TCEC Season 8 Superfinal Week 4

In the previous post, TCEC Season 8 Superfinal Week 3, we left Komodo and Stockfish, our cyberchess warriors, with an 'overall score of +5-1=69'. During the intervening week, Komodo added +3-1=16 to the score, bringing the total to +8-2=85 after 95 games.

A little later Chessdom.com announced, Komodo is triple champion, wins the Top Chess Engine Championship 2015! (*), adding, 'Komodo secured the victory with score 50.5 – 44.5'. The rules stipulated,

If the match is theoretically won for one side before game 100, the match will still continue until all 100 games have been played.

so the two engines slugged it out for another +1-0=4, Komodo scoring the lone decisive point. This was an epic match, worthy of inclusion in the long list of such matches stretching back to 1834 Labourdonnais - McDonnell and including the five 1980s-1990 Kasparov - Karpov clashes. It was a real treat for me to switch on my second laptop at any time of the day or night and watch the two antagonists tirelessly clubbing each other with ideas and moves that I can't pretend to understand.

Congratulations to everyone involved in producing this unique event. The live event page, tcec.chessdom.com/live, lists under 'About TCEC',

Special thanks: Martin Thoresen, Marit Thoresen, Paolo Casaschi, Matthias Gemuh and Jeremy Bernstein.

with an additional 'Thank you' to a long list of individuals:-

Marit Thoresen, Anton Mihailov, Paolo Casaschi, Matthias Gemuh, Jeremy Bernstein, Ivan Anev, GM Ioannis Papadopoulos, FM Dennis Monokroussos, Santiago Méndez, Peter Petrov, Nelson Hernandez, Adam Hair, Mark Uniacke, Amir Ban, Miguel Ballicora, Roberto Munter, Robert Houdart, Lukas Cimiotti, Don Dailey, Mark Lefler, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, Ubaldo Andrea Farina, Marco Costalba, Gary Linscott, Jon Dart, Raimund Heid, L-Å Lander (LaRzZa), Tord Romstad, Giancarlo Delli Colli, Richard Pijl, Ben-Hur Carlos Vieira Langoni Junior, Vadim Demichev, Johannes Zwanzger, Robert Hyatt, Onno Garms, Daniel Shawul, Engin Uestuen, Jim Ablett, Izak Pretorius, Sam Hamilton, Edsel Apostol, Martijn Grimme, Hans van der Zijden, Andrei Olsen, Dean Ellis, Eivind Skifjeld, Paul Frigge, Jon Erik Braenden, Kevin Plant, Frederic Labertit, Alcides Schulz, James I. Hymas, Julien Marcel, Dan Schmidt, Enrico Fagiuoli, Jeffrey Hall, Edwin Meiners, Bill Rust, Bram Mourik, Øystein Schønning-Johansen, Brian Richardson, Kim Burcham, John Rood and everyone who has donated to support TCEC.

(*) At some point, probably between Season 7 and Season 8, TCEC came to mean 'Top Chess Engine Championship' rather than the name 'Thoresen CEC' used in previous competitions. Whatever the name, a footnote to the tcec.chessdom.com/live page adds, 'TCEC is powered by pgn4web and cutechess-cli'.

Once again, congratulations to all!

***

A curiosity of the last week was game 83, which was played twice. Komodo was winning the game, which was restarted after the TCEC server crashed. The moment was captured and recorded in chat accompanied by the following image.

'Ray Fowler: Here is the position of 83a at the server crash. Notice that the bishops were gone:

http://www.java-moo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/game83a1-1024x743.png
(chatWING)'

Komodo eventually won the replayed game.

