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Date: 18 Oct 2008 06:05:41
From: raylopez99
Subject: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed analysis
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I'm looking at an analysis of the recent third game of the Kramnik -
Anand game on Chessbase (http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?
newsid=4963) and am shocked that the annotator apparently did not use
chess software when analyzing the game.
Why? In this day and age there's no excuse for not using chess
playing software. Computers have shown that they are superior to
humans playing chess.
For example, a simple and fast analysis (five seconds per move) shows
the critical moves in the third game as follows (and nobody seems to
have caught these):
19. Nxd4?! (loses). Instead, 19. Rxd4! = . This bad move probably
lost the game for Kramnik. Yet apologists assume that Kramnik's
losing move of 19. Nxd4?! was a 'planned' sacrifice ("19.Nxd4. What a
shot, Kramnik chooses to sacrifice a piece himself and attacks the
rook on g4."). Yeah right. Like his one move blunder a while ago
against a computer that lost a won game was also a 'planned
sacrifice'? Not. Simply put, Kramnik overlooked 19...h5.
32. f3? (loses worse). Instead, 32. Rd3, while still losing, offers
greater resistance for White.
Ironically, the annotator at Chessbase misses these moves (or does not
understand them, see above). Instead the annotator claims that other
moves were at fault, when they clearly were not. For example, it is
claimed "27.a4? With time ebbing away Kramnik errs. The silicon
consensus is 27.Rc1"... in fact, 27. a4 is the preferred move for
Chessbase (Fritz engine) over 27. Rc1. Likewise, the annotator frets
over "33. Bd3?" but in fact at that point the game is over anyway.
Lesson: please lern to use a computer. It's really the only way to
play chess. Even commentators such as Wlod on this board apparently
don't use PCs. I've heard some grandmasters don't use PCs in their
analysis, feeling that it somehow diminishes from the game, but these
eccentric types should be far and few between, in light of the
advances made in chess playing software over the last generation.
RL
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Date: 21 Oct 2008 12:57:42
From: raylopez99
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 21, 7:21=A0am, David Richerby <[email protected] >
wrote:
> Yes but `Which of these World Champions plays most like a crippled
> version of Crafty?' really isn't a sensible way of evaluating
> anything. =A0I
We went over this last time, remember? The thread was well over
several hundred posts long. Can't remember the last time we had such
"unity" on this board! LOL, unless it was something that Sam Sloan
posts.
FYI, I 'respect' your (flawed) opinion and you should at least be
aware of mine: even in blundercheck you can check to see which
masters got 'closest' to the correct move, under the theory that
usually there is but a slight difference between an evaluation at five
seconds a move versus 180 seconds a move. And those times (the
turning points in the game) are not that critical for most games--
since, after all, these guys are all champions. Check it out
yourself, as I have: try evaluating master games at 5 seconds a move
on Fritz then go to 30 seconds a move, then 180 s/m, and see that the
evaluation for most moves does not really change the top three best
lines.
But, as in things mathematics, some people either get it or they never
do. Perhaps you're one of them...
RL
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Date: 21 Oct 2008 06:23:36
From:
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 20, 7:21=A0pm, raylopez99 <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Oct 19, 2:40=A0pm, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > =A0 It would be an interesting project to take masters who have been
> > considered great analysts =97 not necessarily the same thing as a great
> > player =97 e.g. Marco, Alapin, Capablanca, Alekhine, R=E9ti, Nimzovitch=
,
> > Botvinnik, Geller, et al, and subject good-size samples of their work
> > to computerized inspection, to see who had the least tendency to
> > error.
>
> You've probably seen this already, but they have done this for
> championship games--
That's not what I was talking about. I was referring to analytical
works =97 tournament and match books, best game collections, magazine
articles etc. =97 in which these men annotated games, either their own
or others'. Examples would be Alekhine's books on New York 1924 and
Nottingham 1936, Capablanca's "My Chess Career," R=E9ti's "Modern Ideas
in Chess," Lasker's Manual of Chess, Steinitz's annotations for
Hastings 1895 or his "Modern Chess Instructor," Marco's books on
Barmen 1905, Ostend 1906, and the Lasker-Tarrasch match, etc. As
opposed to how well a master performs under pressure in a game, I'm
interested in how accurately, objectively, and insightfully he can
dissect a game when analyzing at leisure.
> as opposed to 'good-size samples'-- and this group
> discussed this a while ago in a long thread (I started the thread):http:/=
/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparing_top_chess_players_throughout_h...
