US Chess CL Archive

This week, in US Chess Digital Archive Is Live, USchess.org announced,

US Chess has been working on digitizing its archive of Chess Life and Chess Review magazines (as well as titles such as Chess Life & Review). This project is now complete and the archive is now online and available for download by the general public.

I've referenced existing digital CL collections in at least two previous posts:-

• 2016-09-20: Shaping Chess History
• 2018-06-03: Caveat eBay Digital Documents

I downloaded the files that were missing from my own collection and have started flipping through them. Unfortunately, the document scans aren't first rate -- many pages are skewed and/or clipped on the side of the magazine fold, and the text is often too light, making it difficult to read -- but who's complaining? Thanks, US Chess!

Oldest Chess Piece?

How did I know that The Last Yahoo (August 2019) really was the last? In Yahoo's heyday, stories like the following would have easily been featured in Yahoo News. Now I have to rely on Google News for this sort of thing, where Google News is more-and-more a rehash of Chess.com News.

'World's oldest chess piece'? I'm sure I've seen that headline in years past.

That middle story leads to:-

2019-11-27: Chess piece found in Jordan may be world's oldest (phys.org) • 'John Oleson with the University of Victoria has reported that a small object found in Jordan made of sandstone might be the oldest chess piece ever found.'

But don't start rewriting chess history yet. The story ends with:-

Taken together, the evidence suggests that the Rook is possibly the earliest evidence of such a chess piece design, and possibly the oldest example of any type of chess piece. More work is required to verify that the stone object is, indeed, a chess piece before it can be designated as such.

I think it's a huge stretch. Huge!

TCEC/CCC Bonus Events

Two weeks have passed since the previous report on the two top engine-vs-engine competitions: TCEC FRC Leagues; CCC11 R2 Underway. To summarize the situation at that time:-

TCEC: 'Cup 4' finished with Stockfish beating LCZero for 1st place (+1-0=7). After 'Cup 4', the TCEC held a series of chess960 (FRC) matches; Stockfish beat AllieStein in the Superfinal by a score of +10-0=10. • CCC: CCC11 R1 finished with Stockfish 3.5 points ahead of second place Leelenstein. R2 is underway.

What activities are the TCEC and the CCC organizing today? In a word, 'bonus' events:-

TCEC: The site is running a series of bonus tournaments; the current event is titled 'Viewer Submitted Openings Bonus 4', with eight engines. The relevant channel command informs,

!bookbonus • If you want to submit an opening to potentially be included in a future Viewer Submitted Openings Bonus (VSOB), see pinned message in #bonus-arena in !discord. Current openings at wiki.chessdom.org.

This was the first time I had seen the TCEC Wiki, so I added the it to the page of 'TCEC/CCC Links'. What's next for TCEC?

!next • 'N' bonuses where N >= 2 from {SF vs. Lc0 with S16 Sufi openings, VSOB5, ...} 30min + 5s. Then S17 testing followed by S17.

As for S17:-

!s17 • Tentatively set to December 2019. Delay due to a possible sponsored hardware upgrade.

Other commands overview S17 tentative plans: 'S17 Qualification League (unofficial)...', 'S17 L1: Not announced yet', etc.

CCC: CCC11 R2 finished with LC0 3.0 points ahead of second place Stockfish. Guest engine Lc0-dev, mentioned in the previous report, finished third, but is not allowed to advance to R3. The following chart gives a bird's-eye view of the R2 results; for a larger version, see 'TCEC/CCC Links'.

In last week's post, 'Fat Fritz' by Albert Silver, I wondered,

How long will it take the computer chess world to pit Fat Fritz against the battle-hardened competitors in the series of TCEC/CCC events?

After CCC11 R2, the CCC ran two matches:-

+16-6=80, Stockfish - Fat Fritz
+14-5=83, Lc0 - Fat Fritz

While the results aren't particularly encouraging for AI/NN engine Fat Fritz, the matches were against two of the top-ranked engines in the world, one a traditional CPU engine, the other an AI/NN GPU engine. As the chart for CCC11 R2 shows, the final ranking in a multi-engine, round-robin tournament can depend heavily on how well the top engines perform against the bottom finishers. Let's hope Fat Fritz finds its way into the qualification rounds of the next seasons for the TCEC and/or the CCC, perhaps along with the latest version of Fat Fritz's cousin, Fritz 17.

