Russell Sherwood

Some light reading

Russell Sherwood Sunday, March 3, 2019

I often get asked about how Engines "Think"

The linked article below gives an interesting, beginner level introduction, which should save me some time!

Unfortunately, it is in Russian but Chrome's translate function does an excellent job!

https://habr.com/ru/post/390821/

Old School

Russell Sherwood Thursday, February 28, 2019

It's been interesting, starting to play in the Bill Flew memorial for three reasons

First of all, the use of the Silli pairing system has led to a very different pool of opposition to that normally encountered, which I believe has gone down well with players.

Secondly, ta rather more loose style is being played, due somewhat to the games being unrated, necessary for us to make the event Engine free

Finally and in many ways, the most interesting has been to see the different approaches - some are playing this like OTB, whereas others appear to be utilising old-school CC methods. For my own preparation, I looked over some of my older Tim Harding texts, which whilst obsolete for modern CC, are a treasure trove for this kind of event!

In addition to this, from wider discussions, it does appear that there is some appetite for events that are a little.......different, be it the pairing system or time control. If you have anything you would like to see tried out get in touch!

Counties & Districts 2018

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Conditional Weapon

Russell Sherwood Saturday, January 12, 2019

The advent of the TriBi time control system has removed some old tactics utilised by some players (Dead Man’s Defence for example) but has provided some new avenues. One of these is the use of the conditional move as a tactical weapon.

In a traditional event, if a player got into time trouble, all they had to do was get through to the next time control (typically less than 10 moves) and then normality could be resumed. However with TriBi, once in time trouble, there is no way to get out of it. Some players have seen an opportunity to now try and push their opponent into a special kind of time trouble: The Deficit. What is this? In simple terms One player has significantly more time on the clock than another, hoping this can lead to a time crunch for the other player.

For example, if one player has 120 days on the clock against 100 days of their opponent this is not an issue but if this winds down and becomes 15 days against 3 then problems can exist for the 2^nd player. There are some protections within the ICCF rules with regard to active play however the best approach is not to get into this situation.

A tactic which I have seen being utilised is the used of conditional moves. If we assume it takes T1 time to make a move (an incorrect assumption but bear with me) and it takes T2 time to make a conditional move. We can assume that T2 will be a lot shorter than T1, in some cases it is only the length of time to enter the move onto the server. If a player makes conditional moves and their opponent “accepts” a significant proportion of them, then it is fairly simple to see that the first player will build up a comfortable time buffer fairly quickly, unless the 2^nd player’s move selection time is significantly shorter than the firsts!

So in practice, this means conditional moves should be considered when the opponent's response is “obvious” or your response to their most likely move is “obvious”, to build up a time buffer, so you are never on the receiving end of this tactic.

It is worth adding that a number of players have been observed letting their clocks run quite a while in opening positions, probably not realised the event is TriBI, make sure this, not you!

Till the next time!

Drinking you under the Tablebases

Russell Sherwood Sunday, January 6, 2019

I have written a little on tablebases in the past. Seven Piece tablebases are available but the size of these presents something on an issue.

What would be useful is to know the frequency of their use......

A while ago I came across the table below. The most interesting part of this is that the top two sets cover 35% of situations that arise. So if you want to get an edge perhaps downloading these is an answer?

