're not getting there on a lot of sacrifices) but Tal wasn't > trying to play perfect chess.
That's total rubbish "Ron". You're obviously someone who doesn't know much about the game of chess. Tal didn't set out to make errors, with the lamebrain idea that this would somehow cause his opponents to make bigger errors. Tal set out to create COMPLICATIONS for his opponents. Obviously Tal desired for all of his sacrifices to be sound and forcing, but no human can calculate everything to the end, so computer analysis has shown flaws in many of his games. This is meaningless, because he wasn't playing against computers.
Your comment is similiar to a common theme of beginner (or patzer) level thinking, ie: "I know this move is bad, but if he doesn't see Bxf7+ then it will be very good for me.
In article <c27Yh.131489$6m4.63198@pd7urf1no>, "Chess Sadist" <thespider...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> That's total rubbish "Ron". You're obviously someone who doesn't know much > about the game of chess. Tal didn't set out to make errors, with the > lamebrain idea that this would somehow cause his opponents to make bigger > errors. Tal set out to create COMPLICATIONS for his opponents. Obviously Tal > desired for all of his sacrifices to be sound and forcing, but no human can > calculate everything to the end, so computer analysis has shown flaws in > many of his games. This is meaningless, because he wasn't playing against > computers.
Have you read Tal's books?
I have. There are many time when he says things like, "It's clear 36. f4 was stronger," (Tal-Gligoric, Zagreb 59), or see his note to 5. ... Qc7 in Tal-Olaffson, Bled 1961 (a move he describes as "bad" - but that he clearly made intentionally) or, say, 10. a3 in Tal-Bagirov, Dnepropetrosk, 1970, which he describes as "in no way stronger than the approved Re1."
(I found these notes by basically opening "The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal" at random. Stuff like this is all over that book. You should try reading it sometime, before you talk about what Tal was, or wasn't, thinking. His book on his match with Botvinnik goes into even more depth on his thinking, again, and does a good job explaining the emphasis Tal put of psychology over soundness. And what is psychology, in chess, other than playing an inferior move which you think your opponent will respond badly too. In particular, I'd point you to his discussion of his 12th move of game 17.)
It's clear from his notes that he doesn't care if his sacrifices were "correct" or not. He made a move - which he knew could well be unsound - with the expectation that in the resulting position his opponents would play incorrectly.
That's pretty much the definition of "making an error to induce your opponent into making a bigger one."
On Apr 26, 11:00 am, David Richerby <dav...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> raylopez99 <raylope...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > I find the rebuttal by Dr. S=F8ren Riis, Oxford, UK unconvincing for > > a number of reasons.
> > - it was clearly written with a popular audience in mind (witness the > > exclamation point!
> Obviously, anything written with a popular audience in mind cannot > possibly be accurate.
No, but popular means not as accurate as a journal paper, which the original paper was. Otherwise it's like saying whoever wins this Usenet thread is right moreso than two chess researchers debating.
> > - it fails to understand the simple argument of 'normalization'. The > > Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko original article pointed out that Crafty > > was used since it was open source and could be modified; the stronger > > programs are not, but in any event Crafty is hardly a weak tactics > > program and the authors are looking for a standardized (normalized) > > way of spotting blunders.
> Just because they used the same system for everyone doesn't mean the > system was good or useful. For example, they could declare that every > king move is a blunder. That's consistent across all the players but > would declare players who tend to win in the endgame (where the king > gets moved more) to be weaker than players who tend to win in the > middlegame. You need to apply the same *good* measure to everyone.
That is the ideal, but my point stands--equally bad is not so bad. And BTW using your example, a player who wins in the middlegame is indeed probably stronger than one who wins in the endgame (it's tougher to win a short game--think of winning a chess brilliancy against equally matched opposition--than to grind out a win in the endgame. In fact, a standard technique I use to draw against my much more powerful chess playing computer is to reduce to the endgame and go for the draw).
> > -The fact that Riis found positional sacrifices not evaluated by > > Crafty is not convincing since: (1) such positional sacrifices are > > rare--as computers have shown, chess is largely tactics; (2) everybody > > will be judged equally by Crafty, so others pos sacs are also scored > > 'badly', so nobody will lose relative standing to one another
> No. A player who plays more positional sacrifices will be penalized > for playing moves that crafty doesn't understand.
No. See my point above. And chess is 99% tactics (famous quote).
> > and (3), as long as assumption (1) is valid, Crafty will find the > > most "mistake free" chess player, or one that plays closest to being > > "tactics mistake free", which is a very good way to determine a good > > chess player IMO.
