Russell Sherwood  Saturday, December 29, 2018

 

Russell Sherwood  Saturday, December 29, 2018

I've covered contempt before with regard to Chess Engines. In most simple terms contempt is used by Chess Engines to enable the achievement of better scores in Engine vs Engine competition. 

General opinion for CC has been that contempt settings should be set to zero to get a more "accurate" assessment of the position, however, there are different views on this. The latest Stockfish release, Stockfish 10 has had its contempt setting raised.

The studious CC player is encouraged to try a number of settings in their analysis and make up their own mind!

Russell Sherwood  Thursday, December 27, 2018

In preparation for the WCCF AGM I started some preparation, which due to pressures of work I was unable to complete, I will release this in a few articles over coming weeks.

A friend always tells me he has a plan with regard to Norms and ratings. An area I examined was that of where IM Norms are generated. This data was gathered from all of the Titles awarded in the last few years - so is not a full data set but a data set of those who have been successful in there quest to achieve the ICCF-IM Title.

By Category

Row Labels	Count of 1	Min
1	1	2251	CCM-A
2	3	2276
3	7	2301	MN-B
4	11	2326
5	8	2351	MN-A
6	10	2376
7	8	2401	SIM-B
8	18	2426	SIM-A
9	6	2451	GM-B
10	3	2476	GM-A
11	1	2501
Grand Total	76

Here I added the approximate rating bands of the new Title Tournaments. What does this tell us? Draw your own conclusions but few Norms are achieved below Cat 3 Tournaments, so these should be avoided if the Norm is your primary objective. The New Master Norm-A event looks to be a happy hunting ground for the IM Norm

When the type of event is examined some interesting results appear

Row Labels	Count of Open
Inv	12
CL	11
WC SF	9
Zonal Ch	7
Zonal TC	7
Master Norm	5
Open	5
WC PR	4
GM Norm	4
Oly P	3
Memorial	3
Inter Z	2
Oly F	2
Inter TC	2
Grand Total	76

The majority of IM Norms do not appear in open entry events! This was a big driver for the new Norm events!

So looking at this the aim, to make your path slightly easier is to get to a rating of 2380+ to be able to enter Master Norm A events (or higher), or ensure you are on your National Federation's radar (and in good standing!) when Team selection time comes around.

Next Time we look at these SIM Norms

 

 

Russell Sherwood  Tuesday, December 18, 2018

 

Following on a rather quiet period in November (related to working pretty much seven days a week!), the last few weeks have thrown up a number of interesting finds. In addition to this, I have been rebuilding my Projects actions list but more on that in another article!

 

Next Chess Move

A very interesting site which allows access to an online processor or for a price a high spec machine. This in itself is interesting but what is more so is that a copy of LCZero is available to be queried. This combined with a high spec machine throws up some interesting opportunities.

 

Chess Tricks

A new(ish) piece of Software. The main benefit obtained by utilising this is in finding Trick moves. These are hard to find moves which require a specific response from your opponent.

 

Ender

This is a side project of LCZero to create an Endgame database. This is not as exact as a Tablebase but extends up to a higher number of pieces and can add significantly in this region.

 

MZ Chess Forum  (http://mzchessforum.altervista.org/)

I have mentioned this forum in the past but in my opinion, it is the best online reference point, with great resources available.

 

Deep Position Analysis  https://github.com/zeFresk/deep-position-analysis

This is an interesting development project which will develop, well read the description.

 

That’s enough for now! See you again in Jan 2019!

Russell Sherwood  Monday, December 17, 2018

A number of rules changes come into play on 1/1/19 within ICCF.

The most relevant of these, from a player perspective, are:

1) Chess 960 World Cup winner no longer receives a WCCC entry

2) The ICCF World Cup frequency is moved from 2 years to 4 years.

3) The Previous Norm and Master Norm events are replaced by a new series of Norm Events

4) ICCF will produce CCE and CCM medals, distributed to National Delegates at Conference if requested in advance.

5) ICCF data holding and handling to be modified  to comply with GPDR

6) ICCF link with FIDE Law of Chess, replaced with ICCF Laws of Chess.

7) Postal time controls extended

8) New controls introduced to combat ETL: 

9) TD's can record leave for players

10) Viewing rules amended to allow teammates to view games.

IF you want to know more, consult the rules after 1/1/19!

Russell Sherwood  Thursday, December 13, 2018

It’s been an interesting couple of months in terms of engine development. Probably the two biggest news items are Stockfish 10’s release and the advance of LCZero.

 

Recently SF10 was released, with a significant ELO gain over SF9. One thing to watch for CC players is that the contempt value has changed and the setting of this should be considered prior to use.

 

LCZero has been gaining strength in self-play recently but it remains to be seen if this will pass through into useful improvements. The significant news of recent days is that another AlphaZero paper has been released with a significant amount of actionable information. This is being put into practice by the Alpha Zero team at the moment. Unless you have suitable hardware LCZero remains interesting rather than competitive for CC players but this situation requires keeping close attention on.

 

Development of a CC-specific variation of Sugar has commenced. This is a very interesting project and one which could prove significant benefits.

 

Players’ favourite Raubfisch continues to develop incremental improvements coming on a regular basis.

 

Sting, whilst not a frontline engine, continues to develop and is of use in cracking difficult positions.

 

Komodo has released a new version of the MCTS equipped version with around a 100 elo gain being observed, coming close to the standard Komodo version.

