General Discussion

I remember a time, in the 1980s, where correspondence chess was played by postcards. There were little or no engines and a players rating accurately reflected their chess playing ability

Then engines come into the game and 1200ELO rated players are becoming International Masters!

Today we have a situation where players in the 2200-2400 region (of which I include myself) play centaur chess including engines whereas those in the ICCF range of 1600-1900 I suspect play without engines

Correspondence chess is dying. There are too many draws. And I wonder whether the way forward would be to ban engines from correspondence chess

Interested in your thoughts

Hi Paul,

Two thoughts:

1. Most CC these days is already played under "no engine" rules - ICCF is probably the only organisation which is different (maybe LSS or FICGS, I'm not really familiar with those), but anyway, there are already plenty of opportunities for players who want to play CC with a no engine rule on dozens of different websites - the sector is flooded, I doubt there is room for ICCF... (and as the owner/webmaster of one of those websites, if ICCF introduced such a rule it would pose something of a conflict for me personally! - not one that would be difficult to resolve though)
2. It's not enforceable... some commercial sites claim to have an algorithm to detect engine use, but none of them ever publish that algorithm, suggesting that they just want people to believe that they can do something they can't; "gentleman's agreement" is the best you can possibly get under such rules.

Cheers,

Austin

It's an interesting debate. OTB I was only ever a 2100-2200 player. But with the use of engines Im now on the verge of being British Champion with a 2400 title and an IM qualification. 

Maybe ICCF does have a nice little niche. Maybe if we can accept the draws we can enjoy the mutual research that goes into each game

I still think it's possible to enjoy CC without blindly following engines, certainly it is at my modest level.

But... sure, it's possible that in five or ten years CC will become a pointless endeavour... I guess when that time comes we'll all move on and find another hobby, but would that really be a disaster? - After all, it's only a board game, the world will continue to spin without it ;-)

Cheers,

Austin

Engines have become a problem for sure  and the great number of draws make the future of CC realy dark.

I’m 2270 on ICCF and I try to find out my motivation trying to outplay other players with my old laptop (8 years old) and a stockfish better use … not only switch on and let the computer thinking for a long time.

I suppose at levels near 2400 or above fight for the full point is a dream. I’m not sure about the future of our hobby.

Jordi

I don't see the point in using bots, and it does reek of cheating, imo. Sorry for the strange formatting of this message. I'm new to this forum. Don't know why all this strange stuff came up. :-)

Gael

Hi Gael,

You entered some text into the "PGN" box, so the forum tried to make it into a chess game... I've removed it now ;-)

If you don't want to play against opponents with computers, then don't play ICCF rated chess... it's really as simple as that, and there are plenty of alternatives (I can recommend schemingmind.com, but I am a little biased! - other non-engine correspondence chess servers are available).

Cheers,

Austin

Thanks for removing all that stuff. Thanks also for the link. At the moment, I'm not really considering playing rated chess, as I'm more or less a beginner. 

In that case ICCF is probably not your best platform.

I'm just playing friendly games at the moment. 

It's a tough one. I got to OTB 206 [BCF ] many, many years ago [ELO @2245] and started playing Corr on the old IECG platform @2005. At that time it was very interesting - engines were not that advanced and could only provide assistance with calculation, so it was still 30-40% human evaluation. Took a break and only been playing ICCF for about 3 years or so now. I'd estimate the human part of the Centaur is now less than 5%. Unless you now undertake a deep and massive opening research program, there is almost no creativity left in middle and endgame. The engine takes care of everything in double-quick time. Losses at 2400+ level are either blunders [I lost one when I analyzed the wrong position!] or time/withdrawals, almost nothing else. So yes, I'd agree with Paul CC with engines burning on a short fuse. Some radical revision necessary, like 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw, and there is a case for abandoning the whole rating system as it no longer reflects individual strength.

Hopefully the new rating system will more accurately reflect playing strength, it will certainly reward wins at a higher level than draws...

But, that in itself is a problem... if wins are nearly always because of blunders or ETL, do they really deserve three points or greater rating gains?

It's possible that we've come as far as we can, and it's time for us all to look for a different hobby - wouldn't be the end of the world.

Isn't the game or sport of chess more than just a 'hobby'? And what a dismal ending that would be to all those centuries of human intellectual development, to walk away from it because of some soulless little bot. :-(

I would not estimate my current OTB playing strength as more than @160 BCF but I can comfortably play at 2400+ on ICCF, so what does that tell you? 

Why not incentivise wins though Austin? Football does it with three points for a win, Rugby does it with bonus points for more tries scored etc. It would encourage a more aggressive opening repertoire for a start!

Isn't the game or sport of chess more than just a 'hobby'? 

Unless you're lucky enough to be paid for it... it's a hobby.

I'm not suggesting that we abandon playing chess, just correspondence chess where engines are used...

Why not incentivise wins though Austin? 

It has been discussed many times - the concern is that the damage caused to all-play-all events by ETLs would be amplified.

But, the new rating system, which will be (hopefully) used for the next rating list, will incentivise wins - the rating reward for a win will be higher than now, and lower for a draw.

Will that make the game more interesting??? that remains to be seen ;-)

I would have thought that some people may consider chess to be a way of life, regardless of whether or not they get paid for it. Just the same as music. Or some other lofty pursuit. Money has nothing to do with it. 

Yes, I agree, of course... But isn't that the definition of a hobby?

I know, sadly, a few folks who consider doing jigsaw puzzles as their hobby. But would you say that doing jigsaw puzzles was a way of life? :-) 

I am certainly interested in the new rating system because, if the new system rewards wins better, then there is more benefit in working with your computer and engines to find those ultimate moves. It could be the answer.