Chess Curriculum - ChessKid/Chess.com

As so often happens, the first shall be last, and the series within a series that started with Chess Curriculum Inventory (June 2015), ends with the first item on the initial short list. From the first post in the series, Chess Curriculum (April 2015) :-

No.1: ChessKid.com's Curriculum! • ChessKid.com is a spinoff of Chess.com and the download link leads directly to that site. The downloaded ZIP file creates five sections with a total of 20 lessons. The introduction says,

With the ChessKid.com Curriculum we set out to create an original, creative and extremely "kid friendly" way of learning the game of chess! While acquiring knowledge of the rules, basic fundamentals, as well as advanced strategies and tactics – coaches and beginning chess players alike will enjoy working through these lessons.

From the inventory:-

No.1: ChessKid.com Curriculum - Welcome & Introduction • Daniel Rensch, Co-Director of Content and Professional Relations • 12 pages (Introduction.pdf) • ChessKid_Curriculum.zip (-> Directory:ChessKid_Curriculum -> 5 Subdirectories = 22 PDF documents)

The last curriculum to be considered is also the most extensive. While I take the time to look through it in more depth, here's a recent video showing its author in an entertaining attempt to solve chess puzzles live.

23 Chess Puzzles In 23 Minutes (36:44) • 'IM Daniel Rensch tries to solve 23 daily Chess.com puzzles in 23 minutes -- can he beat the clock?'

Chess Bloopers

Many of these clips are classics and it's a real treat finding them all in a single video.

Hilarious Chess Moments Collection (13:56) • 'Kasparov, Carlsen, Anand, Ivanchuk, Svidler, Karpov, Spassky, Korchnoi, Grischuk...'

12.730 views and counting -- everyone loves this stuff. What's not to like?

Ethics in Chess Politics - Stories

My previous post, Ethics in Chess Politics - Cases, listed nine recent cases considered by the FIDE Ethics Commission, all involving chess politics in some form. In this post, I'll look at the original stories behind those cases.

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'Case 5/2014: Complaint of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov against Ignatius Leong and Garry Kasparov regarding agreements' and 'Case 7/2014: Complaint of the Philippines and Kenya Chess Federations against Kirsan Ilyumzhinov'

Both stories received widespread coverage during last year's FIDE presidential election. The decision of the Ethics Committee on the first (Case 5/2014: 'Respondents found guilty of breach of par 2.1 of FIDE Code of Ethics') received considerable coverage this year. For example, Peter Doggers' Chess.com report, Kasparov, Leong Found Guilty Of Breaching FIDE Code Of Ethics (September 2015), gave a summary of the entire affair which broke early in 2014.

The story behind the second decision (Case 7/2014: 'Respondent found to be not guilty and case dismissed') is not so obvious. A post on Kasparov2014.com, Kasparov's campaign site, blandly titled Open Letter from Continental Candidates, helps make the connection.

The complaint to the FIDE Ethics Commission regarding the Agon scandal submitted by Githinji Hinga of Kenya and Prospero Pichay of Philippines is attached herewith.

An accompanying attachment, Agon-Complaint-6-June-2014.pdf, now gives a '404 Not Found' message, but there are plenty of web reports from last year. See, for example, another Chess.com report by Peter Doggers titled, Leaked Agreement Between Ilyumzhinov & Paulson Suggests Conflict of Interest (January 2014).

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'Case 8/2014: Complaint by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov against Garry Kasparov regarding an unsigned / proposed agreement for the support of the Salvadorian Chess Federation' and 'Case 10/2014: Complaint of Garry Kasparov against Margaret Murphy, Darcy Lima and Bharat Singh regarding alleged irregularities in Electoral Commission'

These two cases received less coverage from the chess press, but were also related to the 2014 FIDE election. The first (Case 8/2014: 'complaint withdrawn by Mr Ilyumzhinov') is mentioned on the English Chess Forum in a long thread titled Kasparov vs Ilyumzhinov: the FIDE Presidency battle begins (page 48, May 2014).

The corruption scandals escalate with another breaking story of Kasparov via Mig Greengard allegedly trying to buy the votes of Latin American countries (specific mention is made of El Salvador) for $30,000 each.

