Google Search Console

Over the past month, I've been spending some time each week to bring my web site in line with current trends -- see Verifying HTTPS and Image Directory Thumbnails. In the 'Verifying' post, I wrote,

One casualty of the migration was Google Adsense. The ads are missing, e.g. on the index page for the World Chess Championship, and the browser warns of mixed content. The code that calls an ad currently uses 'HTTP'. If I want the ads back I'll need to change the code on all pages, but it might be better to replace Adsense with something else in that space.

All things considered, I was happy with the results of the migration to HTTPS. What will Google force me to do next to keep the site operational?

Before fixing the Adsense problem, I decided to catch up on the many Google notices I've received since the beginning of the year, at least a half-dozen significant emails from Google. The company is very good at communicating with its 'publishers' (the Google term for web sites that display ads), but the information is more for commercial sites than for hobbyist sites like mine.

At the beginning of the year I received an email titled 'Introducing the new Search Console [for m-w.com]'. It said,

Search Console is introducing a redesigned product to help you manage your presence on Google Search. The new Search Console was rebuilt from the ground up to provide the tools and insights that site owners and SEOs have been asking for. You can now confirm which of your pages are indexed and get information on how to fix indexing errors. You can also monitor your performance on Google Search with 16-months of data (to enable year-over-year comparisons).

There is far more information available through the Google Search Console than I can possibly use. The 'Performance' page for the old HTTP version of my site confirmed a large drop in search traffic since 2018-08-17.

This should have been balanced by a corresponding increase in search traffic for the new HTTPS version, but Google told me 'Oops, you don't have access to this property'. After procuring the access, I received the message 'Processing data, please check again in a few days'. Aye aye, sir! [To be continued]

A Remarkable Tool

In my previous post, An Important Seven-piece Endgame, I discussed endgames of the type R+2P vs. R+P as given in 'Rook Endings' by Levenfish and Smyslov. I ended the discussion with:-

Despite the supposed simplicity of the other examples, I discovered a number of inaccuracies in their analysis. I'll discuss one or two of them in a future post.

Unlike the era of Levenfish and Smyslov (L&S), these endgames are now completely transparent thanks to the use of tablebases (TB). Consider the position in the top diagram below (Furman - Kopaev, event/year not specified). The TB gives 1.g5 as the only move, which is also the first move that L&S give. They wrote,

A strong move, opening up the White King's path to h5. It also makes it more difficult for Black's Pawn to advance.

Both sources agree that White has a won game and give 1...h5 as the best continuation for Black. L&S first examine 2.Rh6, where White wins the h-Pawn by force: 2...Rb2+ 3.Kg3 Rb3+ 4.Kf2 Rb2+ 5.Ke1 Ke3 6.Kd1 Kd3 7.Kc1 Rh2 8.Rxh5. The poor positions of the White Rook and King allow Black to draw with 8...Kc3 9.Kd1 Kd3 10.Ke1 Ke3 11.Kf1 Kf3 12.Kg1 Rg2+ 13.Kh1 Kf2 forcing perpetual check. (To follow the analysis in this post on Lichess, use the link below the diagrams.)

Lichess: 8/7p/5R2/8/4k1PP/1r6/6K1/8 w - - 0 1

The bottom diagram shows the position after the correct move 2.gxh6 (e.p.), followed by 2...Rb7 3.Kg3 Ke5. L&S now give the incorrect 4.Rg6, followed by 4...Kf5 5.Rg5+ Kf6 6.Kg4 Ra7 7.Kh5 Rf7 8.Rg6+ Ke7. Here Black can draw with 8...Kf5 9.Rg7 Kf6.

After 8...Ke7, L&S duplicate their error by giving 9.Rg7 Kf8, where 9...Kf6 leads to the same position (and the same draw) after 9...Kf6 in the previous paragraph. Instead of 9.Rg7, the continuation 9.Ra6 Rf8 10.h7 would win.

Back to the bottom diagram, instead of a draw with 4.Rg6, the TB says White should play 4.Rf8 Rh7 5.Kg4 Rxh6 6.Kg5, with mate in 64(!). This allows two conclusions: (1) the TB is a remarkable tool, and (2) not all Rook & a-/h-Pawn endings are drawn.

An Important Seven-piece Endgame

Continuing with the Seven-piece Tablebase on Lichess (August 2018), I first looked at endgames of Q+2P vs. Q+P in A Flawed Seven-piece Study (ditto):-

The next section in Averbakh's book covers Q+2P:Q+P where the strong side has a passed Pawn. I fed all six examples to the Lichess tablebase and discovered that Averbakh's analysis was correct on five of them.

