A Free Google Service?

Last week, in Catching Up with Leela, I wrote,

I'll certainly be looking into the mechanics of using Google Colab and Google Cloud. Maybe I'll even document my experience here, in my own blog.

Following the link, 'HOW TO: Contribute games to Leela FOR FREE', I arrived at Compute Engine : Google Cloud, clicked 'TRY IT FREE', and continued to Try Cloud Platform for Free. After checking the boxes for...

Step 1 of 2 : 'Terms of service' and 'Email updates'

...I received 'Step 2 of 2', which I captured in the following image.

Note that in the bottom left corner my name is filled in although I haven't entered it anywhere. Because of the time I spend working on my blogs, I'm normally signed in to Google's Blogger.com, but I would still like to know where the page got my name. Above my name, in red, the page says, 'Business name is required'. Further down (not shown here) the page displays my cell phone number and the email address I use for Google correspondence. Below that it says, 'How you pay : Monthly automatic payments', and adds

This service can only be used for business or commercial reasons. You are responsible for assessing and reporting VAT [value added tax].

Since I'm planning to use the service to run the Leela engine, this has nothing to do with a business. It looks like I'm out of luck. If I had continued, I would have been required to enter a credit card number under 'Payment method'. Back to the image shown above, the blue box on the right says,

No autocharge after free trial ends • We ask you for your credit card to make sure you are not a robot. You won’t be charged unless you manually upgrade to a paid account.

I'm obviously dealing with a robot that has my name, my phone number (how? why?), and my email address, and it is concerned that I might also be a robot? Further down, a disclaimer says,

The personal information you provide here will be added to your payments profile. It will be stored securely and treated in accordance with the Google Privacy Policy.

Where is my 'payments profile' and how do I verify its accuracy? As for the 'Google Privacy Policy', an incident from earlier this month revealed Google's real policy. See, for example, Google+ to shut down after coverup of data-exposing bug (techcrunch.com), for one report:-

A security bug allowed third-party developers to access Google+ user profile data since 2015 until Google discovered and patched it in March, but decided not to inform the world.

Now Google wants my credit card number. Sorry, Leela project, I can't use this 'free' service. A person's data has considerable value. Ask Facebook.

Chess News from China

Everyone who follows international chess knows by now that China is a chess powerhouse: 43rd Chess Olympiad: Double gold for China! (fide.com):-

China is taking home two team gold medals from the 43rd Chess Olympiad in Batumi! (24 September 2018)

But I doubt that everyone knows how to follow chess news in China. I certainly didn't, so I decided to try a little exercise. First I picked a few random issues from the TWIC Archive (theweekinchess.com). Then I located events labeled 'CountryCode: CHN' and noted the associated 'Website'. Then I ran the site's URL through the same Google translation service that I used in yesterday's post on my World Chess Championship Blog, In with the New!, where I featured stories about the new FIDE president from the Russian chess news site, Chess-news.ru. The next image shows the result of a site that was referenced repeatedly in TWIC.

cca.imsa.cn translated by translate.google.com

Chinese text inside images isn't translated, but everything else is. The text in the black menu bar near the top of the page says,

• Home
• National News Press
• Announcement Procedure
• HD Atlas
• Video Center
• Graded
• Practical Information

The photo caption says, 'The SCO National Chess Open'. If you follow a link, the new page is automatically translated by Google. Now that I've come this far, where do I go next? I'm sure I'll think of something.

Another Online Chess Database

Last year, in Reconsidering an Online Chess Database (November 2017), I wrote a long post about online opening databases:-

A few years back, faced with a technical problem, I scrambled to find a new online chess database and documented the effort in a series of posts on this blog (February/March 2014). [...] Looking again at the work I did in 2014, there was one service that was still under development, Chess-db.com. I decided to take another look at it.

Recently I discovered another candidate database on Lichess.org. Here's a screenshot showing a position that gave me some trouble while using Chess-db.com.

I was playing White. As for the sort of trouble I had, I'll save that discussion for another post. In the meantime, I'll continue exploring the functionality available on Lichess.

Catching Up with Engine Competitions

Wrapping up that month-long series on World Champion Carlsen's record over the past two years, in last week's post Carlsen's PGN 2017-18, I promised,

For my next post in the Monday series, I'll return to the subject of engine-to-engine competitions. I need to catch up with two tournaments: TCEC season 13 and Chess.com's Computer Chess Championship (CCCC).