The second (Case 10/2014: 'complaint held to be not admissible') was reported on Chess.com by Mike Klein in Delegate Issues Deepen for FIDE Elections (July 2014), referencing the three FIDE representatives listed on the complaint.

Every federation gets exactly one vote at the 85th FIDE Congress, but who exactly gets to represent each federation is not as simple as it seems. The battle to select or recognize certain delegates represents a back-channel method for each candidate to improve his chances of election.

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'Case 13/2014: Complaint of European Chess Federation against S Danailov, V Sakotic and S Stoisavljenic' and 'Case 14/2014: Complaint of Montenegro Chess Federation against V Sakotic and S Stoisavljenic'

The next two cases involved the 2013 European Youth Championships in Montenegro. In Organization of EYCC in Budva broke the law, authorities said (March 2014), Chessdom.com reported,

Montenegro Directorate of Youth and Sport, a government body, inspected the documents and accounts of 13 sport federations and 7 clubs. The inspection found that the Montenegro Chess Federation broke the law during the organization of 2013 European Youth Chess Championships in Budva, "Sahovska Hronika" quoted the Montenegrin News Agency MINA.

The report mentioned European Chess Union (ECU) President Silvio Danailov and Montenegro Chess Federation President (also ECU Executive Director) Vladimir Sakotic. ECU Secretary General was Sava Stoisavljevic. Since both cases had the same status -- 'complaint held admissible and respondents appealed to CAS; appeal pending' -- there's not much more to be said at this time.

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'Case 4/2015: Complaint by K Georgiev, S Stoichkov and M Stoynev against Bulgarian Chess Federation' and 'Case 5/2015: Complaint by Bulgarian Chess Federation against Z Azmaiparashvili and T Tsorbatzoglou'

Two more ethics cases involve the Bulgarian Chess Federation. The first (Case 4/2015: 'complaint held admissible and matter awaits exchange of statements regarding the merits') was reported by Chessdom.com: Bulgarian Chess Federation in deep trouble, investigation by the Chief prosecutor announced at a press conference (June 2015); and Chess.com: Bulgarian Chess Federation Bans Whistleblowers, Danailov To Run For FIDE President (June 2015).

Last Thursday, Chess.com reported on a recent press conference where the Bulgarian Chess Federation was accused of fraud and corruption by GM Kiril Georgiev, Metodi Stoinev and Simeon Stoichkov. On Friday, during a management board meeting, all three were banned from the federation.

The second (Case 5/2015: 'decision regarding admissibility held over until outcome of CAS appeal in case 13/2014 [as above]') is on Danailov's web site, Danailov-for-president.com: BCF complaint vs. Zurab Azmaiparashvili and Theodoros Tsorbatzoglou regarding flagrant violations of the FIDE Code of Ethics (July 2015).

Bulgarian Chess Federation sent to FIDE Ethics Commission complaint vs. current ECU President Zurab Azmaiparashvili and ECU Secretary General Theodoros Tsorbatzoglou regarding flagrant violations of the FIDE Code of Ethics.

The CAS appeal was reported by Chess.com: More Clashes Between FIDE, Silvio Danailov (May 2015).

Danailov has appealed to a ruling from the FIDE Ethics Commission at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne. In the fall of 2014, the Ethics Commission had received complaints from the European Chess Union (under a new administration since August 2014) and the Montenegro Chess Federation concerning the organization of the 2013 European Youth Chess Championship in Budva, Montenegro. [...] The Ethics Commission "has neither direct nor indirect (extended) jurisdiction to resolve on the issues raised in the complaints, it has no instruments to adjudicate on them..."

The CAS is generally the last stop in FIDE legal matters.

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'Case 3/2015: Complaint by Michaela Sandu against Natalia Zhukova and 14 other players'

The final 'political' case is a twist on the typical charge of cheating and is in process (Case 3/2015: 'for false accusations of cheating -- matter awaits appointment of Investigatory Chamber'). In Chess championship rocked by thinly-veiled allegations of cheating (June 2015), Malcolm Pein of Telegraph.co.uk reported,

The European Women’s Championship at Chakvi in Georgia was marred by some thinly-veiled allegations of cheating made against the early leader WGM Mihaela Sandu of Romania, who started the tournament with five straight wins.

