TCEC S19 Underway; CCC in 'Pre-CCC15'

Let's start by summarizing this blog's previous report on the world's top two engine vs. engine competitions. The title of that post was Alliestein Wins TCEC Cup 6; CCC Tests 'Stockfish NNUE', and its summary is:-

TCEC: In Cup 6, the AI/NN engines dominated. Alliestein beat Stockfish in the semifinal round, then beat LCZero for the cup title. S19 should start with the Qualification League in the next week • CCC: The CCC announced 'AlphaZero Match Will Be Replicated In Computer Chess Champs' (chess.com). [...] The match should start and finish during the next week.

Both of the 'should start' predictions held true. Following is the current status.

TCEC: Before the start of Season 19 (S19), the TCEC announced its format:-

!next • Now QL, then L3, then testing for L2+L1 including also Stockfish (NNUE) as test opponent, then L2, L1, DivP, Sufi.

It's cryptic, but if you know that QL = Qualification League and L3 = League 3, etc., you understand that the organizers are following the same format they used in S18. An engine with the oxymoronic name 'SlowChess Blitz Classic 2.26' won both QL and L3 by significant margins. The site is now in 'testing for L2+L1'.

CCC: The 'AlphaZero Simulation Match' finished with Lc0 beating Stockfish 8, which was the version of Stockfish used in the 2017 AlphaZero - Stockfish match. Nowhere could I find a W-L-D count of the 200 games from the match and I didn't feel like counting them myself, so here's Chess.com's display of the match.

Stockfish won five games, while Lc0 won a lot more than that. A back of the envelope calculation using the final score of plus-64 yields +69-5=126. A follow-on match Komodo vs. Stockfish 8 was won by the Dragon with a score of plus-30. After that match ended, the CCC started running a series of 'Pre-CCC15' events. A preliminary document showing the planning for CCC15 is available, but is too cryptic to understand. The name will be 'CCC 15: Bullet II' and it should start this week.

[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. • NB: Leela = LC0 = LCzero]

Capablanca Street, West Miami

A few months ago, in April 1970 & 1995 'On the Cover' (April 2020), I quoted from the 1994 USCF Yearbook: 'Anchorage, Alaska, has the only subdivision with a chess theme I have seen or heard of.' This photo isn't quite a subdivision, but it still has a story.

Jose Raul Capablanca Street Sign, West Miami © Flickr user Phillip Pessar under Creative Commons.

The description informed,

He was a Cuban world chess champion.

Since you're reading this post on this blog, you undoubtedly know that already. More interesting is 'Why name a Miami street after Capablanca?' From Miami-Dade Legislative Item, File Number: 062148 (miamidade.gov; July 2006):-

WHEREAS, this Board has conducted a public hearing to consider codesignating and urging the City of West Miami to codesignate SW 16th Street from SW 57th Avenue to SW 62nd Avenue as Jose Raul Capablanca Street; and
WHEREAS, Jose Raul Capablanca was born in Havana, Cuba on November 19, 1888; he was educated in the United States and studied engineering at Columbia University; and
WHEREAS, Jose Raul Capablanca learned chess at the age of 4 by watching his father play and in 1901, at the age of 12, he beat Corzo, the Cuban champion; and
[...]
WHEREAS, this Board would like to honor the memory of Jose Raul Capablanca with this codesignation, since he is a legend in the Cuban community and still revered as the superstar he was in his day; and
[...]

To make the change after ten 'WHEREAS'es, 'The Clerk of the Board is hereby directed to transmit a certified copy of this resolution to the':-

• City Commission of West Miami,
• Public Works Department,
• United States Postal Service,
• Traffic Signals and Signs Division of the Public Works Department
• Land Development Division of the Public Works Department,
• Miami-Dade Police Department, and
• Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department

I bet they don't change street names too often.

Stockfish NNUE = +90 Elo

According to my notes, it's been three months since I last visited the main chess engine forums (see the tab 'TCEC/CCC Links' at the top of this page). What have the engine mavens been discussing since then? In a word, or rather in an acronym, the conversations have been dominated by 'NNUE'. That observation fits well with the last two posts in this blog's TCEC/CCC series:-

• 2020-07-27: A Chess Monsterpiece?; Stockfish NNUE
• 2020-08-03: Alliestein Wins TCEC Cup 6; CCC Tests 'Stockfish NNUE'

NNUE is shaping up to be the most important advance in computer chess since Alphazero and its offshoot Leela. What is it and how does it work? In NNUE (chessprogramming.org), the wiki explains,

A Neural Network architecture intended to replace the evaluation of Shogi, chess and other board game playing alpha-beta searchers running on a CPU.