I still have some work to do on Carlsen's PGN, but I plan to do that while I'm watching the 2018 Carlsen - Caruana World Championship match, which starts in less than a month. The last time I looked at engine-to-engine competitions was as part of a series on AI engines, A Leela Surprise in the Nimzo Indian (August 2018). A few days ago, in Catching Up with Leela, I mentioned,

The [Leela] journey has included three tournaments -- TCEC Seasons 12 & 13 and this year's edition of the CCCC -- of which TCEC S13 is still underway.

In fact, I originally wrote, 'of which the last two are underway'. Then while researching this current post, I discovered that the CCCC finished almost two weeks ago, indicating that it was high time for me to bring myself up-to-date. Let's first tackle the TCEC S13, which most engine aficionados would probably agree is the more important of the two events, serving as a de facto World Computer Chess Championship.

I couldn't find an official announcement for the results of the most recent stage of TCEC S13. The TCEC archive told me that the Premier Division (aka 'Division P'), finished on 2 October, and gave the following crosstable.

That means Stockfish and Komodo will be slugging it out in the final match. This will likely be a repeat of S12, which I reported in Stockfish Wins TCEC Season 12 (July 2018). In the meantime, the organizers are holding TCEC Cup 2018 brackets (chessdom.com):-

The TCEC Cup will take place right after the Premier Division and before the Superfinal, the exact dates will be announced soon. It will be a knockout championship with 32 participants divided into brackets.

The cup tournament has reached the 'OctoFinal' stage, perhaps better understood as the 'Round of 16'. Half of the quarterfinalists are already known.

As for the CCCC (shouldn't that be five 'C's, i.e. 'CCCCC' for Chess.com Computer Chess Championship?), we learned a couple of weeks ago that Stockfish Wins Computer Chess Championship Rapid; Lc0 Finishes 3rd (chess.com; NB: 'Lc0' means 'Leela Chess Zero', or simply 'Leela'):-

The chess engine Stockfish proved its might with a decisive victory over Houdini in the 200-game final match of the Computer Chess Championship's first event, the Rapid Rumble. Stockfish scored 120/200 in a match that was never in doubt. Houdini, which admirably proved itself superior to the other 22 engines in the tournament, could manage just four wins over Stockfish in the final 200 games. Like all stages of CCCC 1, the games were played at the rapid time control of 15+5.

A week later, in Computer Chess Championship Returns For Blitz Battle, Chess.com announced,

The Chess.com Computer Chess Championship returns with a greatly expanded field and thousands of games to determine the best blitz chess engines in the world. [...] The Computer Chess Championship Blitz Battle will consist of three stages, all held at the blitz time control of five minutes plus two seconds increment. Stage one will begin with 33 competitors before the field is winnowed down to 10 engines for stage two and a final four engines for stage three.

That must be 'CCCC 2'. Maybe the 2018 CCCC hasn't finished yet and my first 'Catching Up' post was right after all. Maybe I'd better come back to this topic another time, because my head is spinning with all of these computer chess events. They are starting to be like elevator music -- always there but doesn't demand any real attention.

***

Later: Re 'I discovered that the CCCC finished almost two weeks ago', for some reason I had missed (or ignored) all of Chess.com's intermediate reports on the event. Here they are, in chronological order, ending with the report already linked above:-

• 2018-08-31: Live Now: The New Computer Chess Championship • 'The Chess.com Computer Chess Championship (CCCC) is back with a new, always-on format and more chess engines as Chess.com makes a major investment in the future of computer chess.'
  
  
• 2018-09-11: Machine-Learning Lc0 Joins 'Big 3' Engines Atop Computer Chess Championship At Half • 'Lc0' = 'Leela Chess Zero'
  
  
• 2018-09-19: Stockfish Leads 8 Engines In Computer Chess Championship Stage 2; Lc0 A Contender • 'The first stage of the first Computer Chess Championship event is in the books, and after 562 official games Stockfish tops the leaderboard with an excellent score of 39/46, the first of eight engines to advance to stage two'
  
  
• 2018-09-26: Stockfish, Houdini Battle For Computer Chess Championship; Komodo vs Lc0 For 3rd • 'Proving that it's still the biggest fish in the sea of computer chess, the Stockfish engine cruised to the top spot in the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship, scoring an astounding 51/70 against the world's top chess engines in stage two of the rapid event CCCC 1.'
  
  
• 2018-10-04: Stockfish Wins Computer Chess Championship Rapid; Lc0 Finishes 3rd • 'The chess engine Stockfish proved its might with a decisive victory over Houdini in the 200-game final match of the Computer Chess Championship's first event, the Rapid Rumble.'

As a further reference, here are the first and last values of the '[Date]' tags stored in the PGN files for each of the three stages.