A proper look at this case should discuss the evolving relationship between the Ethics Commission and the FIDE Anti-Cheating Committee. I'll save that for another time.

Ethics in Chess Politics - Cases

The topic of ethics -- or lack of it -- is a growth industry. Everywhere you look someone is accusing someone else of some sort of ethical slip and international chess is no exception. In the nearly two years since I last looked at the FIDE Ethics Commission in Ethics and Cheating (December 2013), the commission has not stood still.

As I recently mentioned in The Resurrection of Agon,

A few months ago I prepared a short series on Spectating the 86th FIDE Congress (September 2015), with closer looks at two topics of particular interest: Chess in Schools and the Journalist Commission. FIDE has just released a new batch of documents.

Those new documents include two annexes of particular interest:-

46. Minutes of Anti-Cheating Committee.
[...]
52. Minutes of Ethics Commission.

For some reason Annex 52, covering 23 cases involving ethical accusations, has been released as a scanned document. It starts like this...

Annex 52

...In order to make some sense of its terse, legalistic content, I'll start by transcribing (that's a fancy term that means running OCR software) its summaries of the most interesting cases. Then in another post I'll match those cases back to reports that documented the original ethical question. These cases are often reported in the chess press without a follow-up, which some might consider an ethical lapse in itself.

For me the most interesting cases are those that involve some sort of political angle. For example, here is closure of an infamous case involving computer chess that I looked at last month in The Rybka - ICGA Ethics Judgement. Annex 52 informs,

Case 2/2012: Complaint of Mr V Rajlich and C Whittington against International Computer Games Association (ICGA) regarding alleged ethical breaches during internal disciplinary procedure -- Respondent found guilty and sanctioned with a warning (judgment prepared by Roberto Rivello).

Here are other famous, infamous, and not-so-famous cases involving chess politics.

Case 5/2014: Complaint of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov against Ignatius Leong and Garry Kasparov regarding agreements for cooperation in the FIDE elections and the payment of consideration in exchange for written pledges or proxies -- Respondents found guilty of breach of par 2.1 of FIDE Code of Ethics; procedure for sanctioning pending.

Case 7/2014: Complaint of the Philippines and Kenya Chess Federations against Kirsan Ilyumzhinov alleging the FIDE President no longer inspires the necessary confidence or has become unworthy of trust -- Respondent found to be not guilty and case dismissed.

Case 8/2014: Complaint by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov against Garry Kasparov regarding an unsigned / proposed agreement for the support of the Salvadorian Chess Federation of Mr Kasparov in the FIDE elections and chess development in El Salvador -- complaint withdrawn by Mr Ilyumzhinov.

Case 10/2014: Complaint of Garry Kasparov against Margaret Murphy, Darcy Lima and Bharat Singh regarding alleged irregularities in Electoral Commission -- complaint held to be not admissible.

Case 13/2014: Complaint of European Chess Federation against S Danailov, V Sakotic and S Stoisavljevic regarding the organisation of the 2013 European Youth Championships in Montenegro -- complaint held admissible and respondents appealed to CAS; appeal pending.

Case 14/2014: Complaint of Montenegro Chess Federation against V Sakotic and S Stoisavljevic regarding the organisation of the 2013 European Youth Championships in Montenegro -- complaint held admissible and respondents appealed to CAS; appeal pending.

Case 3/2015: Complaint by Michaela Sandu against Natalia Zhukova and 14 other players for false accusations of cheating -- matter awaits appointment of Investigatory Chamber.

Case 4/2015: Complaint by K Georgiev, S Stoichkov and M Stoynev against Bulgarian Chess Federation for failure of fundamental justice in internal disciplinary proceedings -- complaint held admissible and matter awaits exchange of statements regarding the merits.