	occurrences:	616,969		size:	1,209.06	96	83.5%

1	KRPPKRP	153,091	23,261,437,520	9,444,643,920	30.46	2	24.8%
2	KPPPKPP	63,395	2,107,379,792	89,290,832	2.05	2	10.3%
3	KBPPKBP	24,923	30,746,474,768	5,561,195,536	33.81	2	4.0%
4	KNPPKNP	20,204	29,087,503,696	6,536,127,184	33.18	2	3.3%
5	KRPPPKR	20,144	1,075,778,832	1,372,519,888	2.28	2	3.3%
6	KNPPKBP	19,617	30,955,844,688	7,104,144,272	35.45	2	3.2%
7	KBPPKNP	17,783	28,727,898,832	6,471,055,824	32.78	2	2.9%
8	KBPPKPP	15,470	7,973,639,248	1,058,776,592	8.41	2	2.5%
9	KNPPKPP	13,554	9,689,699,280	1,550,631,440	10.47	2	2.2%
10	KRPPKPP	13,052	5,054,627,664	1,127,383,952	5.76	2	2.1%
11	KQPPKQP	12,302	22,632,171,664	12,926,209,872	33.12	2	2.0%
12	KBPPKRP	12,082	31,606,770,192	12,859,232,976	41.41	2	2.0%
13	KRBPKRP	11,080	48,381,043,216	44,069,083,408	86.10	2	1.8%
14	KPPPKBP	9,392	7,584,064,976	1,438,176,656	8.40	2	1.5%
15	KRNPKRP	9,210	58,025,199,248	49,364,431,312	100.01	2	1.5%
16	KRPPKBP	9,074	11,435,368,336	4,241,347,984	14.60	2	1.5%
17	KPPPKRP	8,564	4,645,229,072	1,834,192,656	6.03	2	1.4%
18	KQPPKPP	8,339	2,109,622,288	433,126,416	2.37	2	1.4%
19	KPPPKNP	8,151	6,680,648,720	900,566,160	7.06	2	1.3%
20	KNPPKRP	7,567	29,911,219,856	12,131,137,360	39.15	2	1.2%
21	KRPPKNP	6,025	9,632,432,848	3,575,949,264	12.30	2	1.0%
22	KPPPKQP	5,228	2,269,738,128	749,323,664	2.81	2	0.8%
23	KPPPPKP	5,075	336,964,944	9,884,688	0.32	2	0.8%
24	KRPPKRB	4,330	28,687,360,336	5,877,489,808	32.19	2	0.7%
25	KRPPKQP	3,904	16,689,932,048	8,281,893,072	23.26	2	0.6%
26	KRPPKRN	3,785	27,834,688,208	6,556,337,296	32.03	2	0.6%
27	KBPPPKP	3,575	1,491,992,336	139,152,784	1.52	2	0.6%
28	KBPPPKB	2,807	1,797,519,120	503,454,608	2.14	2	0.5%
29	KNPPPKP	2,788	1,731,776,336	189,133,392	1.79	2	0.5%
30	KQPPPKP	2,662	189,038,864	66,055,056	0.24	2	0.4%
31	KBNPKRP	2,458	82,917,193,040	32,889,776,976	107.85	2	0.4%
32	KQPPKRP	2,324	5,506,660,816	3,009,336,272	7.93	2	0.4%
33	KBPPPKR	2,044	6,897,087,952	2,689,630,224	8.93	2	0.3%
34	KQPPPKQ	1,922	3,745,607,056	4,634,537,424	7.80	2	0.3%
35	KBPPPKN	1,760	664,016,016	264,358,928	0.86	2	0.3%
36	KNPPPKR	1,368	7,312,293,712	2,733,418,128	9.36	2	0.2%
37	KBBPKBP	1,075	33,115,579,408	12,847,387,216	42.81	2	0.2%
38	KPPPPKR	1,031	1,762,525,008	648,855,760	2.25	2	0.2%
39	KRPPKBN	955	28,996,307,344	12,680,283,216	38.81	2	0.2%
40	KRPPPKQ	667	11,111,429,008	5,198,413,840	15.19	2	0.1%
41	KPPPPKN	576	439,768,208	65,003,088	0.47	2	0.1%
42	KPPPPKB	574	632,390,160	75,195,600	0.66	2	0.1%
43	KPPPPKQ	448	1,199,301,520	598,771,280	1.67	2	0.1%
44	KNNPKNP	384	47,429,430,096	23,357,510,800	65.93	2	0.1%
45	KRBNKRB	54	46,163,484,752	54,810,115,280	94.04	2	0.0%
46	KRBNKRN	43	41,632,251,088	72,137,970,192	105.96	2	0.0%
47	KRBBKRB	18	12,598,941,008	16,965,106,960	27.53	2	0.0%
48	KRBBKRN	8	14,069,139,408	17,604,229,456	29.50	2	0.0%

Something for nothing 2?

