Miscellaneous

I discovered Chessville quotes by various players to be quite entertaining and they even offer some good advice.

365Chess online database of 3-1/2 million games  This site has games by players from Manfred Aab of Germany to Sofiya Zyzlova of the Soviet Union and includes unrateds to GM’s. For example GM Olivier Renet of France has 1070 games and Michal Maciazek, rated 1453, from Poland has 3 games.  My favorite player, Reshevsky, has 1356 games.  Maybe you have some games in it. You can search by openings…Grob’s Attack (1.g4) has 759 games.  Of which, by the way, White won 37.5% and lost 44.9% which isn’t too much worse than Bird’s Opening (1.f4) where White won 35.5% and lost 40.0%.  Also check out their chess puzzles. 

Best Game of the last century?  Kasparov-Topalov, Wijk aan Zee, 1999…with great notes

The case of the idiot tournament directors:

Arthur W. Dake was born on April 8, 1910 and learned chess at the age of 16 after leaving high school and working as a seaman. Dake's career was unusual in that he did not play in a tournament until he was very strong.  His first tournament was the 1930 New York State Championship where he finished 3^rd.  He was mostly active from 1930 to 1938 then dropped out of chess until he made a comeback at Lone Pine 1975.  On the basis of his early results a grandmaster title application was submitted on his behalf and awarded in 1986.

Dake's result in New York 1931 featured an unfair forfeit loss to Isador Turover. According to American Chess Bulletin, when Turover was short of time and was down to 15 minutes Dake came to the umpire, Dr. Norman Lederer, and asked him to watch Turover's clock. Lederer told Dake that it was none of Dake’s business!! In this tournament the clocks had no flag, and the rule was that a white space had to show between the black dot and the minute hand.

When Turover had no time left, Dake waved his hands several times pointing to the clock. Dake won the game but Lederer ruled that Dake had disturbed Turover's concentration and awarded the game to Turover by forfeit. Of course Dake appealed and the referee, Alvin Cass, ruled that he found the penalty to be harsh since Turover had a lost position but ruled "Discipline must be maintained..." and the forfeit stood.

Final Results, New York International Tournament 1931
J.R. Capablanca 10 (out of 11)
Isaac Kashdan  8.5

Alex Kevitz  7.0           

I.A. Horowitz  5.5             

Abraham Kupchik    5.5

Herman Steiner 5.5       

Anthony Santasiere   5.0          

Isadore Turover   4.5             

Arthur Dake      4.5

Edward Lasker  4.0        

Frank J. Marshall   4.0

Maurice Fox     2.5               

Selected Endgame Lessons from Horowitz

New pdf booklet for download…50 pages of basic King and Pawn endings from I.A. Horowitz’ How to Win in the Chess Endings.  English Descriptive notation.  Don’t let the fact this is in EDN discourage you from studying this essential endgame material; a brief explanation of how to read it is included in the booklet.  Any reasonably intelligent player can learn it in 10 minutes…I learned it as a 10 year old kid, so how hard could it be?!

Engines and Material Imbalances

      As you well know, one area where engines have a hard time is evaluating a position with an unusual material imbalance.  Of course, this can also be true for humans because while there are a lot of “rules” for the value of the pieces in general, an exact evaluation cannot be made on general principles; specific considerations of the position must be taken into account.  In addition to approximate counting the value of the pieces, you also have to take into account such things as P-structure, mobility, K-safety and a host of other features.
      In recent years, engines have shown much improvement in making these evaluations. However, you still cannot always take those evaluations at face value.  Back in the old days of chess engines, say 5 years ago, things were a lot less clear.  For example in the following position taken from CC GM Robin Smith’s book, Modern Chess Analysis which was published in 2004, some evaluations were:

Junior-White 2-1/2 P’s up

Hiarcs-slight advantage to Black

Fritz, Rebel and Chessmaster-equal or slight advantage to Black

Chess Tiger and Shredder-slight advantage to White

Nimzo-White up by 1.0 P’s

       Which engine was right?  The programs were giving Black a huge plus for his 3 connected, passed P’s.  This may be an advantage in the ending, but this position is not an ending and the truth is White has about a one Pawn advantage here.  Today let Houdini analyze this position and it quickly spots the correct 32.d7 and gives White about a one Pawn edge and in only a couple of minutes is 100% sure it’s the correct move.
      Fritz 12, Firebird and Spike all also quickly (unlike the engines of Smith's day. He often had to let them run for hours!) concluded that 32.d7 was the best move, only varying a little in their evaluations.  I should note that I’d read Spike was primarily a positional engine so I tried it out in a short blitz match against Houdini.  In CC positional play is what you want because no engine is going to fall for faulty tactics.  Houdini won by +1 -0 =4.  Spike’s loss came as a result of a tactical error that it probably wouldn’t have made if it had not moved almost instantly.  Still, for the time being, I’m sticking with Houdini for my analysis.
      In a recent Lechenicher SchachServer event I actually had 3 games in which there were material imbalances.  In two games I had a Q vs. 2 R’s which were both drawn.  In the third game we arrived at the following position with White (me) to make move 56.  The engines showed I had a 2-3 Pawn advantage but after several shootouts and trying several candidate moves I was unable to devise any winning plan so I decided to reduce the material to the basics: a R+P vs. B+2P’s because Black’s extra R always seemed to offer him counterplay. 