Typical of many technical wikis, you have to understand the subject to understand the wiki page. One reference goes to NNUE accessible explanation (talkchess.com) with a good number of talking points including a pointer to a technical paper at arxiv.org, which is never easy reading. A couple of Stockfish-specific discussions are at:-

• SF NNUE #2728
• NNUE merge #2823

The official Stockfish fork lives at nodchip/Stockfish: UCI chess engine (github.com). A recent Fishcooking post, NNUE evaluation merged in master, informed,

If 'Use NNUE = false', NNUE is never used. If 'Use NNUE = true', the NNUE eval is used if the material imbalance (including Pawns) is not more than around 2.5 Pawns, else the classic eval. For greater material imbalance the double speed of classic eval outweights [the] more accurate NNUE eval. Probably in such clear cases subtle positional factors play only a minor role.

Gary Linscott, who played a key role in both Stockfish and Leela, said, 'Congratulations! Seeing a +90 Elo patch that replaces the entire eval seems almost unreal.' I hope some kind, understanding soul will eventually produce something like 'NNUE for Dummies'. There is a lot to keep track of here.

Chess Movie 2020

By coincidence, before I saw this trailer I had just seen the report John Leguizamo Stars in Directorial Debut Critical Thinking: Watch Powerful Trailer for Chess Drama (people.com), subtitled,

Based on a true story, Critical Thinking follows John Leguizamo as a Miami high school teacher leading his underserved students to the National Chess Championship.

'Available On Demand on Sept. 4'; I expect we'll hear more about the movie as the release date approaches.

Critical Thinking Trailer (2020) John Leguizamo, Chess Drama Movie (2:24) • '[Published on] Aug 6, 2020'

The description of the trailer didn't have much to say, but the comments did. Here are a few I particularly liked.

When the teacher came in to teach chess class that was my nap time. • You had me at 'Chess Drama Movie'. • Is this like 'Sister Act' but with a chess board? • I've seen this movie so many times. The only difference is that instead of dance, baseball, singing or football they have chess as their talent of choice. • On the lines of 'Queen of Katwe' and 'Endgame' • It’s like a dance movie but with chess. • So they basically copied from FAHIM?

The reference to FAHIM had me scratching my head but Wikipedia (in French) came to the rescue: Fahim (film; with Gérard Depardieu). It starts,

Fahim est un film français réalisé par Pierre-François Martin-Laval, sorti en 2019. Il s'agit d'un film biographique sur le joueur d'échecs franco-bengladais Fahim Mohammad.

...or as Google translates it...

Fahim is a French film directed by Pierre-François Martin-Laval, released in 2019. It is a biographical film about the Franco-Bengladian chess player Fahim Mohammad.

If you change 'Bengladian' to 'Bangladeshi', it makes more sense. That makes two movies I have to watch.

August 1970 & 1995 'On the Cover'

Going back 50 and 25 years, this month's covers celebrate two tournaments that were open to the amateur player. For the previous U.S. Amateur cover, 50 years ago, see July 1968 'On the Cover' (July 2018; co-champions Jones and Shahade). Last month's post July 1970 & 1995 'On the Cover' (July 2020), saw the playoff winners of the 1995 'Amateur Team' tournaments.

Is there a connection between the U.S. Amateur tournament and the U.S. Amateur Team tournament? The most recent USCF Yearbook I have is the 2017 edition. It lists U.S. Amateur champions through 1991, followed by East and West champions starting 1992. It also lists annual U.S. Amateur Team champions starting 1971, with the first mention of East/West versions starting 1984. (NB: A summary of the team names would make a great article.)

