Millennial Chess?

Read it? No, Reddit. Take, for example, a post from a few months ago, Talking About Chess Engines (October 2018), where I noted,

The interest from Reddit.com is somewhat surprising, although the site shows up increasingly in chess related searches.

Recently I was talking to one of my nephews and the subject came up. I learned that he was a keen Reddit user and I made a mental note to look into it more deeply. It turns out there's an age gap involved, as the following chart shows.

Source: Google based on Distribution of Reddit users in the United States as of February 2016, by age group (statista.com)

Taking into account the three years that have elapsed since those statistics were calculated, the interest in Reddit comes mainly from the Millennial generation. That's explains why I'm not more familiar with it -- I'm from the Baby Boomer generation.

The main Reddit chess page is Chess News and Stuff, which starts, 'Join the 121k people in the r/chess community' The first time I made a note about the site was mid-2015, when a Google search on 'chess reddit' returned 'About 1.890.000 results'. Today that same search returns 'About 26.500.000 results'. Continuing with the statistics, one of the Reddit top posts made today, Chess is actually a pretty popular game, says,

Right now we have: 62,000 on chess.com 24,000 on lichess. That alone is a pretty big amount when compared to the "big" video games nowadays. According to Steam charts, we'd be in 4th place, above Rainbow Six Siege, Team Fortress 2, Warframe and many other popular games.

I'm not even including the people who are playing chess over the board right now or sitting at their board studying chess books, or grinding tactics on chesstempo. Quite a few other chess websites and apps have not been counted. We may actually have 100,000 concurrent players of this beautiful game, a pretty big amount even by todays standards. Maybe less if there is a big percentage of players who remain "online" in chess.com but idle, but even 50,000 concurrent players is pretty healthy.

The post goes on to ask, 'Why is the /r/chess subreddit not as big as other games which have similar number of concurrent players?' Maybe it's a generational thing.

TCEC S14 Final, CCC5/-6; Part 2/2

Following the TCEC and CCC computer chess competitions presents two challenges. The first challenge is to keep track of their progress without being glued 24/7 to their GUIs. I've addressed that by preparing a weekly report in the form of a Monday blog post.

The second challenge is what to call each weekly post. Last week's post was TCEC S14 Final, CCC5/-6, where the title summarized the content of the post. For this week's post I could use exactly the same title as last week, but that's obviously not satisfactory. Tacking on 'Part 2/2' should keep things clear.

TCEC: The TCEC S14 final match ('superfinal' aka 'sufi' in TCEC jargon) between Stockfish and Leela ('LC0' in Leela jargon, meaning 'Leela Chess Zero') has seen 72 games completed. Leela leads by one game, +9-8=55. If Leela ('she' in Leela jargon) can maintain this slim lead through the full 100 games, it will signal a major shift in chess engine dominance. The traditional alpha-beta engines with their handcrafted evaluations are quickly giving way to the AI/NN engines which work out their own evaluations from scratch.

Leela also won the preceding TCEC competition with a little help from her friends. For a final report, see TCEC Cup 2 report (chessdom.com).

CCC: Last week's 'CCC5/-6' post started with a preliminary report on the finish of CCC5:-

Stockfish then played Lc0 in a 100 game match, which finished yesterday. The result hasn't been published yet, although the PGN is available.

The result was published in a short note on the 'CCC #tournament-results' page (see the tab above this post for a collection of 'TCEC/CCC Links'):-

Ccc5 finals SF vs LCO dev 60-40

I loaded the corresponding PGN file into PGN software and determined that Stockfish (SF) beat Leela (LC0) by a score of +23-3=74. The games were played at a time control of '10|5' (chess jargon for 10' per game plus 5" per move). As for the next tournament, the 'CCC5/-6' post said,

A new event titled 'Battle of the Leelas' started with Stockfish, Komodo MCTS, and four Leela variants.

The final results are summarized in the following chart.

'CCC #tournament-results'

Stockfish finished fourth in the field of six, losing only one mini-match, against Antifish. I'll leave it to others more knowledgeable to interpret the complete results. I assume the six engines were chosen for a reason.

