Not Mainstream Stories 2020-01

Another month drawing to an end, another month without any chess stories being flagged by Yahoo news as a proxy for the mainstream press. Last month I had Under the FIDE Flag, and this month I short listed three stories for a possible post. I couldn't decide on one alone, so I'll mention all three.

The first 'story' was more of a theme than a story. Like the 'FIDE Flag' post, it involved Iran.

• 2020-01-15: Iranian Chess Official Fears Going Home Over Hijab Images (nytimes.com) • 'Shohreh Bayat said she was afraid of returning to Iran after an image of her at a chess tournament abroad seemed to show her not wearing a hijab.'
  
  
• 2020-01-28: Hijab Limits Women, Says Iranian Chess Master Sacked From National Team (radiofarda.com) • 'The Iranian female chess grandmaster Mitra Hejazipour who was sacked from the national team for boldly removing her headscarf (hijab) during the World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championship in Moscow, has said that hijab is "limitation" not "protection" as official regime propaganda claims.'

The second story was about a well known chess publisher and former chess blogger: Chess Museum (2009-2011) and Chess Toast (2011-2013).

• 2020-01-11: Prolific chess author slain (chessbase.com) • 'Chess author and publisher Bob Long has reportedly been murdered in his home in Davenport, Iowa, USA, according to local news media. ChessBase author IM Andrew Martin was a long-time friend and sent this reflection.'

The third story wasn't really about chess, but built on a theme that has been weighing heavily with the chess community for the last two years.

• 2020-01-28: Can AlphaZero Leap From Go & Chess to Quantum Computing? (medium.com) • 'A new study suggests DeepMind’s amazing game-playing algorithm AlphaZero could help unlock the power and potential of quantum computing.'

All three stories are worthy of a follow-up post, but given my track record with follow-ups, I wouldn't advise anyone to bet on it.

TCEC PCT Handicap Events

In last week's post on the engine-vs-engine tournaments, TCEC S17 L2, CCC12 Rd.3 Underway, I neglected to mention a series of small events that took place between the TCEC Qualification League (QL) and its League 2 (L2). These were five events with names like:-

S17 - Stockfish 1pct vs L2 Test 1 [through 'Test 5']

L2 has since finished and the TCEC is running a new series with similar names:-

S17 - Stockfish 3pct vs CPU L1 Test 1 [currently 'Test 2']

What are these 'pct' events? The site's help explains:-

!pct • tcecSF 0.3%, 1%, 3% and 10% are time odds games: tcecSF has only that amount of time compared to opponent. Both main time and increment is scaled down to given %. Hash size and Move Overhead is also scaled down.

!10pct • Only 10% of thinking time: 30min+5s -> 3min+0.5s; 45min+5s -> 4.5min+0.5s; 1min+1s -> 6s+0.1s

[...]

'Time odds'; OK. 'Hash size scaled down'; OK. 'Move overhead scaled down'; what does that mean? A forum post from a few years ago, The truth about time losses (groups.google.com/forum/fishcooking; September 2017), has a long discussion of the parameter and explains:-

Basic flaw is not properly taking into account future time losses due to communication delays (the thing that Move Overhead was supposed to compensate for).

In other words, 'Move Overhead' accounts for administrative tasks involved in the engine's communications with its environment; OK. How are we supposed to interpret the results of the seven 'pct' tournaments I mentioned earlier? TBD.

FIDE Drug Testing

Many people treat the subject like a joke, but as an integral aspect of The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), drug testing is taken seriously by those responsible for organized chess. Last month, on my World Championship Blog, I had a post on the World Anti-Doping Agency (see WADA Ya Know?), and this month I have a video interview with Dr. Marape Marape, Chairman of the FIDE Medical Commission (fide.com).

Interview with Dr. Marape Marape | World Blitz Ch 2019 | Day 2 (7:37) • '[Published on] Dec 30, 2019'

At about 5:30 into the clip, Dr. Marape (pronounced mah-rah-pay) says,

Chess is generally considered a low risk sport for doping. There are drugs, what I call stimulant drugs. Those are the ones that we are most interested in. Stimulant drugs include amphetamines and others that can give a player some performance advantage in terms of their ability to stay alert and to be able to concentrate for a longer period of time.

For an earlier interview on the same FIDE chess channel, see FIDE World Cup 2019. Interview with Dr. Marape Marape (youtube.com; September 2019). Elsewhere on the web, a FIDE spokesperson informs, 'Dr. Marape is from Botswana. He is also the father of a very talented young player, Naledi Marape.'