Left: 'Charles Weldon, U.S. Amateur Champion'
Right: 'Fred Gruenberg "retires"; Hodgson wins National Open'

Chess Life & Review (50 Years Ago)

Weldon Sweeps U.S. Amateur • Former USCF Master and Wisconsin champion Charles Weldon, now living in New York City, ran off six straight wins to capture the 20th Annual United States Amateur Championship, played May 29-31 at Chicago's Shoreland Hotel. Held in the Midwest for the first time, the tournament continued as one of the nation's most popular with 195 entrants -- 92 in Group 1, open to all non-Masters, and 103 in Group 2, open to all under 1800 or Unrated.

Chess Life (25 Years Ago)

He Put the FUN Back Into Chess by Jerry Hanken • The National Open is one of the few "must play in" events in American chess. In 1965 the legendary late USCF president and executive director Ed Edmondson established the tournament as part of the then "triple crown" of national events (along with the U.S. Open and the American Open).

After a five paragraph summary of the tournament's history, the report continued,

The 1995 National Open top section was won on tiebreak by British GM Julian Hodgson who was awarded the prestigious Edmondson Cup. Julian was only a deceptive No. 14 on the wallchart, as his FIDE rating of 2585 was used. (He had no published USCF rating.)

The 2017 USCF Yearbook lists the winners of the 1965 National Open, the first in the series, as Robert Byrne and Samuel Reshevsky. That first event was featured in the January 1965 'On the Cover' (January 2015), as well as for the following month.

Alliestein Wins TCEC Cup 6; CCC Tests 'Stockfish NNUE'

The previous post on the world's top two engine-vs-engine competitions announced the most recent winners of both: Stockfish Wins TCEC S18; Leela Wins CCC14 (July 2020). Here's a summary of the final rounds:-

TCEC: The S18 Superfinal finished with Stockfish beating LCZero in the 100 game match by a score of +23-16=61. • CCC: CCC14 was a double-elimination event, meaning that an engine had to lose two matches to be knocked out of the competition. Lc0 beat Leelenstein in the 'final' match but since this was Leelenstein's first match loss, the two engines played a second 'final' match, which Lc0 also won. The CCC then conducted a series of 'Post-CCC14' matches, most of them featuring a new 'Stockfish NNUE' engine.

I discussed 'Stockfish NNUE' in last week's post A Chess Monsterpiece (July 2020), and noted, 'Lc0 beat Stockfish NNUE in a 200 game match [...] A second trial is still underway.' What else has happened in the last two weeks?

TCEC: In Cup 6, the AI/NN engines dominated. Alliestein beat Stockfish in the semifinal round, then beat LCZero for the cup title. Stockfish beat Fire for third place. S19 kicked off with various flavors of Stockfish against various flavors of LCZeroCPU, followed by other forms of testing. S19 should start with the Qualification League in the next week.

CCC: In an event called 'More Chesse-Play', consisting of three closely contested 200 game matches, Lc0 beat both Stockfish-NNUE (+1) and Stockfish (+5), while Stockfish-NNUE beat Stockfish (+1). After a few more Stockfish-NNUE matches, where it clobbered weaker engines, the CCC announced AlphaZero Match Will Be Replicated In Computer Chess Champs (chess.com):-

While Chess.com can't bring AlphaZero out of hiding, we will be replicating the full AlphaZero vs. Stockfish 8 match in the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship. The open-source Leela Chess Zero will be standing in for AlphaZero. Anyone who has seen Leela's recent games could be forgiven for mistaking her for AlphaZero.

The match should start and finish during the next week. The current version of the underdog is Stockfish 11.

[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. • NB: Leela = LC0 = LCzero]

Strange Adventures on eBay

After two consecutive posts featuring multiple photos of modern players, last seen in 1997 Linares International (July 2020), the long-running series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price (March 2010), returns with an item that is more artistic. It's also a chess comic, a category for which I have a special fondness.

The item pictured below was titled 'Strange Adventures #35 CGC 8.5 OW-W DC-1953 Chess Cover'. It sold for US $643.93 after 26 bids from 12 bidders.

The caption on the bottom right says,

Captain Comet becomes a human Pawn on - "The Cosmic Chessboard!"

The pieces in the glass cases are named Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and Earth. The description added only the mysterious phrase, 'Tied for Highest Graded Copy.' This probably refers to the 'CGC 8.5' mentioned in the title. For more about the CGC classification, see a previous post in the 'Top eBay Chess Items' series, JLA Chess Comics (April 2019).