The Wizard as Professor

In the first installment of this weekly comic series we introduced a chess village and its villagers. Then we introduced The Village Wizard (January 2024), where I observed,

Some say that the villagers' interest in chess stems from the presence of an unusual man who arrived in the village at some time in the recent past.

This is the third installment.

The village wizard is a retired professor of computer science who taught AI at a top-notch engineering college. He holds a patent on an important technique used to generate life-like forms in plasma. The patent has made him a wealthy man.

(*) Images: AI Comic Factory (aicomicfactory.com)

Consider the Message, Not the Chess

For this month's Flickr favorite, my short list had eight photos. Four of the eight were AI generated images and two were from the annual Tata tournament in Wijk aan Zee. Given my weakness for AI images, guess what I chose for this post?

Top: Strategische Finanzplanung: Schachspiel mit goldenen Bullen und bronzenen Bärenfiguren
Bottom: Human vs AI playing Chess
Both: © Flickr user Kostenlose Bilder mit KI under Creative Commons.

The title of the top photo translates to

Strategic financial planning: Chess game with golden bulls and bronze bear figures

Bulls and bears, got it! The Flickr user name translated to 'Free images with AI'. How did we get from KI to AI? My German - English dictionary translates 'artificial' as 'künstlich'. The word 'künstlich' translates as 'artificial' or 'synthetic'. KI/AI, got it!

I've also been dabbling with AI chess images, last seen in The Village Wizard (January 2024). In looking at hundreds of images, I can't remember seeing a realistic chess set. In the top image, the board looks like it's 7x6. In the bottom image, it looks like 10x8, with two White Queens on the left and two Black Kings on the right. And what is that piece lying on its side in the foreground of the bottom image? Better concentrate on the overall messages of the two images and not on their chess details.

Players under the FIDE Flag

In a recent post, FIDE Rating List - January 2024 (January 2024), I wondered where to go next with the data. I decided,

One idea is to look at the doubling of players under the FIDE flag ('FID'). To get started, here are counts of 'FID' players for the past five years:-

2020 : 252
2021 : 254
2022 : 263
2023 : 527
2024 : 798

Those numbers total 2094 players, of which 507 were rated 2000 or above. Of course, some of those players were listed as 'FID' for all five years, but I'll come back to that a bit later.

The key to detecting federation transfers is the FIDE ID, a unique code given to all chess players tracked by FIDE. A few years ago, I documented these codes on a page titled FIDE Country and Federation Codes - 'unofficial' (m-w.com; 'Last updated 2015-03-02'). The FIDE ID is shown in the last column of the table on that page. At the bottom of the page are references to blog posts that documented the creation of the page.

Each federation assigns codes to new players using the federation's FIDE ID as the first two or three digits of the player's unique FIDE ID, which is typically seven or eight digits. That means the player's last five digits are assigned autonomously by the federation, perhaps disconnected from any central FIDE database.

When I worked out the codes for the various federations in 2015, there were no FIDE IDs longer than eight digits. Now there are many codes with nine digits. It appears that FIDE assigns those codes when a new player -- previously unknown to FIDE and having no federation -- starts playing on the FIDE Online Arena (FOA). I eliminated 'FID' players with nine digit codes from the total of 2094 'FID' players counted earlier and arrived at new counts for the five years:-

2020 : 164
2021 : 166
2022 : 166
2023 : 394
2024 : 636

That totals 1526 players. I then counted the number of times each player appeared on the lists over the five years. I counted exactly 700 players distributed as follows:-

5 : 144
4 : 11
3 : 9
2 : 199
1 : 337

In other words, there were 144 players who were on the lists for each of the five years and there were 337 players who were on a list for only one year. Of those 337 players, 291 were on the 2024 list (released in January 2024, covering activity in 2023) and 82 were titled players (GM, IM, etc.).

Next stop: Which federations were responsible for those 82 titled players before they became 'FID' players? When I tackle this question, I'll have to keep in mind the European privacy laws that also apply to any chess player who changed federations.

