TCEC S15 and CCC8 Finals Both Underway

A week ago, in Leela Wins TCEC Cup 3; CCC8 S1 99% Finished, we left both of our two world class engine-to-engine competitions with their final stages just getting underway. Here's a recap of that post:-

TCEC: The S15 superfinal started [between Leela and Stockfish] and the score is currently tied at +1-1=11. • CCC: The CCC8 qualifying stage finished in the order -- Stockfish, Leela, Leelenstein, Antifish, Houdini, Komodo -- no tiebreaks required. Leelenstein beat Antifish for the second qualifying spot in the Leela family.

What is the current status of the two tournaments?

TCEC: With just over half of the S15 superfinal games played, Leela leads Stockfish by 27.5-24.5 (+8-5=40). At one point, Leela led by five points.

CCC: Here's a portion of the final crosstable from the CCC8 qualifying stage, showing how the first 12 engines (out of 24 engines total) fared against each other.

In the final stage, with about two-thirds of the games already played, the order of the four engines is Stockfish, Leela, Leelenstein, Houdini. The point spread between each successive place is almost enough to guarantee that this will be the final standing.

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page. • Leela = LC0 = LCzero]

The Real Caravaggio?

For this month's edition of Flickr photos, I had a good choice of interesting photos, one of which was a photo of a painting. I decided to use the painting, because I couldn't remember having seen it before.

Joueurs d'échecs, Le Caravage, 1610 © Flickr user Pierre under Creative Commons.

The description of the photo/painting pointed out (in French) that the chess board is positioned incorrectly, with the corner square white *not* on right. I had a bigger problem with the chess board -- it looks too modern and the slight tilt downward to the right is wrong. I have a plastic folding board in the same colors that looks very much like the board in the painting. This is undoubtedly a coincidence and the similiarity is my imagination playing tricks on me, but it still annoyed me.

Using an image search on 'chess caravaggio' (the artist's name in English), I located a half-dozen copies of the painting, one version of which had a different chess board. The others all had the same funny-looking board seen in the Flickr photo. There were other differences between the two versions, enough to convince me that they were two different paintings.

The Flickr description gives 'Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia' as a source. The white patch on the right side might be from a flash and is even more visible in the original (I've cropped out the painting's frame). Which version is hanging in Venice?

Paul Morphy, Annotator

In a recent post on this blog, Paul Morphy, Editor, I looked at the first two volumes of 'Chess Monthly' and wondered whether Morphy wrote the notes to the games. Here's a summary of the post:-

The bottom entry (1858) lists four Morphy games starting on p.15. [...] The first game, Paulsen - Morphy (p.15), is the famous game where Morphy sacrificed his Queen for a Bishop. It has a page and a half of notes. The other three Morphy games have a half-page of notes. [...; Fiske:] "The Book of the [1st American Chess] Congress will hardly be ready before Spring. ... The notes to the games will be chiefly by Mr. Morphy." [...] Were the notes to the Morphy games taken from the draft of the book? [...] Next stop: The Book of the 1st American Chess Congress.

I already had a copy of the book, downloaded from the Open Library when I was working on the post Fiske's 'Chess in Iceland' (July 2018). That copy turned out to be problematic when I was using it in my Kindle. The pages were dark yellow and slow to load, so I located a better copy in Google Books. The title page was preceded by a colored chess problem, as shown in the following image.

Title: 'The Book of the First American Chess Congress' Author: Daniel Willard Fiske, MA; Published: New York, Rudd & Carlton, 1859. The subtitle says,

Containing the proceedings of that celebrated assemblage, held in New York, in the year 1857, with the papers read in its sessions, the games played in the grand tournament, and the stratagems entered in the problem tournay; together with sketches of the history of chess in the old and new worlds.

The book's dedication says,

To Paul Morphy, the hero of that American tournament whose story is here told, and the conqueror upon the traditionary battle fields of Europe, I dedicate this book with every sentiment of esteem and friendship.

The book's preface mentions,

To my kind and distinguished friend, Mr. PAUL MORPHY, the reader is under obligations for comments to several of the games in the Grand Tournament.

