Chess Set Available for Use

Chess in Christchurch © Flickr user mikeyu1402 under Creative Commons.

It's good to know, but why are playing hours shorter on the weekend? A color photo of the same scene is also available on Flickr.com: Chess in the square.

Do You Care about Today's GMs?

Not too long ago, Wahrheit, the pipe-smoking proprietor of Robert Pearson's Chess Blog, posted the question Do You Care About Today's Grandmaster Games and Tournaments? He summarized his concern with

My purely unscientific sample says that the over-teenage, under-2200 crowd spends a lot less time at the club discussing the latest GM games than when I started going to clubs around 1980.

While I doubt that many GMs lose sleep over this issue, perhaps they should. I am absolutely certain that the only people on the planet who are the least bit interested in GM chess are the card carrying members, the rank-and-file, of the chess playing public. If they aren't interested in GM chess, then no one is. This contrasts with most other sports / hobbies / pastimes, whose experts can count on a smattering of interest from those who know next-to-nothing about said sport etc., but who will spend at least a few of their 8760 hours per year watching an occasional program or reading the odd story about that passing interest.

Wahrheit: So, for any reader who has been around serious chess long enough to have seen the beginning of the computer era, what say you?

I say thanks for asking. It's a good point and since I've been interested in serious chess since the years just before the Fischer boom, I'm qualified to answer.

Wahrheit: Do you look at yesterday's Wijk aan Zee games with annotations by the excellent Dennis Monokroussos, or was it on your radar at all?

Substitute 'any cat.18+ tournament' for 'yesterday's Wijk aan Zee' and 'any competent commentator' for Dennis Monokroussos and my answers are:

• 'Do you look?' • Yes, I look, but not immediately, and often long after the event has ended.
  
• 'Was it on your radar?' • Yes, it was, because I follow a number of news sources and blogs, many of which report on the same top level events.

One of the attractions of chess is that we can play through a Lasker - Capablanca game from a century ago and get the same sort of intellectual pleasure as from playing through yesterday's game between two world top-10s. Chess news and chess games have a certain timeless charm that increases with temporal distance from the event.

How many chess fans can name the last 2-3 winners at Corus-A or at Linares? I know I can't, but when the day comes that I'm suddenly interested in Kramnik's handling of a certain variation, or Anand's conversion of a miniscule opening advantage, I'll look at the game and say, 'Oh, yes! That's the year he won that event. He was in great form, wasn't he!'

Wahrheit: If you were around for both, were you more likely to look at the games from Karpov - Kasparov 1985 than Anand - Kramnik 2008?

Nothing has changed. I was just as likely to look at the K-K games in the 1980s as I was to look at the most recent World Championship match. A big difference is that nowadays the games are available immediately. In the pre-Internet, pre-TWIC, pre-Chessbase, pre-blog era the games were available only when they were printed. In the days of Fischer - Spassky 1972, or the early Kasparov - Karpov matches, that meant printed the next day in mainstream, big city news sources. Other top level games were available a few weeks or months later in the specialist chess press.

***

Now it's time to change gears. This Q&A is obscuring Wahrheit's original point, that 'the masses increasingly don’t care about innovations at move 17 or 25, even compared to 20 years ago in the Kasparov era'. I'm not sure that they ever did care. Kasparov, the best prepared player that the world had ever seen, was following in the footsteps of of his well prepared predecessors: Alekhine, Botvinnik, Fischer, and Karpov. What was once, for those players, proprietary technique in preparation is now the common property of all world class players. Some players might work harder, and some might have slightly better memories, but they all work hard, looking to improve their own openings while looking for chinks in their opponents' openings. What has changed is that where once they moved wooden pieces at lightning speed around a chess board, they now slave away at their computers, watching the numbers calculated by their chess playing software scroll by.

We, the small part of the public interested in chess, know that the first 10-20+ moves in any 2700+ (maybe 2600+ or even 2500+) GM game are the result of both players having studied that opening using software and then having memorized the most favorable lines. What we might not know is that players did the same 25 years ago. It might have only been the first 10-15 moves and it did not involve computers, but the basic technique was already in use.

How many club players could pinpoint where the new move ('N') occurred in a game between two 2700+ players? Very few. How many could do it 25 years ago? Also very few. Does it matter? It depends on where you stand. The trend at GM level will continue until chess as they know it is played out. It might take 10 years or it might take 20 or more, but opening theory will eventually be exhausted. That's a fact, not an opinion, and that's why I'm becoming more and more interested in chess960. The memorization ends the day you admit that there is more to chess than the single, traditional start position. On that same day a chess game begins once again with the first move.