> But World Champions make very few tactical mistakes.
Not true. Nearly all games are full of tactical mistakes, except perhaps at the correspondence chess level. I was reading a book by John Nunn ("Chess explained move by move") that makes this point in the preface--Nunn had a hard time finding 20 OTB games that were 'mistake free' for his book, after searching 1000s of games.
> > Now of course the surrebutter (rebuttal to the rebuttal) will be > > that players like Tal will score poorly--and indeed they (he) > > did--but let's face it, Tal was more of a shock player that relied > > on playing the man rather than the board.
> I'm not convinced by that assertion. Tal played games that were sound > enough that they were very hard to defeat over the board. I don't > think that counts as playing the man rather than the board.
But on balance Tal was a shock player. Deny that and you become a chess revisionist.
> > In a match of coolheaded Karpov or Kramnik versus Tal, all in their > > prime, the less emotional player is likely to win
> Hmm... The two Botvinnik-Tal matches between them were only won by > Botvinnik +12-11=19. Hardly a convincing victory for the cool head.
Pace Karpov's lifetime record against Tal, which is way positive. Of course it was a young Karpov against an older, sick Tal, but the point stands.
> > Think of all the bogus moves made by beginners, sacrificing knight > > for pawn, "to break up their pawn chain", with no positional > > advantage. If you believe chess is positional play more than > > tactics then such bogus moves should work more often than they do. > > They do not.
> This argument is bogus. Sacrificing a knight against one's opponent's > pawn structure is hardly a prime example of `positional chess'. You > might as well say that all the bogus tactical shots attempted by > beginners to `win material' or `checkmate the king' show that tactics > play a small role in chess.
Positional chess SACRIFICE was my point. A positional chess sacrifice is rare in chess is my point (goes to chess being 99% tactics). A positional chess sacrifice is one where you do indeed exchange knight for two pawns, so you're down a pawn, with no immeadiate hope of recapturing your lost material. But the positional gain will help you 20 moves from now. This is common in GO but not in chess.
On Apr 25, 10:26 pm, help bot <nomorech...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> You know, if you took the games of a typical (1300) rated > player and checked them with a dumbed-down-Crafty (1500), > you might get some useful information, but not nearly as > much as hoped for. But when you take the games of the > world champions and check them with a program which is > short of 2800, you get mainly garbage, combined with many > instances where a tactical oversight is correctly pinpointed.
But chess is 99% tactics help bot.
> You also penalize those players who *deliberately* chose > to play what they knew to be sub-optimal moves, for > whatever reason. I just did this myself at RedHotPawn, > choosing to grab a Knight rather than leap in with another > piece to set up a 95%-certain mating net. Why? Because > while the mating net was around 95% certain, the capture > of the free piece was 100% certain (unless I have lost my > mind)! When I spot another mating net, things should be > simple enough for me to get the 100% certainty I desire, > and having captured yet another piece, this is all but > inevitable, barring my opponent's resignation.
But you risk the chance of letting your opponent escape--remember the maxim: "always check, since the next move may be mate". Just recently I did not follow this move and instead of winning a pawn against my PC I drifted and eventually lost.
> Another item which these statistical analyses overlook > is the deliberate gift of, say, a half-point. These have > been known to occur in world championship level play, > and of course the "nice guys" will be penalized for not > being "tough players", despite clinching the match > with their action.
Keep in mind this was not a statistical analysis of the kind Sonas is famous for, but a different kind. Also over time the "nice guys" penalty will statistically average out.
> In short, what can be learned is who was least prone > to tactical blunders, and apparently, whose style leans > most toward a sizable gap between what the program > sees as the #1 optimal move, and #2 -- something I > think may be termed the sharpness of play. For one > example, I am playing a game at RedHot now where > I had to decide whether to develop my QB "normally" > via ...d6 and then B-moves somewhere, or fianchetto > via ...b6 and B-b7. It was a toss-up, since it makes > no difference whatever to the outcome. I expect a > computer would see both moves as being nearly > equal, weighing them in such a way as to slightly > favor the move which gives the Bishop immediate > control of squares, though this immediacy is quite > irrelevant to the true value of the moves.
Again, over time this will "wash out" or "average out". In general sharp play is better than just pushing yourself into a passive position, don't you think? That's what Crafty is looking for--sharp play. Sharp play = sharp mind bot!
> I wonder just how much time, and to what depth > the moves were analyzed before scoring them. I > recall that often a player's move may be scored poorly, > but if executed and stepped forward, a program may > change its mind completely about this, suddenly > realizing it had overlooked something.