Russell Sherwood Sunday, January 6, 2019

Another New in Chess initiative

Dear Chess Friend,

Vote for the Yearbook Novelty of the Year 2018 and WIN!

We would like to know what you think was the best opening novelty of 2018. The inventor of the novelty will receive a prize of € 350. Among those who have voted for the winning novelty, a FREE 1-year subscription to the Yearbook will be raffled.

You can cast your vote only until February 1.

Sincerely,
Remmelt Otten
New In Chess

Something for nothing?

Russell Sherwood Sunday, January 6, 2019

Players may be interested in the opportunity to take part in the following survey, distributed by New in Chess

Dear Player,

We are social scientists conducting an academic research study on tournament chess players’ practice habits, chess ratings, and opinions about a variety of chess-related questions. If you are interested in helping us with our research, please click the link below to access our survey. The survey will take 10–20 minutes. We think you may find the survey questions interesting, thought-provoking, and fun to answer. This survey is primarily targeted toward chess players who have a FIDE or USCF rating, but all chess players are welcome to complete it.

If you complete the survey, you are eligible to win a prize. For every 100 people who complete the survey, we will randomly choose one person to receive $30 voucher to the New In Chess online store. We will also randomly select three participants out of everyone who completes the survey to receive a one-year digital subscription to New In Chess magazine. You are eligible for these prizes if you complete the survey and provide an email address at the end of the survey.

When we finish collecting and analyzing your data, we will make a complete, anonymized report of the results available to everyone who participated in the study and provided their email address at the end of the survey.

If you are under 18 years old, you may still participate in our study! However, you must get a parent or guardian’s permission before you do. If you are a parent of a chess player member who is under 18, we request that you allow them to complete the survey (but we encourage you to be present while they do and to help them if necessary).

Sincerely,

Patrick Heck, Ph.D. & Christopher Chabris, Ph.D.

PS If you have any questions or comments about this survey, please email Patrick Heck: [email protected].

Access Survey

Goals, Goals and Goals

Russell Sherwood Monday, December 31, 2018

At the start of 2018 I set a number of Goals for the publishing on the website. The first of these was to better the record for each month. The second was to reach 200 posts. The third and most stretching was to post more in 2018 than in the previous 6 years of the website.

I’m quite happy that all of these goals were achieved. So what next for 2019? That will remain to be seen but will be in line with our more International outlook as a Federation.

As always if you have any area you would like to read about in CC, let me know. We might cover it, we might not but it costs nothing to ask!

Changing Horizons

Russell Sherwood Sunday, December 30, 2018

A few years ago I undertook a review of the engines utilised by Correspondence players. Out of interest, I have started to re-run the survey over the last few days.

So what do we see (currently based on a small sample size)

56% of players appear to use Chessbase

27% utilise SF10

20% utilise Stockfish derivatives

18% utilise Komodo 12.3

7% utilise Houdini

So what about the other 28% - This is evenly split between older SF and Komodo versions, plus a few Fritz's

Deduce what you wish from this? I will give mine as the sample size increases!

Engine Analysis Research Group

Russell Sherwood Sunday, December 30, 2018

One of the issues with CC is that available information for improvement is thin on the group. In addition, the majority of players tend to be quite secretive and protective of their “secrets” (Whatever that means!)

Added to this, an awful lot of players tend to be leechers by nature. To counteract this an experiment for 2019 will be the EARG. The aim of this group is to help players develop together, through discussion. To join this you do not need to be a strong player but you do need to be a contributor to the discussion.

If you are interested in getting involved, get in touch. Discussions will be held out of the public eye, which will be part of an initial discussion for the group!

Membership is open to all nationalities. It is worth remembering that even for British players most opposition can be avoided, so a move from a Competitive to Cooperative mindset is possible!