• Stage 1: 2018-08-31 to 2018-09-16
• Stage 2: 2018-09-17 to 2018-09-25
• Stage 3: 2018-09-25 to 2018-10-01

This event was the first to show that an AI/NN engine could compete against the best of the traditional engines in a neutral setting.

ChessBase India Interviews Judit Polgar

Nearly three years since ChessBase India started its video channel on Youtube, it has become one of my favorite sources of chess videos.

The story of how Judit Polgar became the strongest woman player in the world (29:33) • 'Published on Oct 10, 2018'

The video description included this inspiring paragraph:-

Why has the world seen only one female player who has been able to match her wits with the best in the business? What did Judit Polgar do that made her into such a fierce champion? In this interview with IM Sagar Shah we get to know everything about Judit's life. Right from the time she learnt chess, to how she beat Kasparov in 2002 when the Russian was on the height of his powers

For the previous post about ChessBase India on this blog, see Best Blind Players of India (August 2018).

Catching Up with Leela

At the end of last week's post, Restoring Adsense, I promised,

After this short series that has little to do with chess, it's time to return to the main subject.

The main subject is chess and the topic to which I want to return is the neural network (NN) engine technology, last seen in The NNs Depart TCEC S13 (August 2018; i.e. Leela and DeusX), and A Leela Surprise in the Nimzo Indian (August 2018; video). Leela is the main player in the NN arena and I once took the time to catalog the online resources that track the progress of this remarkable creation: Finding Leela (June 2018). In the Leela forum we find a recent thread that documents the engine's early days:-

• 2018-09-05: Leela: From Retarded to Genius; subtitled 'A story of Leela's journey from a contributor's point of view from March to September'.

That journey has included three tournaments -- TCEC Seasons 12 & 13 and this year's edition of the CCCC -- of which the last two are TCEC S13 is still underway. Where is the project today? It needs games, lots of games:-

• 2018-09-26: Worrying drop of contributors • 'There used to be millions of training games per day a few weeks back. Now it is barely 400.000. I remember people in this forum telling me I was stupid to worry about a drop of people who contribute to the training. I fear this is happening now'

Now 400.000 training games per day might sound like enough, but the Leela contributors are beating the bushes to get even more. Here's a recent call for assistance:-

• 2018-09-26: HOW TO: Contribute games to Leela FOR FREE using Google Cloud and Google Colab • 'I made this post primarily to help people who were wanting to contribute to Leelas development but do not have GPUs, but this is also applicable to those who are already contributing with GPU time. [...] Through Google Cloud you can rent GPUs ranging from K80/P100/V100/etc via your browser with no processing on your end. [...] Google Colab is a similar process whereby you can utilise one of Googles K80 GPUs for free processing again via your browser.

If you're not familiar with GPUs like 'K80 / P100 / V100 / etc.', it's enough to know that they are three evolutions of graphic processors, the number crunchers that all NNs rely on for their numeric intensive computations. To supplement that forum fountain of wisdom, the Leela blog posted its own version:-

• 2018-10-02 Contributing to Leela Chess Zero. Creating the Caissa of Chess engines... (blog.lczero.org)

I'll certainly be looking into the mechanics of using Google Colab and Google Cloud. Maybe I'll even document my experience here, in my own blog.

The CCL Was Hacked

What's the CCL? It's the Facebook group Chess Club Live. I've posted about them twice: the first time in Chess and Social Trends (October 2016), and the second time in A Short History of CCL (March 2017). Along with dozens (hundreds?) of other chess related items, they publish posts from this blog and from my World Chess Championship blog. A couple of weeks ago my blog statistics told me that the blog feeds had stopped. I contacted Michael Mkpadi, the main man behind CCL and one of those types of people who has a dozen novel ideas every day, and asked him what the problem was. He replied,

Facebook got hacked, I got hacked, my page got hacked. Now I've lost my admin rights and am trying to get Facebook to restore my page.

When I asked him what the prognosis was for CCL's return to service, he replied,

Facebook are a law to themselves, not sure I know what they'll do about that page other than keeping it in limbo for an eternity.

A few days later he messaged me that CCL was back and, sure enough, it was. Here's a screen capture I took while writing this post.

That hack wasn't just the CCL: Facebook just had its worst hack ever -- and it could get worse (cnn.com; 4 October 2018).

On Sunday, September 16, engineers at Facebook detected some unusual activity on the social media platform's networks. It was an attack, the biggest security breach in Facebook's history. And it would take the company 11 more days to stop it. Now, almost a week since the public was first told of the attack, we still barely know anything about what happened.

It's a dangerous world out there. Even online chess clubs have to keep looking over their shoulders.