2018 Carlsen - Caruana, the Venue

Was last month's Chess and Cubofuturism (October 2018) the last post in this blog's long running Flickr series? When I signed in today to survey the chess items uploaded since the 'Cubofuturism' post, I received the following message:-

Free accounts will soon be limited to 1,000 photos or videos. Flickr isn’t Flickr without the contributions and participation of our free members, and we remain committed to a vibrant free offering. If you are a free member with more than 1,000 photos or videos, you will have ample time to upgrade to Pro (for 30% off your first year) or download your photos and videos.

On top of that, of the 300+ photos newly available in the last month, only two were interesting enough to add to my favorites list. Of those two, neither was suitable for today's post. If a photo doesn't tell a bigger story, it's just an interesting photo. What to do?

Google image search on 'chess holborn college'

I decided to look at images related to the venue for the 2018 Carlsen - Caruana being played in London. All the images shown above, plus the others that I cropped out, are part of a bigger story. For the original announcement about the choice of venue, see News about 2018 Carlsen - Caruana (August 2018), on my World Chess Championship blog.

GPU Benchmarks

First I got some idea about GPU Pricing in last week's post. Then I got some idea about the AI engines' operating environment in this week's post, Stockfish Wins TCEC Season 13. Both the CCCC and the TCEC offer public information about the setups they use in support of the AI/NN engines.

Computer Chess Championship (chess.com):-

GPU: 4 x Tesla V100 (64 GB GPU memory)
CPU: Intel Xeon @ 2.70GHz
RAM: 256 GB

TCEC Season 14 (chessdom.com):-

GPU: 1 x 2080 ti + 1 x 2080
CPU: Quad Core i5 2600k
RAM: 16GB DDR3-2133

I've listed only the hardware that allows a comparison of the two setups. The V100s used by CCCC were first offered by Nvidia in 2017; the 2080s used by TCEC were first offered in 2018. How do they compare? Here's a chart from the same company that provided the numbers I used in 'GPU Pricing'.

October 2018: 2080 Ti TensorFlow GPU benchmarks - 2080 Ti vs V100 vs 1080 Ti vs Titan V (lambdalabs.com) • 'The 2080 Ti comes out on top as the best GPU in 2018 for training neural nets.'

Although the 2080s don't offer the same throughput as the V100, a cost/benefit comparison improves in favor of the 2080s when you factor in the price of the GPUs. Note that these numbers are for training the NNs listed to the right of the top chart. The performance of a system running a specific chess engine with its trained weights would be different.

Chess @ 538.com

At the 2018 World Championship we've had four games, all draws, and the assembled journalists search for any scrap of info that might be considered newsworthy. For me, that means looking at the journalists. I ended the previous post, World Championship Yahoos, with,

It's the second time in a month that I've used FiveThirtyEight.com as a reference. The first was Out with the Old!, about the forced retirement of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Maybe I should give that news resource a deeper look.

The chess writer for 538.com is Oliver Roeder ('He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied game theory and political competition.'). His reports on games three and four demonstrate that he knows his chess:-

• 2018-11-12: Computers Are Haunting The World Chess Championship (Which, Yes, Is Still Tied)
  
  
• 2018-11-13: The Biggest Blunder Of The World Chess Championship Is A Deleted YouTube Video

A unique feature of the reports is a graphic overview of the match so far. Let's call it, 'How to summarize a World Championship match in 100.000 pixels or less'.

Match overview through game four (538.com)

We can easily see that Carlsen held a significant advantage in game one and that the success of the Black pieces in all games has been the main story so far. But what about that 'Biggest Blunder' in the headline for game four? Was Woody Harrelson knocking over pieces again? No, that pre-game excitement from the first game was overshadowed by a more sinister incident. The report went on to explain,

The day’s humdrum play was overshadowed by some excitement off the board, though. A chess-world controversy -- or at least what qualifies as one -- erupted. Before the game, the posh Saint Louis Chess Club posted, and quickly deleted, a YouTube video appearing to show aspects of Caruana’s pre-championship preparation sessions.