Long story short: Morphy wrote the notes to 'several' of the games in the book. While I was working on this, I also learned more about the games in 'Chess Monthly'. The following is from another of Fiske's chess books, 'Chess Tales & Chess Miscellanies' (1912), as a long note to the chapter titled 'Paul Morphy'. The note was titled 'Morphy as a Chess Editor' and attributed to the Times Democrat, New Orleans, March 10, 1901, p. 15:-

From some unknown cause, but undoubtedly as a fact, there seems to have obtained a fairly general belief among the chess fraternity, and especially the editorial section thereof, that Paul Morphy merely lent the use of his name, without substantial editorial work, to the two chess periodicals with which he was connected during his career; namely, the American Chess Monthly during 1858, 1859, and 1860, and the column in the New York Ledger appearing in 1859-1860. In part refutation, at least, of this current idea, we think the following excerpt from a letter written under date of February 5, 1901, from Prof. Daniel Willard Fiske, then at Florence, Italy, to Mr. Will H. Lyons, the well-known chess bibliopole of Newport, Ky., will prove interesting to our readers. It will be recollected that Professor Fiske was Morphy's associate in the editorship of the Chess Monthly. He observes:

"I was very much interested in Mr. Buck's account of Paul Morphy. He errs, however, when he states that Mr. Morphy contributed very little to the Chess Monthly while his name was upon the title-page. During the course of the second, third, and fourth volumes, a large part, possibly the greater part, of the games were selected and annotated by him. His annotations, for their clearness, their firmness, their gentlemanliness, and their terse, accurate English, have not, I think, ever been equalled. They well deserve republication. Unfortunately the indexes do not enable anyone to ascertain with which games Mr. Morphy had to do. My own copy has his initials attached to the games he annotated.

If possible, I will endeavor to have sent you from Paris three large photographs (front view, three-quarters view, side view) of the bust of Mr. Morphy in the Café de la Régence. They are not very satisfactory, partly because the light under which they were taken was so placed as to give a gray appearance to the hair. On the whole, the bust of Morphy constitutes the best likeness obtainable -- all those appearing in books are caricatures."

We confess that we ourselves were not aware that so large a proportion of the games and annotations that enrich the specially splendid 1858, 1859, and 1860 volumes of the Chess Monthly were due to Paul Morphy, but there can be no questioning the accuracy and reliability of Professor Fiske's statements in the matter. It would surely be a boon to possessors of that already valuable periodical, and a marked increase in its chess value to all lovers of the game, if he would furnish for publication, from his set of the Chess Monthly, the data indicating the games selected and annotated by the King of Chess-Kings. We should be only too pleased to give the matter place in our column.

It may be remarked in this connection that, as far as concerns the chess department in the New York Ledger of 1859-1860, aside from the fact that the entire series of at least the earlier half of the games and annotations bear unmistakable marks of Morphy's handiwork, we have personal knowledge that he expended much labor on that particular portion of the column. But the clouds of a mighty oncoming conflict on the bloody fields of the Civil War were already sweeping over the sons of the North and South alike, and small wonder that Morphy was compelled to commit the latter part of the volume to the capable hands of his friend, Fuller, of New York. This is a his- torical fact too well known to need repetition or discussion.

[Paul Morphy died at New Orleans, July 10, 1884.]

In that passage there is much for further research. For this post, I'll stop here.

Chess Obsessed

After Moscow Panoramas, what else can I do that avoids 'requiring any significant amount of work'? How about something along the lines of 'The Game of Life' or 'The Chess-Players' (January 2019), which was based on that month's 'Top eBay Chess Items by Price'? For the current month that would be a post following on Hyde's Mandragorias (May 2019).

I found a half-dozen recent eBay photos from roughly the same period as the item in the 'Hyde' post, couldn't decide which I liked best, and chose the one that I knew most about. Another photo from the same film is on my page Chess in the Movies (p.2), where the description says, 'Brainwashed (Schachnovelle, 1961); Allied Artists Pictures; Curt Jurgens'.

Curd Jurgens - Brainwashed

Is the actor's name Curt or Curd? The film also figured in a post on this blog, Chess Behanced (February 2014), where I made the connection between Stefan Zweig's novella 'The Royal Game' (aka Schachnovelle) and 'Brainwashed'. That post pointed to a couple of Wikipedia references and used the name Curd Jürgens. The Wikipedia page, Curd Jürgens, starts,

Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens (13 December 1915 – 18 June 1982) was a German-Austrian stage and film actor. He was usually billed in English-speaking films as Curt Jurgens.

It looks like it's 'Curd' in German and 'Curt' in English. As I do with most differences in spelling, I'll continue to use whatever my source uses along with a mention (usually 'aka') of the alternative.