> (see below)
>
> RL
>
> Actual moves played compared with computer choices
>
> One of the latest methods of analyzing chess abilities across history
> has come from Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko from the Department of
> Computer and Information Science of Ljubljana University.[19] The
> basis for their evaluation was the difference between the position
> values resulting from the moves played by the human chess player and
> the moves chosen as best by a chess program, Crafty. They also
> compared the average number of errors in the player's game. According
> to their analysis, the leader was Jos=E9 Ra=FAl Capablanca, followed
> closely by Vladimir Kramnik.
> The "Classical" World Chess Championship matches were analyzed, and
> the results for the fourteen Classical World Champions were presented.
> Players with fewest average errors:
> Jos=E9 Ra=FAl Capablanca
> Vladimir Kramnik
> Anatoly Karpov
> Garry Kasparov
> Boris Spassky
> Tigran Petrosian
> Emmanuel Lasker
> Bobby Fischer
> Alexander Alekhine
> Vassily Smyslov
> Mikhail Tal
> Mikhail Botvinnik
> Max Euwe
> Wilhelm Steinitz
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Date: 21 Oct 2008 02:45:18
From: raylopez99
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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Offramp wrote:
> Which move? Do you mean the stunning 10...Bd6 after 8....Bd6?
Sorry, that should read 10...Be6
RL
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Date: 21 Oct 2008 00:35:06
From: Offramp
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 21, 12:18 am, raylopez99 <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Oct 19, 2:40 pm, [email protected] wrote:
> As for a computer finding new moves, this is brought out in a book on
> openings by Neil McDonald ("Concise Chess Openings" --I love this book
> because it's so small), to wit, on the McDonnell Gambit of the King's
> Gambit, McDonald says that Fritz found this move: 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4
> 3.Nf3 g5 4.Bc4 g4 5. Nc3 gxf3 6.Qxf3 d5 7.Nd5 Nc6 8.O-O Bd6 9.d4 Nxd4
> 10.Qh5 Bd6 11.Bxf4 Bxf4 12.Nxf4 Bxc4? 13.Qe5+ wins rook, but here
> Fritz found 12...Nf3+!!, which refutes the variation.
>
> I defy a human to find such a counterintuitive move.
Which move? Do you mean the stunning 10...Bd6 after 8....Bd6?
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Date: 21 Oct 2008 00:30:54
From: Offramp
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 21, 12:21 am, raylopez99 <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Oct 19, 2:40 pm, [email protected] wrote:
> The "Classical" World Chess Championship matches were analyzed, and
> the results for the fourteen Classical World Champions were presented.
> Players with fewest average errors:
> Jos=E9 Ra=FAl Capablanca
> Vladimir Kramnik
> Anatoly Karpov
> Garry Kasparov
> Boris Spassky
I can only imagine Spassky being in 5th if the first sentence had
been,
"The "Classical" World Chess Championship matches were analyzed, and
the results for the fourteen Classical World Champions OVER ALL THE
GAMES IN THEIR CAREERS were presented."
That would then include the thousands and thousands and thousands and
thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of very quick
draws that litter Spassky's career after 1977.
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Date: 20 Oct 2008 16:21:12
From: raylopez99
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 19, 2:40=A0pm, [email protected] wrote:
> =A0 It would be an interesting project to take masters who have been
> considered great analysts =97 not necessarily the same thing as a great
> player =97 e.g. Marco, Alapin, Capablanca, Alekhine, R=E9ti, Nimzovitch,
> Botvinnik, Geller, et al, and subject good-size samples of their work
> to computerized inspection, to see who had the least tendency to
> error.
You've probably seen this already, but they have done this for
championship games--as opposed to 'good-size samples'-- and this group
discussed this a while ago in a long thread (I started the thread):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparing_top_chess_players_throughout_history
(see below)
RL
Actual moves played compared with computer choices
One of the latest methods of analyzing chess abilities across history
has come from Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko from the Department of
Computer and Information Science of Ljubljana University.[19] The
basis for their evaluation was the difference between the position
values resulting from the moves played by the human chess player and
the moves chosen as best by a chess program, Crafty. They also
compared the average number of errors in the player's game. According
to their analysis, the leader was Jos=E9 Ra=FAl Capablanca, followed
closely by Vladimir Kramnik.
The "Classical" World Chess Championship matches were analyzed, and
the results for the fourteen Classical World Champions were presented.