The report included a still shot of a computer screen where the image could be expanded to make everything on the screen readable. And, yes, it's the sort of information that might prove valuable to the opposition. Some of the less knowledgeable comments on the incident wondered, 'Why the fuss?' In brief, because match preparation is opening preparation, nothing more and nothing less -- how do I press for a quick advantage playing White and how do I avoid a quick knockout playing Black? A couple of old posts on this blog delved into the nuts and bolts:-

• Anand on World Championship Opening Preparation (October 2013)
• Opening Preparation Using Engines (September 2015)

The resulting brouhaha convinced one respected chess journalist, GM Ian Rogers of Australia, to resign his job working with the American team: @GMIanRogers: Sadly parting ways with @ChessLifeOnline after a decade... (twitter.com):-

...I declined to accept edits to my round 4 World Ch'p report which would downplay responsibility of editors of the Caruana video, downplay the effect of the video on Caruana's chances, and omit the key image from the video.

On top of that, all of the videos produced by the St.Louis Chess Club disappeared from Youtube. Out of sight, out of mind? Hardly. Someone in St.Louis is guilty of an unprofessional lapse of judgement. That's the person who should resign -- not a journalist doing the job he was paid to do.

World Championship Yahoos

In last month's wrapup of chess news reported by the mainstream press, October Yahoos, I wrote,

Let's hope that 'November Yahoos' will be filled with stories about next month's 2018 Carlsen - Caruana match.

No need to wait until end-November to survey the results. Under headlines like 'Trump's last-minute cancellation draws criticism' and 'Entire teams penalized after wild college football brawl', chess was the top story.

2018-11-10: The World Chess Championship Is Deadlocked After Game 2 (yahoo.com; FiveThirtyEight)

Heavy rain showers, a gentle breeze and 57 degrees [F = 14 degrees C] in London, the BBC reported this morning. The top American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana was unprepared for such weather, arriving for Game 2 of the World Chess Championship sporting a wet blazer. Never mind the sartorial dampness, however. He arrived excellently prepared for the chess.

Along with that main story, the accompanying stories were also about games one and two of the match.

2018-11-10: Chess stars draw again in world tournament (yahoo.com; AFP)

The second round of the 2018 World Chess Championship in London between three-time defending champion Magnus Carlsen and American Fabiano Caruana ended in a draw on Saturday. The two young chess stars, both under 30, have one point each after drawing their opening two games of the tournament

Almost all Yahoo stories have a comments section, and although the comments are often a mindboggling display of ignorance, sometimes they are on target. The story above continued, 'Italian prodigy Carlsen is seeking to cement his reputation as one of history's greatest chess players', and drew snorts of derision like 'Italian, Norwegian they're all the same'.

2018-11-09: World Chess Championship starts with Harrelson blunder (yahoo.com; Reuters)

World Chess Championship officials might rethink the role of ceremonial starter after Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson knocked over a king and moved the wrong pawn in a comical start to the 2018 event in London on Friday

That story gathered more than double the number of comments of the other two stories combined, stuff like:-

• 'Why rethink? Woody was hired to alter the image a bit, and he did that. Also made the internet news, giving the competition a wider audience, if only briefly!'
• 'The errors seems a little too convenient. He technically conceded the world championship on the first move. It's just a fun publicity stunt like announcing the wrong Miss Universe.'
• 'Never knew Woody was a chess man.'

Looks like it's once again time to point out Woody Harrelson vs Garry Kasparov; "Cheers!"; Consultation (1999), Prague CZE (chessgames.com). The game started 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5, the same opening seen in another celebrity game, Boris Becker vs Garry Kasparov; CNN exhibition (2000); New York, NY (ditto).

Back to that first story, it's the second time in a month that I've used FiveThirtyEight.com as a reference. The first was Out with the Old!, about the forced retirement of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Maybe I should give that news resource a deeper look.

Stockfish Wins TCEC Season 13 (and Everything Else)

In Catching Up with Engine Competitions (October 2018), I took a checkpoint on the progress of two major computer chess tournaments. What has happened in the four intervening weeks?

TCEC S13

Stockfish beat Komodo +16-6=78 to win the TCEC Season 13 Superfinal. Only one opening resulted in a win for both engines, an Old Indian (1.d4 d6 2.Nf3 Bg4), played in games 85 and 86. For a report on the superfinal of the previous season, see Stockfish Wins TCEC Season 12 (July 2018).