Many Zeros, One Hero

Nearly five months after my last post on the USCF's political plight -- Wrapup on the 2009 USCF EB Election -- the lawsuits and the long ordeal are over. For a press release by the USCF, see USCF Agrees to Settle Lawsuits with Susan Polgar and Paul Truong [USchess.org]; for expert commentary, see Settlement in Dispute That Riveted the Chess World [NYtimes.com]. Worth bringing to wider attention is a note of appreciation posted to the USCF's members-only forum, A special thanks to Bill Hall:

No matter whether anyone likes or dislikes the settlement, the fact is that it *is* a settlement. USCF now has the opportunity to move forward and get back to promoting chess which is why most of us are members of this organization in the first place.

However, I truly believe that every member needs to take the time to send a thanks to Bill Hall for the superhuman devotion and dedication he gave to the effort to resolve this issue in USCF best interests as best he could. Let's face it, the guy conversed with 14 different defendants and multiple sets of attorneys on a daily basis oftentimes including nights and weekends for over two years. Think of the stress and the toll on his and his family's well being. I honestly do not believe that there are many people who would have done this for USCF or any other organization.

Thank you Bill Hall for all your time, energy, and efforts to do what you truly believed to be best for USCF. We look forward to seeing your ability to lead the organization out of the valley and up to a higher plateau.

The USCF's Executive Director responded in the same thread:

I appreciate the sentiment, but if you want to thank me, do so by thanking my staff who picked up the slack as best they could in the face of staff reductions, reductions in pay, and serious uncertainty. You have a lot of good people working for you, and they have been through a difficult period. There are also a lot of issues pending out there that have not received my proper attention through this process, and to any of you affected by this, I apologize and begin some much needed catch up work so we can turn our attention to the future of the Federation. Also, this as been a very difficult time for all of the defendants individually, and in their representative capacities. At times emotions have run high and at times feelings have been hurt. I want to thank everyone that has been involved in the USCF's defense as part of the joint defense agreement. [...]

What has shocked me in talking with so many is just how much we all really do have in common. It is easy to get mired in a contest of wills over our differences, but to be great we must find a way to recognize our commonalities and grow from there. That is how we must move forward. Chess is bigger than each of us, but chess can only grow through all of us. I owe so much to chess. That is why I am here. I want kids to have the same opportunities that I have had, and I want adults to have the opportunity to enjoy and love the game as I have grown to love it. In seventy years the Federation has had its ups and downs and it has persevered. Seventy years is something to fight for.

Bill Hall, Executive Director, USCF

Thanks, Bill Hall! Thanks, staff! Seventy years of positive support for chess is indeed something to fight for.

One Hundred Days for an Opening Repertoire

In Preparation and the Path of the Challenger, I presented arguments from both Kasparov and Karpov on who is better prepared for a World Championship match - the reigning champion or the challenger. Since the only person who is able to comment fully on match preparation is the player himself, we are fortunate to have the thoughts of both players.

Kasparov's insights from 'Kasparov v Karpov 1990' are particularly useful, because he covered many details related to preparation which are normally not available to the chess public. Here's an example (p.2); Karpov qualified as challenger in March 1990.

Back in January 1990 I began planning my preparation, considering how to allocate my efforts, and where and with whom to carry out my training sessions. But there are events over hich we have no control.

Q: You have in mind the January events in Baku, as a result of which you not only broke off your first training session, but were also forced, together with your relations, to flee from your native town?

A: Yes, of course.

Q: You were left without a home, and it is not hard to imagine all the problems which piled up on you. Did you nevertheless succeed in carrying out fully your intended preparations for the match?

A: To say that my preparation was not carried out fully would be an understatement. The sort of preparation which I am accustomed to seeing was altogether absent. Before each match for the World Championship I used to reckon that 100 days of work were necessary. On this occasion I barely managed to scrape together 60 training days, but these were by no means those unclouded days of preparation on the banks of the Caspian Sea, which we had earlier.

Here Kasparov described how he was affected by the events of Azerbaijan's Black January (1990), when Soviet troops occupied Baku.

The normal pattern of life was destroyed. And this before such a match. There was neither sufficient time, nor reserves of nervous energy, nor calmness. The only thing I succeeded in doing was to outline the strategic course of the coming encounter, although only very approximately.

The strategy was to fight 'for maximum complexity' with both White and Black, but the course of the match showed Kasparov that his preparation with Black was inadequate (p.3-4).

I did not imagine how well prepared my opponent would be.

Q: During the match this quickly became evident.