No, you're talking about "move on opponent's time" feature. The way the study was done was to analyze each move for a fixed time, so no "changing of mind", and even if so, each player had the same scoring applied, so it doesn't really matter (over time). Besides, have you noticed that _MOST_ of the time (not always) the best move found by Fritz or Crafty in the first five seconds is also the best move found after 60 seconds? Because chess is 99% tactics, and often the tactics are no more than 4 moves deep (most of the time).
RL (a 1950 Elo player, so I can speak with some authority).
On Apr 26, 6:26 am, raylopez99 <raylope...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> - it fails to understand the simple argument of 'normalization'. The > Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko original article pointed out that Crafty > was used since it was open source and could be modified; the stronger > programs are not, but in any event Crafty is hardly a weak tactics > program and the authors are looking for a standardized (normalized) > way of spotting blunders.
But the test crippled Crafty by cutting off the search at only 12 plys. In a game between two patzers, this might be a minor flaw, but at the world championship level, things are not always so simple.
Although this cutting off at a specific ply makes it possible to duplicate the test on any computer, it may have been more useful to use a fixed time instead (provided the time is equal to or greater than the average time to complete 12 plys).
> -The fact that Riis found positional sacrifices not evaluated by > Crafty is not convincing since: (1) such positional sacrifices are > rare--as computers have shown,
No, they aren't. Only in games between patzers is the intentional sacrifice of material for position "rare".
> chess is largely tactics;
True. But not all tactics are visible at a depth of only 12 plys. Tactics can flow from positional advantage, with virtually no limit as to depth.
> (2) everybody > will be judged equally by Crafty,
Misjudged would be more accurate.
> so others pos sacs are also scored > 'badly', so nobody will lose relative standing to one another,
Except at random, due to all the errors.
> and (3), as long as assumption (1) is valid, Crafty will find the most > "mistake free" chess player, or one that plays closest to being > "tactics mistake free", which is a very good way to determine a good > chess player IMO.
But not good enough for these guys.
As all the world champions were good at tactics, it requires a bit of subtlety to differentiate between them.
> Now of course the surrebutter (rebuttal to the rebuttal) will be that > players like Tal will score poorly--and indeed they (he) did--but > let's face it, Tal was more of a shock player that relied on playing > the man rather than the board. In a match of coolheaded Karpov or > Kramnik versus Tal, all in their prime, the less emotional player is > likely to win
A silly statement. As we saw, the wild, attacking style of GK gave GM Karpov a very hard time, except for their very first match. How was GM Tal, in his prime, all that different from GM Kasparov?
Another example was the cool, calm, collected Bobby Fischer, who was overwhelmed by GM Tal in his prime, and who calmly observed after the fact that GM Tal's hyper-aggressive play was "unsound".
> (unless he loses his cool and loses...haha... think of > Topolov vs Kramnik). Also nobody ever became champion ignoring > tactics. > That is the lesson of chess. Think of all the bogus moves > made by beginners, sacrificing knight for pawn, "to break up their > pawn chain", with no positional advantage. If you believe chess is > positional play more than tactics then such bogus moves should work > more often than they do. They do not.
It's not this simple. The world champions are all competent at tactics, so the differences between them are more subtle than just "who was the best tactician".
> So, understanding how chess works, and how chess playing computers > work, and having seen Crafty evaluate pretty good myself, I have to > side with the original article.
If you mean the one I think, it was horribly skewered by a whole slew of critics under "Reader's Feedback", in addition to all the points made by the various critics who had their articles published.
The primary issue is not that computers are incapable of ranking the world champions by accuracy, it is that attempting to do this with a crippled Crafty and just the games from the world championships is a poor method.
I would have preferred a deeper analysis by a stronger program of all their important games, in conjunction with a side-by-side subjective analysis of the same games by a human GM who, instead of tweaking the program to suit his whims/preconceptions, simply comments on where he thinks the program went astray.
The ideal might be the HAL9000 computer "discussing" the games and results in plain English, and giving "his" considered opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of each of the world champions, as seen by a program rated (in the future) 9000 USCF. :>D
On Apr 26, 2:00 pm, David Richerby <dav...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> > In a match of coolheaded Karpov or Kramnik versus Tal, all in their > > prime, the less emotional player is likely to win
> Hmm... The two Botvinnik-Tal matches between them were only won by > Botvinnik +12-11=19. Hardly a convincing victory for the cool head.