Case 5/2015: Complaint by Bulgarian Chess Federation against Z Azmaiparashvili and T Tsorbatzoglou (ECU) for alleged interference in BCF's affairs -- decision regarding admissibility held over until outcome of CAS appeal in case 13/2014.

Next post: the stories behind these cases.

TCEC Season 8 Superfinal Week 3

My first post about the TCEC Season 8 Superfinal in Progress closed with the comment, 'It is, after all, showing us the future of chess.' My second post, Superfinal Week 2, noted that the then-current score, with Komodo leading Stockfish, was '+4-1=41, with 54 more games to be played'.

During the intervening week, another 29 games have been played, with a score of +1-0=28, the sole win again for Komodo. That gives an overall score of +5-1=69. At this point it's safe to conclude that the future of chess is a snoozefest.

What's going on? The following composite chart shows some basic TCEC statistics from game 74, although it could have been taken from almost any of the drawn games.

Top: Evaluation, Time usage, Depth
Bottom: Speed, Tablebase hits

The first graph ('Evaluation') shows White starting with an advantage of ~0.60 Pawns in the opening, eventually dropping to 0.00 in the endgame. The third graph ('Depth') shows the principal variation ('PV' in chess engine jargon) consistently at ~40 ply, i.e. 20 moves for each player. The fifth graph ('TB hits') shows the number of times an engine reached a six-piece position that can be looked up in a tablebase. TB hits were registered before move 10 was reached in this game.

In other words, the pattern of a typical game is start with a position that favors White, trade off most of the pieces, reach a known draw. How much of this is caused by the choice of opening? The 'Opening Book' tab on the TCEC Archive Mode page informs,

Stage 1 will be bookless: every engine will compete from the starting position. We’re not worried about repetitive openings; with a good mix of engines we don’t expect that to be much of a problem.

Stage 2 [...] will have a double round-robin format, but this time we will use a two-move book

Stage 3, the qualifying round for the Superfinal, will revert to the format we’ve used in recent seasons: an eight-move book

Superfinal [...] will use 50 positions selected by our guest IM Erik Kislik, of which 33 are his own and the remaining 17 are made by [Nelson Hernandez, aka Cato].

This season, as you can see, we’ve decided to cover more numbers on the roulette table. Bookless, short-book, medium-book advocates should all be satisfied that their cause is at least being represented and that the responsibility for selecting these positions is distributed among multiple individuals, thus mitigating possible biases.

For the superfinal, possible opening biases have been 'mitigated', except perhaps the bias of the experts doing the selection. Chess engine competitions, whether man-machine or engine-to-engine, have always been skewed by the unseen human hands creating the engine's opening book. Isn't there another way? How about offering the engine an incentive to take a risk that a human wouldn't take.

Chess Charcoal Drawing

In the previous edition of Top eBay Chess Items by Price, titled A Lot of Live Auctions, I noted,

When I started the series on 'Top eBay Chess Items', there were no live auctions. Now they pop up every fortnight and are always good candidates for the final post.

I could have said the same for the present auction. I had two live auction candidates on my short list and picked the item pictured below because it looked less commercial.

The eBay auction was titled 'Russian Charcoal Drawing -– Children Playing Chess Lot 422; Part of a live auction event'. It sold for US $1750 after 21 bids starting at $400.

The description added,

Russian charcoal drawing on paper of six children gathered in a field, two of the children are playing chess; signed lower left in Cyrillic script; in excellent condition with no rips, tears, foxing, staining or visible repairs. 26 in. high x 28 in. wide. • Seller's Estimate: USD 800 - 1,200

Out of curiosity I clicked through to the eBay page, About Live Auctions, where I learned,

We’re opening the doors of traditional auction houses, giving global shoppers a new way to bid on world-class art and collectibles. This is the classic auction house experience, with an innovative twist.

I should have looked into that when I first encountered live auctions.