 

CFish and CiFish continue to keep pace with new development versions of Stockfish, however, AsmFish has fallen significantly behind the pace. A spin-off version AsmFishCP has been developed. This has a number of Stockfish improvements implemented but is still significantly behind the pace.

Finally, for now, SHashChess has been updated. Whilst still only "interesting" in terms of output, it is still a useful addition to any stable.

 

Russell Sherwood  Wednesday, December 12, 2018

On January 1st the biggest shake-up in ICCF tournaments for a number of years is taking place with the Introduction of the New Title Tournaments.

Historically ICCF offered two "open entry" events - the Master Norm for players over 2300 and the Grandmaster Norm for players rated over 2400. These tournaments served well for a number of years but an increasing frustration was seen in recent years driven by a number of issues:

• The introduction of the CCE and CCM Titles, which whilst some federations took a lead to organise their own qualifying events, were not available for open entry.
• Modifications made to the GM Norm tournament to facilitate the obtaining of SIM Norms had the negative effect of making GM Norms much harder to obtain.

Following an in-depth analysis of the situation, a proposal was presented at the Llandudno Congress which was accepted and comes into operation on Jan 1st.

So what has changed? First, instead of 2 Tournaments, there are now 10 events, 2 each focused on GM, SIM, IM, CCM and CCE Titles.

The first thing to notice is that the entry requirements for the GM events are higher than before. A GM Norm is possible in the SIM-A and possible SIM-B event but these will be much more difficult to obtain, the same being true for each subsequent lower tier.

So what is the benefit of this? For each Tier, we have a much narrower rating, which for the 'A' events means that, typically, the event is a Category higher and hence requiring a slightly lower score (generally one less win) for the Title Norm. This will still be difficult to achieve but this reorganisation should make the obtaining of titles slightly easier. 

Another benefit, which may not be immediately apparent is that events in which "elo leeching"  is not really possible in these events!

 

So have a look and make your choice! If you want any advice on these events, please get in touch.

	Low	High	Mid	Cat	Games
GM-A	2485		2485	10+	15
GM-B	2455	2484	2469.5	9-10	13
SIM-A	2420	2454	2437	7-8	15
SIM-B	2380	2419	2399.5	6-7	13
IM-A	2350	2379	2364.5	5	13
IM-B	2300	2349	2324.5	3-4	13
CCM-A	2250	2299	2274.5	1=2	15
CCM-B	2200	2249	2224.5	K-L	17
CCE-A	2125	2199	2162	H-I	15
CCE-B	2050	2124	2087	E-G	15

Russell Sherwood  Wednesday, December 12, 2018

The 2019/1 Rating list has thrown up some interesting moves......one of the most interesting is a comparison to 5 years ago

2019/1		2014/1
4	2400+	0
10	2300-2399	2
11	2200-2200	3
4	2100-2199	4
4	2000-2099	2
33		11

Back to the 2019 List

Top Gainers

810256		Jones, Phillip	42	1926	1857	69
810222		Smith, Andrew	118	2175	2128	47
810220		Davies, Jonathan	26	1727	1688	39
810251		Soar, Timothy	28	1744	1711	33
810212	CCE	Sherwood, Alexander	352	2337	2308	29
212421		Robinson, Nicola	20	1699	1672	27
810257		Burrows, David	36	1675	1655	20
810259		Denton, Sean	45	2145	2126	19
810180		Nettles, Paul Eric	56	2216	2198	18
810139	CCM	Adams, Mark	167	2361	2348	13
810198		Thomas, Dennis	24	1595	1582	13
810199		Dahlgren, Paul P.	37	1480	1467	13
810163	CCM	Keevil, Paul	128	2329	2318	11
810156		Ricketts, Martin	44	1828	1817	11
810195		Bevan, Peter M.	97	2148	2138	10

 

Biggest Sliders

810181		Hallwood, Reg	22	1470	1544	-74
810075		Wakeham, Marc R.	467	2051	2121	-70
810102		Guy, David T.	234	1580	1639	-59
810255		Morgans, Justin	41	1982	2027	-45
810254		Jones, Steve	39	1400	1439	-39
810202	LGM	Sherwood, Helen	645	2337	2372	-35
810133		May, Adam J.	40	1845	1872	-27
810165		Bailey, S.	118	2104	2127	-23
810217		Richards, Michael	231	1322	1344	-22
810192		Baron, Margaret	184	1826	1846	-20
810176		Chugg, Malcolm	122	1301	1318	-17
810161	CCM	Sherwood, Russell	761	2336	2348	-12
810177		Wilding, Arthur	60	1499	1511	-12

 

(Personally, Helen and I are happy to see almost the back of our "Annus Horribilis" and commencing a Dunlop manoeuvre!

 

Congratulations to Adam Davies on breaking the 2300 barrier  and Eric Nettles the 2200 barrier

 

 

Russell Sherwood  Sunday, October 14, 2018

Occasionally in a game, we can have the problem of an opponent wishing to delay the outcome,  In more recent times the laws of CC were changed to introduce the "Code of Conduct". What constitutes a valid COC claim is quite complicated and the player is advised to review the ICCF Rules on the matter

A tool I knocked up at the time is a timeline visualiser - this is a simple excel sheet which can simplify the determination of one of the key parts of COC.

1) Copy your timeline into the sheet

2) Copy/ delete the  formulas

3) Add any vacation into the sheet

4) Review the timeline - some basic methods used people to delay results become very obvious on these charts.

 

 

Download

Russell Sherwood  Thursday, October 11, 2018

WCCF Powerpoint Template

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