I then turned my attention to R+2P:R+P. Before tackling Averbakh, I decided to return to 'Rook Endings' by Levenfish and Smyslov, previously seen on this blog in Levenfish's Rook Endings (January 2011) and The Bridge, the Diversion, and the Best Defense (November 2011). The authors introduced the section titled 'Rook and Two v. Rook and One' with:-

This section is of great practical interest, as endings of this type, quite naturally, arise very often: as when one player has won a pawn during the game but at the same time most of the pawns have been exchanged off. As is clear from previous chapters, a R + P v. R ending is by no means always won for the superior side. The situation becomes more complicated with the addition of an extra pawn on each side, as this allows for new resources both for the attack and for the defence.

For example, the superior side can sometimes reduce to an ending with two far advanced connected pawns against a rook, whilst the defending side can sometimes reduce to an ending with rook v. far advanced pawn. Sometimes the defending side manages to transpose into a drawn ending with R + 2P v. R of the type analysed in Chapter 3.

No less important is the fact that, in analysing more complex rook endings, positions with two pawns v. one pawn can come up. Only if these positions are correctly appraised can the correct way to solving the more complex endings be found. But up till now endings with R + 2P v. R + P have been very poorly dealt with in chess literature.

The section is separated into positions having similar characteristics in their Pawn structure. The first diagrams in the section are of the type that is easiest to assess.

When the pawns are opposite each other and the superior side does not have a passed pawn, the result is usually a draw.

For example, the first position is shown in the following diagram.

White can make no progress: 1.Rh6 Ra4 2.Rh7+ Kf6 3.Rh6+ Kf7 4.Re6 Rb4 5.Kg5 Ra4 6.e5 Ra5. The position after the third move repeats the position after the first move, probably to show two different tries by White.

Despite the supposed simplicity of the other examples, I discovered a number of inaccuracies in their analysis. I'll discuss one or two of them in a future post.

Carlsen's Events 2017-18

With a World Championship match due to start in less than two months, it's a good time to return to Magnus Carlsen's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record (TMER; 'Last updated 2016-09-26'). I'll follow the same pattern used in the previous cycle of updates that started two years ago with Carlsen's Events 2015-16 (September 2016).

Since the last event on the TMER is currently '2016-09 42nd Olympiad, Baku AZE', I searched all issues of TWIC following that Olympiad and discovered 564 'Carlsen' games. Eight of those were played by Magnus's father, leaving 556 games by the reigning World Champion.

The following table shows the main events that Carlsen played in the last two years along with a count of games for each event. Because of limited space, the table isn't complete, e.g. events that included both rapid and blitz show only a count for the rapid games.

The corresponding TWIC search for the 2015-16 update located *only* 282 Carlsen games. Why the large increase? It appears that many of the games played in 2017-18 were for Chess.com online events. The world's leading website for chess started organizing events at the highest level in 2016.

The Imagery of Chess, New York 1944

Continuing this blog's eight-and-a-half year series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010), in the previous post, Chess with Two Cardinals (August 2018), I wrote,

This month my short list had only one item, but it was not short on quality.

This month I had well over a half dozen items on the short list and it was even longer on quality. The item pictured below relates to The Imagery of Chess, St. Louis (August 2017). Titled 'Marcel Duchamp, Max / Imagery of Chess A Group Exhibition of Paintings Sculpture', it sold for US $500.00, 'Best offer accepted'.

The auction listing included an uncommonly detailed description of the item on sale:-

The Imagery of Chess: A Group Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, Newly Designed Chessmen, Music and Miscellany
Author: Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst
Publication: New York: Julien Levy Gallery, 1944
Binding: Single sheet
Condition: Fine

Description: A wonderful -- and uncommon -- piece of chess ephemera, the original announcement for the December 1944-January 1945 exhibition, which was both published and hosted by the formidable Julien Levy Gallery of New York. Marcel Duchamp, widely known as a passionate, highly accomplished chess player in his own right, designed the layout for the announcement and Max Ernst illustrated the title page, with its bright-red chessmen.

The announcement is made up of a thick single sheet, folded into fourths. On the first verso is a manifesto called "On Designing Chessmen", calling for the improved design of chess pieces over the French and the Staunton sets. And, opposite this, is the list of the 32 contributing artists in the show, the number 32 having been chosen by Duchamp to match the number of chess pieces on the board.