CCC6 is currently underway. The rules say,

Qualifiers (5|2) - escalation, 3 rounds, 16 engines, top 8 qualify, SF, Lc0, Komodo & Houdini get buys [sic; 'byes'] • Playoffs (10|10) - 12 engines, 3 rounds, top 8 plus SF, Lc0, Komodo & Houdini, book ON • Finals (10|10) - 2 engines, 200 games, book ON

The escalation format, where the lowest ranked engines play mini-matches against each other at the beginning and the stronger engines enter the competition at each successive stage, makes it impossible to predict which engines will eventually prevail. For a preliminary report, see CCC 6: The Winter Classic (preview).

Steinitz's Gravestone

Left photo: Steinitz Grave 4 © Flickr user 4paul! under Creative Commons.

The gravestone in the left photo has a chessboard on its top and says,

Hier ruht in Frieden ['Here rests in peace']
William Steinitz
Geb. 14 Mai 1837 ['geboren']
Gest. 12 Aug 1900 ['gestorben']

The sign in the right photo says,

Grave of William Steinitz
First World Chess Champion
In memory of my ancestor
By Kurt Landsberger
Grave number 5893

The tags in the photos place the cemetary at Brooklyn, New York. The page William Steinitz, 1836-1900 (findagrave.com) identifies the place of burial as 'The Evergreens Cemetery'. Note the difference between the year of birth on the gravestone and the year on the referenced page. Wikipedia's page, Wilhelm Steinitz, says, 17 May 1836, giving a different day and year than is written on the gravestone.

AI/NN: 'Here to Stay?'

Last week we took a peak at 'Game Changer' Excerpts, from the first book on AlphaZero. This week let's have a video from the Saint Louis Chess Club's Youtube channel, where a panel discusses how AlphaZero impacts the world of chess engines.

AlphaZero: Is It Here to Stay?! (1:00:37) • 'Streamed live on Jan 26, 2019'

The video's description identifies the three participants in the discussion:-

Grandmaster Denes Boros and computer chess expert Jacob Wilkins join Ben Simon to discuss the finer details of neural-network based engines vs. the human mind.

If you follow the link to the original Youtube page (right-click the embedded video), the chat to the right of the video follows the discussion and can be scrolled independently. For more about the host, see Chess - Ben Simon Media. As for the title, 'AlphaZero: Is It Here to Stay?', is there any real doubt?

Down the Rabbit Hole

In yesterday's post on my World Chess Championship blog, 1851 London (the Tournament Books), I used Google Books as a reference for the first international tournament. While I was working on the post I discovered a pair of resources on Google Books that I had previously either overlooked or underestimated: 'Related books' and 'Other editions'.

The English edition of the 1851 London tournament book leads to other English language resources on Google Books and the German edition leads to German language resources. As you might expect, those other resources lead to further resources and on and on and on.

For example, on the English side I discovered the magazine The Chess World, Volume 1, March 1865. That title in itself is not particularly useful for locating additional information about the periodical, but Di Felice's wonderful reference work 'Chess Periodicals, 1836-2008' says,

656. Chess World (The) : A Magazine Devoted to the Cultivation of the Game of Chess, Containing Games and Problems by the First Masters (1865– 1869) Vol.1 no.1 (Mar 1865)–Vol.4, no.12 (Mar 1869). Monthly. Publisher Trübner & Co. London. England. 23 cm. Magazine. General. English. Note Editors’ names not given; preface signed by "The editors."

On the German side I discovered the magazine Schachzeitung, 'von der Berliner Schachgesellschaft', Volume 1, 1846 (starts in July). Of this periodical Di Felice says,

2321. Schachzeitung: In Monatl (1846–1871) Organization Berliner Schachgesellschaft. Vol.1 (1846)– Vol.26, no.12 (Dec 1871). Monthly. Editors Ludwig Bledow ( July/Aug 1846), Wilhelm Hanstein and Otto von Oppen (Sept 1846–1851), Otto von Oppen and N.D. Nathan (1851–52), Otto von Oppen (1852–58), Max Lange (Dec 1858– 1864), E. von Schmidt and Johannes Minckwitz (Jan 1865–1866), Johannes Minckwitz (1867–71). Publisher Veit und Co. Berlin, later Leipzig. Germany. Illus., 21–23 cm. Magazine. General. German. Note Vol.4 (1849)–Vol.26 (1871) with title Schachzeitung der Berliner Schachgesellschaft. Continued by Deutsche Schachzeitung: Organ für das Gesamte Schachleben.

All of this taken together promises to be a huge time waster. At least I'll get a few posts out of the time spent.