A: Yes, but during the match everything is much more difficult to do. And there is another important factor, which I have already mentioned. I did not succeed in carrying out in full my preparation program, which had to be reduced to 60 days, and that with many breaks and distractions due to other things. It is quite obvious that when the time for preparation is reduced, the program itself also begins to be reduced, it is cut short. And therefore another incorrect step was taken, one which almost proved fatal. I wanted not only to play for complications with Black, but I even began avoiding theoretical duels, planning various irregular set-ups, deliberately going in for inferior positions, merely in order to avoid theory and maintain the tension. Tactics which are completely atypical of me, and in the given instance I stifled my own style of play.

Imagine spending 100 days preparing an opening repertoire. And this on top of already being the best prepared chess player in the world.

Lost Prodigy

Jeff Sarwer - A Lost Prodigy (Part 1) (6:00) • 'This is the story of Canadian born child chess prodigy Jeff Sarwer.'

See also: Lost and Found: An Interview with Jeff Sarwer from the USCF's Chess Life Online.

Chess Can Sell Aluminum (1960)

If you look carefully, you'll see a blue window in a thick stone wall. Is the scene in a castle?

And what's that got to do with a chess?

FORECAST: There's a world of aluminum in the wonderful world of tomorrow ... where you will furnish your home for elegant fun with aluminum ... aluminum that takes so many colors and shapes it turns a table and chairs into an endlessly versatile game center ... aluminum that can be enameled, brushed, cast, forged, stamped or extruded in as many moods as there are moves on a chess board. Aluminum Company of America, Pittsburgh.

It comes 'in as many moods as there are moves on a chess board'. Good analogy; now I get it!

Scientific American's Chess Neuroscience

After my surveys of Scientific American's Chess Puzzles and Computer Chess, there remains one area where chess is interesting to science: Chess Neuroscience. That's the phrase I used in the first post, but it might not be the most accurate term to describe the subject. Wikipedia says,

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. Nevertheless, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that involves other disciplines such as psychology, computer science, statistics, physics, philosophy, and medicine. [Wikipedia: Neuroscience]

With that in mind, here are the articles I found. All were published after the last of the SciAm pieces on the evolution of Computer Chess.

• 2001: A Scorecard; How close are we to building HAL? • 'Even computer chess, in which seeming progress has been made, deceives. In 1997 IBM's Deep Blue beat then world champion Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue's victory, though, was more a triumph of raw processing power than a feat that heralded the onset of the age of the intelligent machine. Quantity had become quality, Kasparov said in describing Deep Blue's ability to analyze 200 million chess positions a second.'[January 2001]
  
  
• Brain Study Shows Grandmaster Chess Players Think Differently Than Amateurs Do • 'Grandmaster chess players tap into different parts of their brains than amateurs do when plotting their next move, according to a new study.'[August 2001]
  
  
• The Intimate Machine : Intelligent by Design • "When Deep Blue played chess against Kasparov, the machine was not looking at the board and was not lifting the pieces by itself," says Manuela Veloso, assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. "The computer was extremely good at thinking, but not at actually perceiving the board and having an arm move the pieces. I feel that intelligence includes these abilities." [Scientific American Frontiers; October 2002]
  
  
• The Expert Mind • 'How did he play so well, so quickly? And how far ahead could he calculate under such constraints? "I see only one move ahead," Capablanca is said to have answered, "but it is always the correct one."' [August 2006; preview only]
  
  
• Men's Chess Superiority Explained • 'The topic of sex differences when it comes to matters of the mind is, needless to say, a divisive one. Those who wish to argue that women are just not as smart as men often point to chess as their proof. Although girls can obviously play, no woman's ever been world champion. But before looking for cultural or biological explanations for the disparity, scientists say you need to do the math.'[December 2008]
  
  
• Tamir Druz: From Risking Check in Chess to Checking Risk in Energy Futures • 'The more he became involved in competitive chess, the more he began to wonder: "What made a great player great? What made one player better than the next?" He got to know many elite players, and his observations made him think that neither bookish intelligence nor the ability to memorize lots of information had much to do with anything.'[April 2009]

Starting with the quote attributed to Capablanca, there is much in 'The Expert Mind' worth comment. For starters, it uses the term Cognitive Science rather than Neuroscience.

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of how information is represented and transformed in the brain. It consists of multiple research disciplines, including psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and education.[1] It spans many levels of analysis, from low-level learning and decision mechanisms to high-level logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization.
[Wikipedia: Cognitive Science]

As it is the only full length feature article in the list, I'll come back to it in a future post.