In the first match, won by GM Tal, he often stood worse out of the opening but maintained a cool head, realizing the only chance was to complicate, apply pressure to the opponent's King, to randomize the position a bit. It was GM Botvinnik who choked, rather than maintaining his coolness.
In the second match, the annoying attacks were fended off in part by a switch to different openings which were less conducive to GM Tal's wild, attacking style. It should not be assumed that GM Tal was a hothead, while his victims were all coolheaded.
> > That's total rubbish "Ron". You're obviously someone who doesn't know much > > about the game of chess. Tal didn't set out to make errors, with the > > lamebrain idea that this would somehow cause his opponents to make bigger > > errors. Tal set out to create COMPLICATIONS for his opponents. Obviously Tal > > desired for all of his sacrifices to be sound and forcing, but no human can > > calculate everything to the end, so computer analysis has shown flaws in > > many of his games. This is meaningless, because he wasn't playing against > > computers.
> Have you read Tal's books?
> I have. There are many time when he says things like, "It's clear 36. f4 > was stronger," (Tal-Gligoric, Zagreb 59), or see his note to 5. ... Qc7 > in Tal-Olaffson, Bled 1961 (a move he describes as "bad" - but that he > clearly made intentionally) or, say, 10. a3 in Tal-Bagirov, > Dnepropetrosk, 1970, which he describes as "in no way stronger than the > approved Re1."
> (I found these notes by basically opening "The Life and Games of Mikhail > Tal" at random. Stuff like this is all over that book. You should try > reading it sometime, before you talk about what Tal was, or wasn't, > thinking. His book on his match with Botvinnik goes into even more depth > on his thinking, again, and does a good job explaining the emphasis Tal > put of psychology over soundness. And what is psychology, in chess, > other than playing an inferior move which you think your opponent will > respond badly too. In particular, I'd point you to his discussion of his > 12th move of game 17.)
> It's clear from his notes that he doesn't care if his sacrifices were > "correct" or not. He made a move - which he knew could well be unsound - > with the expectation that in the resulting position his opponents would > play incorrectly.
Mr. Mitchell has made a serious error here in equating game commentary after the fact with what a player may have been thinking at the time.
All of these games have been annotated -- often after looking at notations by others -- by such players as GM Tal. This in no way means that if, say, GM Kortchnoi said move x was better and then GM Tal wrote in his book that move x was better (since he agreed), that at the time the game was played GM Tal *saw* that move x was better, but deliberately chose to play a stupid move instead!
On the contrary, in match one against GM Botvinnik, GM Tal often points out that he had to choose a different line because his old choice had failed the last time out. In effect, he readily admits when his openings were poor, despite having won the game anyway.
Besides, those books on GM Tal, by GM Tal, were all written by someone we now know to be a horrible patzer, thanks to crippled-Crafty! :>D
>So, understanding how chess works, and how chess playing computers >work, and having seen Crafty evaluate pretty good myself, I have to >side with the original article.
I would not go so far as to say that I side with the original argument, only that Riis' objections were groundless. In fact, the original authors have done some groundbreaking work on developing a methodology to rate chess players. It is, at the very least, very interesting, and a refreshing change from the pseudo-science historical ELO/chessmetrics stuff. The problem with the work is that it applies a new method to a very hard problem (ranking world champions) when they haven't even shown the method's worth when applied to easy problems (ranking everybody else).
I have previously expressed belief in the theory that "move rating" will eventually surpass "result rating" as the gold standard measurement of chess skill. This is a small first step, but there is much work left to do.
On Apr 26, 3:18 pm, Ron <ronaldinh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> The whole idea of judging a player by his "error rate" presumes that the > way to win at chess is to commit no errors.
> But a quick look at players like Lasker, Tal, and Bronstein shows that > there's another way: make an error in order to induce your opponent to > make a bigger error.
Right. This is precisely the, um, strategy I use when I make all my errors. I am deliberately failing to see the correct move and instead playing a turkey, with the intention of inducing a similar blunder by my opponent. Of course, I could always find the best move if I really wanted to; I just *want* to play poorly. ;>D
> Many of Tal's sacrifices would be considered errors by a chess program > (and that's just counting the ones where you could expect a program to > see it through to the end, in all variations, in however much time you > gave it - and if you're only giving even a top program ten minutes a > move, you're not getting there on a lot of sacrifices) but Tal wasn't > trying to play perfect chess. He was trying to win games.