Players with fewest average errors:
Jos=E9 Ra=FAl Capablanca
Vladimir Kramnik
Anatoly Karpov
Garry Kasparov
Boris Spassky
Tigran Petrosian
Emmanuel Lasker
Bobby Fischer
Alexander Alekhine
Vassily Smyslov
Mikhail Tal
Mikhail Botvinnik
Max Euwe
Wilhelm Steinitz
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Date: 21 Oct 2008 15:21:29
From: David Richerby
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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raylopez99 <[email protected] > wrote:
> One of the latest methods of analyzing chess abilities across
> history has come from Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko from the Department
> of Computer and Information Science of Ljubljana University.[19] The
> basis for their evaluation was the difference between the position
> values resulting from the moves played by the human chess player and
> the moves chosen as best by a chess program, Crafty.
Yes but `Which of these World Champions plays most like a crippled
version of Crafty?' really isn't a sensible way of evaluating
anything. If, say, Kasparov were to play a match against Crafty, he
would surely win it convinicingly. Yet Guid and Bratko would look at
the games and, every time Kasparov played a winning move, they would
say `That move was bad because Crafty was expecting something else.'
Dave.
--
David Richerby Chocolate Painting (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ Renaissance masterpiece that's made
of chocolate!
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Date: 20 Oct 2008 16:18:04
From: raylopez99
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 19, 2:40=A0pm, [email protected] wrote:
> Tal's annotations
> of his 1960 match with Botvinnik were also quite good, especially
> considering that he dictated them verbally without sight of any board,
> replaying the games in his head from memory.
That is wicked! Tal is one "bad" chess player!
I agree with Taylor Kingston here, and point out that a lot of people
don't realize that a chess engine has two components: a brute force
portion, and a "move ordering" portion that picks the most likely
moves to search first. This latter component is because a chess
engine cannot do a 'brute force' search beyond five or six moves, so,
it must order the 'most likely best moves' beyond move five (actually
more like move 4 for most PCs). Thus, there is real "artificial
intelligence" involved in picking the likeliest 'best moves'. Typical
candidates for 'best moves' are the usual ones from the rules of
chess: pick moves that support other pieces (like two knights
reinforcing each other), rooks behind pawns, rooks in open files (or
soon to be open), move the king in the endgame not in the beginning
(when out of book), etc. Chess engines, using these rules and others,
are surprisingly "human like"--Fruit, designed by a chess player, is
one example.
As for a computer finding new moves, this is brought out in a book on
openings by Neil McDonald ("Concise Chess Openings" --I love this book
because it's so small), to wit, on the McDonnell Gambit of the King's
Gambit, McDonald says that Fritz found this move: 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4
3.Nf3 g5 4.Bc4 g4 5. Nc3 gxf3 6.Qxf3 d5 7.Nd5 Nc6 8.O-O Bd6 9.d4 Nxd4
10.Qh5 Bd6 11.Bxf4 Bxf4 12.Nxf4 Bxc4? 13.Qe5+ wins rook, but here
Fritz found 12...Nf3+!!, which refutes the variation.
I defy a human to find such a counterintuitive move.
RL
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Date: 19 Oct 2008 14:40:05
From:
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 19, 4:40=A0pm, Offramp <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Oct 19, 3:05 pm, [email protected] wrote:
>
> > "Lasker's Manual of Chess," published by Russell Enterprises, which
> > will be out in a few weeks.
>
> In that go-hick I believe that Lasker's book of the 1909 St Petersburg
> tournament, the one where he says the analysis "is accurate" has held
> up unbelievably well. I remember having a quick look at some of his
> analysis with a reasonable chess program and it all stood up well.
I reviewed an e-book version of that some years ago:
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review312.pdf
On the whole Lasker's analysis there did stand up quite well to
computer analysis. The same is not true of his "Common Sense In
Chess," where I discovered quite a few errors in editing a recent new
edition.(http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review625.pdf).
> I read somewhere that the analyst whose analysis stands up best to
> computer analysis is ... Steinitz.
I couldn't say; I've never put him under silicon-based scrutiny.
Among those I have, I'd say Reuben Fine was surprisingly inaccurate,
while Botvinnik and/or Fischer was perhaps the best. Tal's annotations
of his 1960 match with Botvinnik were also quite good, especially
considering that he dictated them verbally without sight of any board,
replaying the games in his head from memory. Editing Russell
Enterprise's 5th edition of that book, I found one or two whoppers,
and a few lesser errors, but overall it was amazingly clean. A
surprisingly error-prone book was Timman's on Cura=E7ao 1962 (http://
www.chesscafe.com/text/review495.pdf).
