Interview Videos : Aronian

It's time to close the series on improving my chess engines -- at least for now -- and move on to another topic. I've summarized the engine series at the end of this post and have calculated that, at the rate of one player per week, I have just enough time to review the eight players who will be starting the 2018 Berlin Candidates Tournament in March. I did the same for the 2016 Moscow Candidates Tournament, which I started in Instructional Videos : Carlsen (January 2016), and summarized in Instructional Videos : the Candidates (March 2016):-

We started this series of instructional videos with the current World Champion, GM Carlsen, then worked through each of the eight candidates for a title match later this year: Anand, Aronian, Caruana, Giri, Karjakin, Nakamura, Svidler, and Topalov.

In 2016, I featured instructional videos showing each player analyzing a game. This time I'll feature each player being interviewed after a game. The eight players, in alphabetical order, are GMs Aronian (*), Caruana (*), Ding Liren, Grischuk, Karjakin (*), Kramnik, Mamedyarov, and Wesley So. Players with an asterisk ('*') after their names also played in the 2016 Candidates. Let's start with the first player in the list, the ever-popular GM Aronian, who is certainly one of the favorites to win the event.

Levon Aronian Wins Chess World Cup 2017 (6:32) • 'Published on Sep 27, 2017'

The video's description said,

Levon Aronian Beats Ding Liren; Chess World Cup 2017; Final; Tie Breaks

Aronian had just won the 2017 Tbilisi World Cup, where he and his final opponent, Ding Liren, both qualified into the 2018 Candidates.

***

As for the series on chess engines, I started with a look at the most important components.

• 2017-10-30: Improve Engine Software
• 2017-11-06: Improve Engine Hardware - Specs
• 2017-11-13: Improve Engine Hardware - Parts List
• 2017-11-20: Improve Engine Hardware - High Performance
• 2017-11-27: Improve Engine Software - Tablebases

Then I looked at TCEC Season 10, which was entering its final weeks.

• 2017-12-04: Engine-to-engine, Head-to-head
• 2017-12-11: Houdini, Komodo, Stockfish, and AlphaZero

As that last item hints, a powerful newcomer, AlphaZero, appeared during the last days of the TCEC, and I spent some time to review its underlying technology.

• 2017-12-08: A New Style of Chess [Video Friday series]
• 2017-12-18: The Constellation of AlphaZero
• 2018-01-08: The Lineage of AlphaZero
• 2018-01-15: AlphaGo Netflix

I'll come back to the subject for TCEC Season 11, which is currently underway, and for a deeper look at AlphaZero.