Thus after 56.Rg6 Rxg6+ 57.hxg6+ Kxg6 my plan was to transfer the K to c5 and sac the R for a B and P.  After this I hoped to capture the a-Pawn then advance it.  Unfortunately this does not work because Black’s K is able to reach the queening square with only one move to spare and I could not figure out a way to pick up the extra tempo I needed.  58.Kf2 Now I supposedly have a one P advantage. The K passes behind the R so as to keep the Black K cut off. 58… Kg5 59.Ke3 Bd5 60.Rf8 Bc4 61.Kd4 Kg4 62.Kc5 Here I looked hard to find a mate with the R&K but his B was always stymied that idea. 62...Kh4 63.Kb4 Kg3 64.Rf5 Kg4 65.Rxb5 Bxb5 66.Kxb5 arriving at the following drawn position:

     This is a draw because Black’s K is inside the square.  If it was outside it would be a win. After spending a lot of time analyzing this position with several different engines and ending up with gobs of analysis stored with the game I was unable to discover any method of forcing a win in the initial position. All this shows what I’ve said before is correct (as are most things I say…that’s a joke):  Titled CC players who manage to routinely defeat players who rely solely on engine use and even manage to outplay other titled players have to be pretty strong players or they would never be able to discover ways to defeat the engines of today.  On LSS, I looked up the names of several of their top rated players and discovered most didn’t have OTB ratings that I could find, but many did have CC titles with the ICCF.  Their #2 ranked player is OTB Grandmaster Alex Fier of Brazil but he never finished any of his games and lost them all by forfeit.  Too bad he didn’t stick with it because it would have been interesting to see how well an OTB GM fared in this kind of chess.



ChessDotCom Videos

While on the subject of videos, if you enjoy watching them check out ChessDotCom for great videos by players like IM David Pruess, IM Daniel Rensch, GM Alex Lenderman, GM Melikset Khachiyan, etc.

Online Chess Lessons Channel (YouTube)

I suggest checking out National Master William Stewart’s YouTube Channel for analysis of games of interest from recent events.  His website also has some interesting commentary.  He offers lessons at the rate of $22.50 - $24.50 for each one hour session.  Disclaimer: this post and the recommendation of his website and YouTube site does not constitute an endorsement for his offer of chess lessons. I have no opinion on them one way or the other.

Frank Marshall

Frank Marshall (August 10, 1877 – November 9, 1944), was the U.S. Chess Champion from 1909–1936, and was one of the world's strongest chess players in the early part of the 20th century. I recently came across a site by USCF Life Master A.J. Goldsby dedicated to Marshall which includes little known biographical material and some of Marshall’s best games that have been annotated in depth.  This site is definitely a must visit!  AJ’s Page on Frank Marshall

4-Shared dot com

4-Shared dot com is a free online storage site that allows you to upload, access, and share (public or private) your music, videos, photos or anything else you want.  For those that don’t know, that means you use it just like the hard drive on your computer. I have 43 booklets stored on it and have used only 8% of my 15 GB worth of space! One year’s subscription costs $6.50 a month and offers a lot of features including 100 GB of storage space. Worth checking out.