Included among the 32 artists are Andre Breton, John Cage, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Arshile Gorky, Man Ray, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Yves Tanguy, etc. And finally, on the last verso is an artistic, fanciful image of a chess set called "Brotherhood of sister squares" by Marcel Duchamp and "End game" by V. Halberstadt. And below this, an announcement that "GEORGE KOLTANOWSKI World Champion of Blindfold Chess will play blindfolded 5 simultaneous games against Alfred Barr, Jr., Max Ernst, Frederick Kiesler, Julien Levy, Dorothea Tanning and Dr. Gregory Zilboorg -- Admission by Invitation Only -- MARCEL DUCHAMP referee".

The show ran from Dec. 12th 1944 thru Jan. 31st 1945 and the announcement is in pristine condition. Crisp and bright and fresh as the day it was issued almost 75 years ago. In fact, this copy is from Julien Levy's estate in Bridgewater, CT.

On the page 'On Designing Chessmen', an unnamed writer said,

The standard chess sets now in use, the FRENCH set and the STAUNTON, are both somewhat confusing in the similarity and intricacy of their forms. In the French set for example, the Bishop is a little Queen and the pawn a little Bishop. Cannot a new set be designed, that is, without a too radical departure from the traditional figures, at once more harmonious and more agreeable to the touch and to the sight, and above all, more adequate to the role the figure has to play in the struggle? Thus, at any moment of the drama its optical aspect would represent (by the shape of the actors) a clear incisive image of its inner conflicts. In the complicated modern game the figures should inspire the player instead of confusing him.. They should whisper to him at the right moment: "Move now to QB4. ... Break through the center. ... Pin the Knight. ... Let me win a piece. ... We can exchange Queens, the pawn will be metamorphosed into a new Queen. ... to mate the King.

And they should never make a MISTAKE.

For another example of Duchamp connecting the world of chess with the vastly larger world of art, see, A Six-Figure Chess Item at Auction (November 2017).

Image Directory Thumbnails

While I was working on the series about image recognition, last seen in Chess Piece Recognition (July 2018), I decided it would be a good idea to have a tool that could display the contents of an online image directory using thumbnails instead of file names. Using the search term 'directory index thumbnails', I eventually located gfwilliams/ThinGallery (github.com; 'A single-file web gallery. Uses EXIF thumbnails to quickly display thumbnails for a directory with no server-side code').

I followed the instructions and uploaded a copy of a GALLERY file to the directory I use for this blog. The results are shown below.

m-w.com/cfaa/gallery.htm

The result isn't perfect. The thumbnails take a few minutes to load and the result is only for JPG images (NB: also PNG), but it's still better than nothing.

To understand the correlation between my convention for image names and the corresponding post, note that the image in the upper left is from Tablebase 1 - Botvinnik 0 (September 2007). I hope I don't get a flood of complaints for possible copyright violation.

September 1968 'On the Cover'

In this blog's monthly 'On the Cover' series, when was the last time the same chess personality featured on the covers of both American chess magazines 50 years ago? It turns out that it was exactly two years ago, in September 1966 'On the Cover', when Spassky was so honored. A few months before that, in May 1966 'On the Cover', Petrosian was similarly honored.

This month, 50 years ago, Larry Evans became the first person to appear solo on the cover of both magazines. The captions on the following photos explain the circumstances.

Left: 'U.S. Champion Larry Evans'
Right: 'Three Time Champ'

Chess Life

The 1968 United States Championship, a 12-man invitational round-robin, was won handily by the second-best player in the country. Larry Evans, a sometime New Yorker (he prefers the west coast), landed on top of this truncated field by dint of what can only be described as accurate plodding. He accepted gambits, grabbed pawns, capitalized on his opponents' errors (there were plenty) and in general was content to let his renowned technique do all the work.

Chess Review

Larry Evans of New York won the United States Championship for the third time. He did so by effectively tacking down just the points needed till his last-round draw with Arthur B. Bisguier secured his first in the standings. It was Evans' play which was most impressive throughout the toumament.

GM Evans also appeared in the series for the November 1966 'On the Cover', as a member of the U.S. Olympiad team ('Evans, Addison, Benko, Fischer, Rossolimo, R. Byrne, and Team Captain D. Byrne'). For one of his many other mentions on this blog, see Borrowing Leaves (December 2015), playing chess with Marcel Duchamp.

For a less flattering portrayal of this month's featured American, see Edward Winter's The Facts about Larry Evans (chesshistory.com). It's hard to reconcile that Evans the player and Evans the writer were the same person.