I Was FIDE's 'Person of the Day'

Since its complete makeover a few months ago, FIDE's website gets no respect. Case in point: Coffee, Chess, the FIDE webpage & other Goofiness (spraggettonchess.com), where we find this informed commentary:-

The Mad, Mad World of FIDE’s Home Page • FIDE's new website has been almost universally criticized in the online chess community. For one reason or the other, such as requiring too much scrolling to find what you are looking for, unfriendly and difficult navigation, incomplete player information and ratings, too crowded with BIG images and confusing layout, too much in your face, etc.

To that I would add a severe shrinking of news about FIDE's current activities. The site appears to be on information lockdown. But all is not lost. Next to 'Top players', under 'Person of the day' you'll find a search on the 'Players database'. I entered my own last name and got this...

...That's my name, my birth year, the flag of my federation, and my last published rating; but that's not my photo. My guess is that it's The other M.Weeks (May 2006), aka 'Manuel William Weeks' of Australia. I suppose I should submit my own photo to FIDE, but how?

***

Later: Re 'I should submit my own photo to FIDE', how about this one? (With apologies to the great Groucho.)

TCEC S17 L2, CCC12 Rd.3 Underway

Two weeks ago,in TCEC S17, CCC12 Both Underway, I reported on the status of the top two engine-vs-engine competitions. Here's a summary of that report:-

TCEC: The 16 AB/CPU engines in the QL [Qualification League] stage are nearing the half-way point. • CCC: CCC12 is being run using a bracket format. Four engines in rd.1 compete for two slots in the 16-engine rd.2. Half of the remaining engines will be eliminated in each round. The first match 'CCC12.1' is currently underway.

Both competitions have advanced further. Following is a snapshot of their current status.

TCEC: The QL stage finished with half of the engines qualifying into the next stage, League 2 (L2). The following chart shows the full results for the eight qualifiers.

L2 is currently underway and has reached the half-way point. The top finisher in the QL stage, Defenchess, has an excellent chance of qualifying into L1, the next stage.

CCC: CCC12 rounds 1 & 2 have finished, and the last of four matches for rd.3 is currently underway. None of the matches in rds.1 & -2 was closely contested. Houdini beat Lc0-CPU convincingly in rd.2, then lost to Lc0 (-GPU) in rd.3 by nearly the same score.

A few days ago, in Stockfish 11 (forum/fishcooking), the Stockfish team announced the 'Official release version of Stockfish 11'. For an idea about its relative playing strength, see Stockfish 11 (talkchess.com).

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page. • NB: Leela = LC0 = LCzero]

One Bar in Bangkok

The description for this photo said,

A backlit decoration behind the counter of a bar in Bangkok, Thailand.

Bangkok, Thailand. Wasn't that the venue for a fictional World Chess Championship?

Backlight Decoration in a Bar © Flickr user Peter Addor under Creative Commons.

A 1984 planetary hit started like this:-

Bangkok, Oriental setting
And the city don't know that the city is getting
The creme de la creme of the chess world
In a show with everything but Yul Brynner

The song's chorus started like this:-

One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free

With 336 views and 25 faves, the photo has something going for it. Cheers!

FIDE Rating List - January 2020

Another year, another FIDE Rating List (FRL). In last year's post, FIDE Rating List - January 2019, I wrote,

The format of the file was the same as in recent years, so it was easy to add it to my database that goes back to 1971.

Ditto for this year's post, with the additional observation that the January 2020 FRL marks the 50th anniversary since the publication of the first list. The year 2020 has another special characteristic -- for the first time the number of active players is less than the number of inactive players. Here's an update to the table I've been maintaining for the past few years:-

• 2020: >354K players; >181K marked inactive
• 2019: >325K players; >157K marked inactive
• [...]

For the record, the data I'm working with is from the FIDE Ratings Download:-

STANDARD
TXT format (01 Jan 2020, Sz: 7.88 MB)

These days there are so many FIDE rating lists that some limiting criterion is necessary, so I'll just continue with that plain vanilla FRL. As for federations, I discovered three code changes, shown at the top of the following chart. The first two lines look like a code change for the 'Democratic Republic of Congo'. The third line, LCA ('Saint Lucia'; a Caribbean island), must be a new federation. Its highest rated player is Martyr, Reginald, who was listed under TTO ('Trinidad & Tobago') in 2019.

As for the two lists in the bottom of the chart, they show (1) federations with the largest year-over-year increase in players, and (2) federations with the largest percentage increase (for federations with 100 or more players in 2019). Compare the similar charts in last year's post.