This is why it is rather unfair to try and judge competitive players by how closely their moves match up to a chess program; the program is under no pressure to protect its title, for instance. Nor is it ever faced with stupid questions from reporters like- Q: "In game one, why did you allow 42.Q-g7 mate?" A: "As world champion, I never overlook such things. Clearly then, I must have been offered, and accepted, a huge bribe, of say, ten billion dollars. Pardon me, but I *must* get to the bank before it closes. The interest I'm losing as we speak is KILLING me!"
> And judging by his results (a world championship; the longest undefeated > streak in tournament games) he did so incredibly well.
Because of all the hype surrounding GM Fischer and all the controversies brought on by Cold War politics, we seldom remember that even as BF was taking the title from the "evil axis" in 1972, at the same time GM Tal was undergoing a period of near invincibility -- the streak you mentioned above. Countless fans of BF will recount a 6-0 match victory or two, while never once realizing the simultaneous exploits of GM Tal, who by the way, "took" the year 1972 according to Chessmetrics, over GM Fischer!
> To say, therefore, that he was making errors strikes me as somewhat > absurd.
If we go by what GM Botvinnik said, only Tigran Petrosian never made any (combinational) errors. (In the position after 1.e4 Nc6 2.Qh5 Nb8 3.Qxf7+, one would be wise to decline the sac according to GM Botvinnik's advice, if GM Petrosian has White.)
> If the "error" was never intended to be an irrefutable move, and it > leads directly to victory against a top player, how can you call it an > error?
All this shows is how closely a given player's world championship games matched up with move selections by a crippled Crafty. I don't know about you, but if I were world champion, I would hope to be a bit stronger than crippled Crafty, and want my moves to match up well in simple tactical exchanges, but not otherwise.
I really think the scope of such a statistical analysis ought to have been limited to finding out which world champion was the least afflicted by a tendency to blunder, and which was most afflicted.
In article <1177635208.140743.116...@c18g2000prb.googlegroups.com>, help bot <nomorech...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Mr. Mitchell has made a serious error here in > equating game commentary after the fact with > what a player may have been thinking at the > time.
> All of these games have been annotated -- > often after looking at notations by others -- by > such players as GM Tal. This in no way means > that if, say, GM Kortchnoi said move x was > better and then GM Tal wrote in his book that > move x was better (since he agreed), that at > the time the game was played GM Tal *saw* > that move x was better, but deliberately chose > to play a stupid move instead!
Is "Mr. Mitchell" supposed to be me?
In all of the cases I cited, it's clear that Tal is talking about what he saw during the game, not about his after-the-fact analysis.
Tal does quite a bit of this in his books. He'll give notes from after-the-fact analysis, but he tends to focus much more than most players on what he saw, when, and what his motivations were for playing.
So, nice try, but you're actually completely wrong here.
On Apr 26, 9:24 pm, "David Kane" <davidek...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >So, understanding how chess works, and how chess playing computers > >work, and having seen Crafty evaluate pretty good myself, I have to > >side with the original article.
> I would not go so far as to say that I side with the original argument, > only that Riis' objections were groundless. In fact, the original authors > have done some groundbreaking work on developing a > methodology to rate chess players. It is, at the very least, > very interesting, and a refreshing change from the pseudo-science > historical ELO/chessmetrics stuff. The problem with the work is > that it applies a new method to a very hard problem (ranking > world champions) when they haven't even shown the method's > worth when applied to easy problems (ranking everybody else).
It seems to me that the above comments themselves do a decent job of showing how the "groundbreaking work" is little different from ChessMetrics' pseudo-science.
------
In one of the defenses to a criticism, it was argued that even a weak chess program could be utilized effectively to rank players, due to a strong correlation of some sort. But in constructing their example to demonstrate how this works, the authors (as always) made some invalid assumptions; in this particular case, that apart from the single strongest move in a given position, the remaining choices are distributed or chosen evenly. Obviously, the remaining move choices are anything but equal, and how a player chooses among them is a big part of how strongly they play. The stronger the player, the more likely he would be to go for #2 as opposed to #10 (granting the oddball assumption of exactly ten choices per position). All these invalid assumptions come off as a clueless math major having fun "playing around with" numbers which just happen to relate to chess.
Thus far, the only works I have seen which are not seriously flawed in terms of logic and reason, were a few of the brief criticisms of the published works by the math whiz-kids.
Ron <ronaldinh...@hotmail.com> wrote: > The whole idea of judging a player by his "error rate" presumes that > the way to win at chess is to commit no errors.
Well, it worked for Petrosian. ;-)
> [...] Tal wasn't trying to play perfect chess. He was trying to win > games.