It would be an interesting project to take masters who have been
considered great analysts =97 not necessarily the same thing as a great
player =97 e.g. Marco, Alapin, Capablanca, Alekhine, R=E9ti, Nimzovitch,
Botvinnik, Geller, et al, and subject good-size samples of their work
to computerized inspection, to see who had the least tendency to
error.
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Date: 19 Oct 2008 13:40:50
From: Offramp
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 19, 3:05 pm, [email protected] wrote:
> "Lasker's Manual of Chess," published by Russell Enterprises, which
> will be out in a few weeks.
In that go-hick I believe that Lasker's book of the 1909 St Petersburg
tournament, the one where he says the analysis "is accurate" has held
up unbelievably well. I remember having a quick look at some of his
analysis with a reasonable chess program and it all stood up well.
I read somewhere that the analyst whose analysis stands up best to
computer analysis is ... Steinitz.
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Date: 19 Oct 2008 13:19:30
From:
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 19, 2:15=A0pm, [email protected] (John Savard)
wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:05:55 -0700 (PDT), [email protected]
> wrote, in part:
>
> > =A0A strange attitude. I would be very reluctant to produce any game
> >collection without computer analysis today.
>
> True, but I can see what is behind it. Tactical phenomena that only a
> computer would be able to detect could be claimed to be _irrelevant_ to
> human over-the-board play.
I can't accept that argument at all. Good moves are good, and bad
moves are bad, whether discovered by human brains or computer
programs. It's an annotator's job to point out both, with the greatest
accuracy possible.
> I, too, think it makes more sense to use the
> computers - but take what they say with the appropriate grain of salt,
> in the fashion you've noted.
>
> John Savardhttp://www.quadibloc.com/index.html
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Date: 19 Oct 2008 07:05:55
From:
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 19, 9:03=A0am, Offramp <[email protected] > wrote:
> On Oct 18, 2:05 pm, raylopez99 <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I'm looking at an analysis of the recent third game of the Kramnik -
> > Anand game on Chessbase (http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?
> > newsid=3D4963) and am shocked that the annotator apparently did not use
> > chess software when analyzing the game.
>
> The recent Keene-Simpole book Petrosian v the Elite says that they
> specifically did not use a computer when analysing the games.
>
> "We used our own brains for our comments and cannot blame a computer
> program - which we rarely employed - for any blunders which have
> persisted." Page 13.
A strange attitude. I would be very reluctant to produce any game
collection without computer analysis today. Even the great world
champions erred in their analysis. I recently edited a new edition of
"Lasker's Manual of Chess," published by Russell Enterprises, which
will be out in a few weeks. There were enough significant analytical
errors, of both omission and commission, that I added a 24-page
appendix of analytical endnotes to correct them.
If an all-time great like Lasker can make that many mistakes, how
much more a lesser player like Keene, whose analytical style already
tends to the superficial?
> I think computers are still a bit shaky when it comes to very long or
> deep sacrifices.
They are shaky in the sense that they may not see the value of a
long-term sacrifice, especially if the compensation is positional
rather than tactical, and so they won't make the sac in the first
place. A human GM, using general principles, will sense the potential
of the sacrifice, whereas for the computer the ultimate payoff will be
beyond its analytical horizon, and so it will not consider the sac
worthwhile. However, once the sac is made, the computer will often
handle the resulting variations more accurately than the GM.
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Date: 19 Oct 2008 06:03:11
From: Offramp
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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On Oct 18, 2:05 pm, raylopez99 <[email protected] > wrote:
> I'm looking at an analysis of the recent third game of the Kramnik -
> Anand game on Chessbase (http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?
> newsid=4963) and am shocked that the annotator apparently did not use
> chess software when analyzing the game.
The recent Keene-Simpole book Petrosian v the Elite says that they
specifically did not use a computer when analysing the games.
"We used our own brains for our comments and cannot blame a computer
program - which we rarely employed - for any blunders which have
persisted." Page 13.
I think computers are still a bit shaky when it comes to very long or
deep sacrifices.
I agree with you that they should be used, though.
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Date: 19 Oct 2008 00:30:32
From: Sanny
Subject: Re: Why don't people use computers when annotating games? Flawed
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GetClub Easy Level plays as good as International Master.
So It need a IM to beat Easy Level at GetClub.
GetClub uses applet which is 3-4 times slower than downloaded programs
Still it plays very strong games.
So want a game with IM then play with Easy Level at GetClub.
Bye
Sanny
Play Chess at: http://www.GetClub.com/Chess.html
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