[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]

Masters of the [Chess] Arts

As the long-running series on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), starts its fourth year, I'm no closer to understanding the subject than I was three years ago. This month's episode is from the World Chess Hall of Fame (worldchesshof.org).

Masters of the Arts: STL Chess Club's Tony Rich and US Chess' Carol Meyer (8:44) • '[Published on] Oct 21, 2019'

The description expanded on the title:-

Watch as Saint Louis Chess Club Executive Director Tony Rich interviews US Chess Executive Director Carol Meyer as they reflect on the World Chess Hall of Fame exhibition, "US Chess: 80 Years -- Promoting the Royal Game in America," on view March 6 - October 27, 2019.

I couldn't remember seeing a video in what appears to be a series of its own -- Masters of the Arts -- but it turns out there are more than two dozen of them: worldchesshof / search?query=masters (youtube.com). The video shown above was the first to appear on one of my short lists for chess videos, which stretch back to 2012. It was also the first video in the series to use the word 'chess' in the video's title. That might explain why most of the videos in the worldchesshof channel rarely reach 1000 views. SEO works, but it also works against.

***

Just after posting: On top of the inadequate SEO, the video doesn't allow embeds:-

Video unavailable • Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner.

Talk about clueless!

'Fat Fritz' by Albert Silver

Last year I wrote a short series of weekly posts about the preliminary stages of TCEC S13:-

• 'Deus X' [DeusX] by Albert Silver (August 2018)
• Battles of the Chess NNs
• The NNs Depart TCEC S13

To make a long story short, AlphaZero begat Leela which begat Deus X. After Deus X was eliminated from S13, nothing more was heard about it until a year later:-

• 2019-08-13: Fat Fritz – What on Earth is that? (chessbase.com; Albert Silver)

That article describes the evolution of Deus X into Fat Fritz. Skipping ahead a few months, a claim appeared similar to one made at the introduction of AlphaZero near the end of 2017:-

• 2019-11-06: Fat Fritz defeats Stockfish in 100-game matches (chessbase.com)

Not surprisingly, that claim was a precursor to the introduction of Fat Fritz as a commercial product:-

• 2019-11-12: Introducing Fritz 17 with Fat Fritz and other goodies (chessbase.com)

How long will it take the computer chess world to pit Fat Fritz against the battle-hardened competitors in the series of TCEC/CCC events?

Doesn't Look Like a Photo

Why did this photo have 1615 views and 218 'faves'? Is it even a photo?

Game © Flickr user oldTor under Creative Commons.

That title didn't explain anything. The description (translated from Russian) said, 'Shot with a lens Samsung NX 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 OIS, HDR', which also didn't mean anything to me, because I'm not much of a photographer. At least I knew it was a photo and that it was in 21 groups, 3 albums, and 1 gallery. Maybe there's a clue there.

The first group was 'Grunge Art Work', which also didn't mean much to me. A Google search presented the question, 'What is grunge design?', and answered,

The term "Grunge" was first coined to stand for a specific type of music, influenced by punk, rock and heavy metal. The design itself takes on the rawness of punk and rock, and incorporates real life imagery inspired by the urban and industrial scene -- it's very stylistic, less uniform, and is easily recognizable.

Easily recognizable? Google also presented the question, 'What is grunge art?'. The answer was,

Such images are used by various designers today to help them create artworks that reflect the atmosphere of heavy rock, or underground punk music. This idea of a grunge look, like the idea of a retro style, has witnessed an expansion today.

I can't say that I'm any wiser after that. The second group was 'Opt out no limits for art work!', subtitled, 'A place to put your art no limits go wild! and have fun!' Other than a mild obsession with the female form, there was no discernible connection between the artworks in the group, many of which were impressive indeed.

Many groups carried the acronym 'HDR', which also appeared in the photo's description. Google presented another question, 'What is HDR photo?', and answered,

HDR is a setting on the iPhone Camera app. The letters stand for High Dynamic Range. But what does that mean? It means that your camera will process photos slightly differently than normal in order to capture greater detail from bright and dark areas in your photo.

Back to the question about views and faves, let's just add it to the long list of life's little mysteries.

The Club of 14 November

Who are all of these people?

ChessCafe.com – Since 1996

And how did their ranks swell 50% in one year?