In the TCEC Cup that was played before the S13 Superfinal started, Stockfish beat Houdini +1-0=7 in the final match of the knockout event. The two engines beat LC0 (Leela) and Komodo in the semifinal matches.

Details for both the Superfinal and the Cup, including PGN game scores and crosstables, are available in the TCEC Archive. The archive also covers TCEC previous seasons.

TCEC S14

What about TCEC Season 14? It starts today: TCEC Season 14 – Let’s get ready to !boom (chessdom.com). The announcement began,

Season 14 of the Top Chess Engine Championship, the premier chess software competition, starts this Monday, November 12th, at 16:00 CET. It will involve the strongest chess programs and neural networks in the traditional division system. A total of 36 engines with ELO 3000+ will divided into five divisions and a Superfinal.

The action can be followed on TCEC - Live Computer Chess Broadcast.

CCC / CCCC / CCCCC

Some of those 'C's stand for Chess.com. The others stand for Computer Chess Championship, as in CCC: Computer Chess Championship, which happens to be the main page for the event.

Chess.com hasn't issued any news updates since the links mentioned in my 'Catching Up' post. Stage three, the final stage of the CCCC2 blitz competition, started today. The results of stages one and two must be somewhere, although I couldn't find them. I could work out stage one for myself from the PGN file (NB: Similar format for 'ccc1/stage1', etc.):-

https://newman.chess.com/archive/ccc2/stage1/games.pgn

Four engines have reached the final stage -- Houdini, Komodo, Lc0, and Stockfish (which jumped quickly into the lead) -- the same four that reached the semifinal stage of the TCEC Cup. For an overview of the engines that competed in stage 1, here is a colorful graphic from Chess.com's most recent news item. The little green and yellow trophies show the number of TCEC/CCC(C) competitions won by the top engines.

I calculate that the games are played at the rate of about three games per hour, which means 72 games per day. With 600 games total, the event should be over some time next week.

'The World Is Watching'

Today is the rest day after the first two games of the 2018 Carlsen - Caruana title match. For the blog's November video let's look at what's available from YouTube's World Chess channel, the organizer of the event. So far the channel offers:-

• Opening Press Conference
• Opening Gala
• Game 1
• Game 2

Here's the start of the first game, although you would never know it from the title or the description of the video.

World Chess Championship London 2018 (34:01) • 'Streamed live on Nov 9, 2018'

The description of the clip says only,

First 30 minutes of the World Chess Championship

There is no game number, no link to the official site, no explanation of why only the first 30 minutes are shown or how to watch the rest of the game. C'mon World Chess! You are supposed to be the experts in marketing chess to the entire world. You can do better than this. The banner in front of the players promises, 'The World Is Watching'. Make it happen!

If you've ever wondered about GM Caruana's nationality, he explained it during the 'Opening Press Conference'. In response to the question,

You have changed nationality a couple of times. Do you feel American or Italian or what do you feel?

he said,

I never changed nationalities. I had dual nationality from birth. I changed federations when I was 13. I was a kid, I was living in Europe, and this was mainly to get back to my roots -- my mother is Italian. When I changed back to the U.S. I was in my 20s. This was a personal decision and I feel connected to both countries. I would like to represent both, but only one is possible. I live in the United States and represent the U.S. now. I feel very much an American, but I cherish my Italian roots.

In case you're wondering, the official site is london2018.worldchess.com. The first two games both ended in draws. Good luck to both players!

GPU Pricing

Let's say I want to buy one of those machines featured in my previous post, GPU Configurations. How much money will I have to shake out of the piggy bank?

The 'Lambda Blade' link I referenced leads to another page Blade : Customize. There are three configurations, shown below, where the model in the previous post is the 'Basic' version.

The pricing for the three models is:-

Basic • $20,788.00
Premium • $25,852.00
Max • $51,958.00
also: Customize

In other words, I can buy a new car or I can buy a 'Deep Learning' rig. I'm sure my wife would prefer a new car.

The 'Customize' option starts with the 'Premium' model and allows to add/subtract options to determine a final price. The numbers are consistent. If I decrease 'GPUs' and 'Memory' to arrive at the 'Basic' model, the price is the same for that model.

What exactly are the technical tradeoffs for the different prices? I'll look at that in another post.