Back to that 'Chess in the Movies' page, I created it sometime around 2005. It might be worthwhile to survey images I've collected since then and, if I have enough examples, add another sub-page on the same topic. One last word about the original eBay photo: it sold for $19.59 'Buy It Now'.

Moscow Panoramas

Just like a few months ago in Postcards from 1935 Moscow (January 2019)...

I'm swamped with other projects and have no time for a post requiring any significant amount of work.

...so let's have some more photos 'Spotted on eBay'.

Top: 12th Soviet Chess Championship, Moscow, IX-X, 1940. For another photo on this blog from the same source, see The 12th Soviet Championship (September 2017)
Bottom: Final candidates match, Moscow, IX-XI, 1974, 1973-75 Candidates Matches (m-w.com)

The top photo 'consists of four photos glued together'. The bottom photo is a single panoramic view.

Leela Wins TCEC Cup 3; CCC8 S1 99% Finished

When we left last week's post about two ongoing, world class engine-vs-engine competitions, TCEC Cup 3 Nears QF; CCC8 S1 90% Finished, the situation looked something like this:-

TCEC: Currently in the octofinal stage (the round of 16) five of the original 32 engines have already qualified for the quarterfinal, with three octofinal matches remaining to determine the other three quarterfinalists • CCC: Of the original 24 engines, 21 have entered [CCC8] and have run the gauntlet of the engines that started before them. Fizbo is the 22nd engine to start, leaving only Stockfish and Leela still to start.

What's the status a week later?

TCEC: In TCEC Cup 3, Leela beat Stockfish in the final match with a score of +2-1=7, to confirm its victory in TCEC Cup 2. The following chart shows the last four matches that determined 1st through 4th places in the final standings.

The S15 superfinal started afterwards and the score is currently tied at +1-1=11. For a reminder on how the two engines qualified, see the post from two weeks ago, TCEC S15 Final: SF vs. Leela; CCC8 S1 at 3/4 Mark.

CCC: Looks like last week's title, 'CCC8 S1 90% Finished', was overly optimistic. The first, qualifying stage is still running. Leela was the last engine to start the event and still has four mini-matches left on the schedule. I'll add an update to this post when the final result is known.

With both TCEC S15 and CCC8 in their final stages, it's useful to have an overview of finishes to previous competitions:-

• 2019-02-25: Stockfish Wins TCEC S14; CCC6 S2 Underway
• 2019-03-18: TCEC S15 Div4 Finishes; Stockfish Wins CCC6
• 2019-04-15: TCEC S15 DivP Underway; Leela Wins CCC7 Final

Newcomers to chess engine tournaments might benefit from a basic information page published recently by the organizer of the CCC competitions: Computer Chess Engines: A Quick Guide (chess.com).

[For further information from the various stakeholders in the engine-to-engine events, see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page. • Leela = LC0 = LCzero]

***

Later: A few hours after I prepared the main post above, the CCC8 qualifying stage finished in the order -- Stockfish, Leela, Leelenstein, Antifish, Houdini, Komodo -- no tiebreaks required. Since the rules specified, 'Top 4 engines advance to final, only two can be from a single, or shared, code-base', Leelenstein beat Antifish for the second qualifying spot in the Leela family. Also noteworthy is Houdini's narrow half-point placing above Komodo. I'll have more details in next week's post.

The Hand That Feeds You

The last time we saw the Grand Chess Tour (GCT) on this blog was Chess Lions in Leuven (June 2018), about the GCT leg in Belgium. The tour is back in 2019, and it's been much expanded. What do the players think?

Grand Chess Tour: 2019 Côte d’Ivoire Rapid & Blitz - GCT expands in 2019 (2:44) • 'Published on May 12, 2019'

What do you think they think? More events, more money -- what's not to like? The description to the video said,

Grandmaster Maurice Ashley feels the Grand Chess Tour Players out on how they feel towards the expansion of the Grand Chess Tour circuit into new Countries beginning with the Côte d’Ivoire Rapid & Blitz in Africa.

Starting with GM Nakamura ('more events, more players, more variety, more prize money'), followed by GMs Wesley So, Vachier-Lagrave, Topalov, Karjakin, and Carlsen ('The more the merrier!'), the players have nothing but good to say. For more about the series of events this year, see 2019 Grand Chess Tour (grandchesstour.org). Unfortunately for those of us who live in Belgium, the Belgian leg has disappeared. I should have visited last year when I had the chance!