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geeker

14th December 2021, 19:46
Chess-themed puzzle w. Nina by Rodriguez aka Picaroon, Buccaneer.

http://www.fifteensquared.net/2021/12/14/independent-10974-by-rodriguez/
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brendan

14th December 2021, 20:00
Thanks for those links Geeker.

I've just been watching this video (below) of how AlphaZero destroyed Stockfish - maybe give it a look if you have a spare half hour:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dT6CR9_6l4
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jono

14th December 2021, 20:21
Brilliant piece of construction by Rodriguez. The Indi allows setters to create custom grids, as is the case here (I think), but I suspect this wouldn’t have been as easy with the Guardian grid library. There was, however, one chess-based clue in the Guardian today which I expect you saw
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geeker

14th December 2021, 20:56
Brendan, thanks. I'll watch the video when I get home from work.
The game was played in 2017, and I saw several analyses of it at the time. Pretty sure agadmator did one, also chess24 and chessbase.
Scared the $%^& out of me. At that time, it looked like defenses like the Queen's Indian (the feature game) and (to a lesser extent) Caro-Kann had been outright refuted.
But neural network engines have gotten quite a bit stronger since 2017, which may or may not be surprising. The Caro-Kann is popular again, and contrary to its long-time passive reputation, strong GMs (Firouzja, for instance) even play it when they need a win! I'm not seeing many Queen's Indians, though... ;-)

P.S. The Queen's Indian being destroyed stunned me because Karpov played a huge number of QI games with both colors. And I used to play the Caro-Kann vs. 1. e4. The Alpha Zero self-training logs showed the C-K gradually falling from favor as the # of training games increased. There was a really interesting article about how various openings fared in the training games (first guess chess24, or else chessbase) , but I'd have to search for it.
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geeker

14th December 2021, 22:34
Here's a link to the chess24 article (6 Dec 2017) I was thinking of. It has some opening preference graphs and links to the full Deep Mind research paper.

https://chess24.com/en/read/news/deepmind-s-alphazero-crushes-chess

I recall chess24 video(s?) by GM Jan Gustafsson (opening expert and longtime trainer of Carlsen).

Also this annotation on chess.com of one of the spectacular games:

https://www.chess.com/blog/SamCopeland/the-top-10-chess-games-of-the-2010s-and-honorable-mentions#alphazerostockfish
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chrise

15th December 2021, 07:47
One for chess buffs in yesterday's Guardian:

Move of bishop to China, not a fate that's rectified (10)
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geeker

16th December 2021, 04:09
Here's a funny video about the "touch move" rule in chess being bent at a very high level:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puRR65UUKAs
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geeker

16th December 2021, 04:13
And more chess bloopers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5WVJu154F0
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brendan

16th December 2021, 05:14
Thanks Geeker, I really enjoyed those.

The strangest one was when Inarkiev made an illegal move against Carlsen but, because Magnus didn't spot it and played his next move, he forfeited the game! I get it but it does seem unjust, doesn't it - or not?
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geeker

16th December 2021, 05:50
The Inarkiev-Carlsen game was totally bizarre.
Magnus was later awarded a win.

https://www.chessbase.in/news/Carlsen_Inarkiev_controversy

The Indian arbiter interviewed implies the game should have resumed with MC's time increased by one minute. Apparently Inarkiev refused to resume and was forfeited.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/05/magnus-carlsen-ernesto-inarkiev-controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Inarkiev

Until that incident I'd been a fan of "Che" Inarkiev. He was named after the evergreen crossword revolutionary, and there are photos of him sporting a "Che" wristband during games.
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