The Village Wizard

A week ago I started a new Monday series requiring two artistic talents which I lack completely: story telling and illustrating. In that post, The Chess Village (January 2024), I wrote,

The story starts in the Catskill mountains, in a village where almost everyone plays chess.

This is the second installment.

Some say that the villagers' interest in chess stems from the presence of an unusual man who arrived in the village at some time in the recent past. He has two distinguishing characteristics that everyone notices wherever he goes -- he wears a pointed hat and a cloak. For this reason the villagers call him the 'Wizard'. He lives in a mansion on the edge of the village.

(*) Images: AI Comic Factory (aicomicfactory.com)

Man City and Magnus

From Youtube's 'Man City' (Manchester City) channel. For an introduction to the team, see Manchester City F.C. (wikipedia.org; 'This article is about the men's football club').

When Geniuses Meet | Pep meets Chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen (11:54) • '[Published on] Dec 12, 2023'

The description said,

A must-watch encounter between two tactical geniuses, our manager Pep Guardiola sits down with Magnus Carlsen to talk their Greatest Moves.

The first of more than 1600 comments said,

As a chess and football fan, I see this as an absolute win.

I have to agree, even though I'm not a huge football [soccer] fan. While I was preparing the post on my local PC, I received the message: 'Video unavailable : Watch on YouTube'. Will it be available after it's posted?

FIDE Rating List - January 2024

A new year means a look at the first FIDE rating list of the year. I've been doing this for so many years that I repeated that first sentence from last year without consciously copying it. Even better, I have a reliable checklist to follow.

1) Identify last year's post: FIDE Rating List - January 2023 (January 2023).

2) Identify the source of the FIDE data: FIDE Ratings Download (ratings.fide.com).

STANDARD
TXT format (31 Dec 2023, Sz: 9.77 MB)

3) Compare some basic counts over the past few years. Going back to the start of 2020 gives pre-covid 19 as a reference point.

2024: >440K players; >265K marked inactive
2023: >405K players; >253K marked inactive
2022: >377K players; >228K marked inactive
2021: >362K players; >174K marked inactive
2020: >354K players; >181K marked inactive
[...]

4) Analyze changes in players per federation. The upper chart shows two new federations (Grenada and Niger). No federation had a name change, giving FIDE exactly 200 federations.

The lower charts show federations with the largest increase in number of players (left) and the largest percentage increase (right; for federations with at least 100 players at the start of 2023). In last year's post I noted,

Mexico ('MEX') and Bangladesh ('BAN') are on both charts.

Copy that for Mexico, then add China ('CHN') and Philippines ('PHI'). Bangladesh missed being included this year by only two places on the left chart.

5) Identify ideas for a followup post. In last year's only followup post, FIDE Rating List - Active Players (January 2023), I remembered an idea from 2022:-

One idea is to look at the doubling of players under the FIDE flag ('FID'), as calculated on the right [chart]. This must be a consequence of the war in Ukraine, but should be confirmed.

Will I manage to do it in 2024? To get started, here are counts of 'FID' players for the past five years:-

2024 : 798
2023 : 527
2022 : 263
2021 : 254
2020 : 252

Yes, this confirms that there has been a substantial increase during the past two years. What more can we learn from the rating lists about this?

The Chess Village

For the past month I've been using one post per week to explore AI Comics (*). In the previous post, Father Time and the New Year Baby (January 2024), I wrote,

After a month experimenting with this technology, it's time to carry the idea one step further. • Next: The chess village.

A 'step further' means to develop a complete story using AI Comics to illustrate the story. The story is mine; the illustrations are AI Comics. This post is the first installment.

The story starts in the Catskill mountains, in a village where almost everyone plays chess. The village square is a chess board and on an average day, when the weather is good, any number of villagers gather there to play games of chess with each other.

(*) Images: AI Comic Factory (aicomicfactory.com)