Kindle Best Seller

For today's post I had planned to follow up on last week's 'Game Changer' Excerpts. While writing that post I noticed a section in the book on engine evaluations of '0.00'. I think it was at the end of chapter 2, titled 'ZeroZeroZero'. I documented the entire excerpt just a few days ago by saying,

More pages are available from Google Books: Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI. The section 'Preview this book' is uninterrupted from the cover page through most of Ch.4.

Now the preview has disappeared and the page is marked 'No preview'. I've been looking into the topic of engine evaluations '0.00' for some time, but I'm not prepared to write a full post on it. I had hoped to use the half-dozen (or so) 'Game Changer' pages to launch a discussion, but that will have to wait for another day. What to do?

Since writing the 'Excerpts' post I've also noticed that the book is marked 'Best Seller' by Amazon. In fact, it's no.1, as the following screen capture shows.

Amazon Best Sellers: Best Chess
(amazon.com)

No.2 on the list, which I suppose is the previous no.1, is 'Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time' by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. For readable titles of the other books, follow the Amazon link.

All books on the Amazon list are marked 'Kindle Edition'. Does no one buy physical copies of books any more? Whatever the case, congratulations to all involved in the AlphaZero book on creating an instant hit!

TCEC S14 Final, CCC5/-6

For the past several weeks I've been running a Monday series to track the evolution of two outstanding all-engine chess events that just keep going and going. When a tournament in either one finishes, another tournament starts almost immediately. Without a regular, periodic look at the competitions, they are difficult to follow. (For links and acronyms, see the 'TCEC/CCC Links' tab.at the top of each post on this blog.)

TCEC: Last week's post, TCEC/CCC Head Scratching, revealed a mismatch between the published records of TCEC S14 and the two participants in the S14 superfinal. How did Leela manage to qualify? I ended the discussion with:-

I checked a few other resources and couldn't find the source of the discrepancy.

As I write this, the two engines have played 37 games in the 100 game match with the score deadlocked at +6-6=25. Since the previous post, Chessdom.com has published two reports on circumstances leading up to the match:-

• 2019-02-04: Stockfish wins the Premier Division, Lc0 qualifies for the Superfinal
• 2019-02-06: Interview with Alexander Lyashuk about the recent success of Lc0

Neither report mentions how Leela qualified for the superfinal, so we have to turn to other sources. The Leela blog provides a hint:-

• 2019-01-16: Leela promotes to SuperFinal of TCEC! She will face Stockfish. (blog.lczero.org)

Here we find the crosstables for all S14 preliminary divisions where Leela played. This includes the mention:-

Premier division standings (Komodo MCTS results have been removed)

So we have the results counting seven engines instead of the eight shown in the TCEC archive. Why were the MCTS results removed? I'm sure the reason must be documented in several places, but I found the answer on Talkchess.com:-

• 2019-02-09: End of Era is there: SF is finally beaten! • 'My question is why LCZero is playing the superfinal, if Komodo was second in Premier Division? It should be Stockfish vs Komodo.' => 'Because the games against Komodo MCTS were cancelled at the end (according to TCEC rules, since MCTS crashed 3 times), and Lc0 benefited from that.'

CCC: As for the other ongoing competition, CCC5 was underway at the time of last week's 'Head Scratching' post. Stockfish emerged the winner, 2.5 points ahead of Lc0, which was 4.5 points ahead of third-placed Lc0-dev. Stockfish then played Lc0 in a 100 game match, which finished yesterday. The result hasn't been published yet, although the PGN is available.

A new event titled 'Battle of the Leelas' started with Stockfish, Komodo MCTS, and four Leela variants. Thanks to some new commands in CCC chat, I located a few key resources that I hadn't seen or had overlooked:-

• CCCC Club - Chess Club (chess.com)
• CCC PGN Archive (ditto)
• CCC #tournament-results (discordapp.com)

Another command ('!CCC6') informs,

Nightbot: CCC 6: The Winter Classic; Classical (standard) games with the eight best engines. Time control: 30/10 classical; Engines: 8; Stages: 1 main, 1 final between top two engines; Stage 1 format: 4x RR (escalation); Stage 1 games: 112; Stage 1 duration: 7 days; Finals games: 100

That's enough for this week's post. Next week we should have the score for the TCEC S14 superfinal through game 80, and find that CCC6 has started.