The 2011 World Championship Candidates Match Tournament

       Quite a few people have been commenting on the fact that there was grand total of 3 wins in the classical time control. Grischuk made it to the finals by drawing the classical games and playing the blitz tiebreakers where he apparently felt he would have better chances.
       A lot of the top players have expressed their dislike of the current candidates system.  For example Magnus Carlsen refused to play and that was a major loss to the event.  I have to agree with Kramink when he opined that because this was a classical tournament they should be playing at classical time controls and playing rapid games has no place in these events. He suggested a round robin tournament which is what they had in the old days and it makes sense to me. Kramink pointed out that in Kazan he played more blitz games than classical which is just unbelievable. This year’s Candidates tournament was decided primarily by rapid chess and that should not be the case in a world championship event.
       GM Emil Sutovsky, World Championship and Olympiads Committee member, sent out a questionnaire to the world’s top 20 players asking their opinions and what changes they would like to see made. There will be a meeting this month where, hopefully, the issue will be addressed and, hopefully but unlikely, the players’ opinions will be given serious consideration, but don’t count on it.
       As I see it there are two problems with matches played at classical time controls.  The first became evident back during the K-K matches.  These days at that level it is very hard to win and unless some restraints are put in place the matches could go on for a protracted period of time making them simply too expensive for the organizers.  They also become boring and hold little interest for spectators.
       The other problem is money.  Organizers won’t organize and players won’t play without big money being available.  Even at the lower levels of play many class players won’t play if they have no chance to win big money.  With hotel, food and gas expenses making it expensive enough to play, then adding EF’s that sometimes run into hundreds of dollars, nobody is going to show up unless there is the promise of a big payoff.  There is a local club that offers occasional events with small EF’s and small prizes and they’re lucky to get 15-20 players.  Everybody wants a shot at winning big money. 
       Here’s my solution: Make the world championship a biannual round robin event where the top 20 rated players in the world are invited. I realize there probably would not be much money in these events, but who says the world champion has to be a millionaire? The great players of the past were far from it and they will always be remembered and revered in the chess world. Many GM’s of yesteryear had real jobs and chess was a hobby.  GM Arthur Bisguier told of how, when he played his match with Reshevsky, he’d get off work, grab some fast food and race to the playing site.  Ask one of these guys to do that today!  Most of them wouldn’t even consider it.  My guess is that in a big RR like I am suggesting things wouldn’t be so boring because the players wouldn’t be motivated by greed but by the love of the game.  Organizers?  There has always been folks willing to undertake organizing because it was something they enjoyed and they did it even when there was no money to be made. 
       Yes, that would cause a lot of top players to give up chess if they couldn’t make a living at it, but who cares?  Just remember the 3 wins at the classical time control and all the boring games. Who’s going to miss that? Fischer may have been a turd but at least he made his opponents play chess. Najdorf, Tahl, Bronstein, Spassky…we need more guys like them.  Not these wussies that are “playing” these days.

1400’s and Endings

I hear it all the time from lower rated players: Study tactics. Endings and strategy should wait until you are (whatever) rating.  Well take a look at this ending played between a couple of 1400’s. White to move.

Play continued 51.Kb7 Kf2 52.Kb6 Ke2 53.Kb5 and Black resigned.  He should not have because the position is drawn. If you simply count moves from the starting position, in which it is obvious White must capture the P on a4, you will see it takes 4 moves (Kb7, Kb6, Kb4 and Kxa4).  Where will Black’s King be in 4 moves? …Kf2, …Ke3, …Kd4 and …Kc4 reaching this position:

When I showed this position to White he insisted that it was a win (and presumably so did Black) because all he had to do was play 55.Ka5 and meet …Kc5 with 56.a4 Kc6 with 57.Kb4 and he can advance the P and win.  This is not true. After 57...Kb7  58.Kb5 Ka7  59.a5 Kb7  60.a6+ Kb8  61.Kb6 Ka8  62.a4 Kb8  63.a5 Ka8 reaching the following position: 

And White either has to allow Black to capture his P’s or a stalemate.  Going back to the original position, it is a draw because White’s K can never get off the a-file without allowing Black to get in front of the P’s.  With a little elementary endgame knowledge both players would have known this and Black could have saved a half point.

MacFarland Publishing

       I’ve not been posting much mostly due to real life activities and keeping busy with my CC tournaments.  But even those have suffered.  In a recent game my opponent played Ng5 attacking my Q on f7.  After some thought I concluded I should play …Qd7 followed by …Nf6, so that’s what I did: played …Nf6.  But that was before moving the Q so after he took my Q on f7 there was no choice but to resign.  I can’t remember the last time I played such a grossly bad move.
      Anyway, the other day I got a nice catalog in the mail from MacFarland Publishers; they publish books on about every subject you can think of and their collection of chess books can only be described as fantastic.  No opening junk or trash on how to make a master out of a 1400 in 2 weeks kind of stuff.  They publish a lot of biographies on players like Amos Burn, Arthur Kaufman, Julius Finn, WHK Pollack, Adolf Albin, Isaac Kashdan, Samuel Reshevsky, Frank Marshall, etc., etc.  They even have some books on chess fiction.
      Guys like Kaufman and Finn are really unknowns but were fascinating characters who graced the chess world of their day.  The books are a little pricey, but you get what you pay for.  For example, the book on Amos Burn costs $95 but it is 984 pages and contains 209 photos!  If I were buying chess books these days I could have easily spent a few hundred dollars.  Check them out.    MacFarland Publishing

Lopsided Correspondence Team Match

     The Correspondence Chess League of America, the ICCF representative for US, started a 17 board, double round match against Lechenicher SchachServer back in April.  As of now the score stands at CCLA 3 vs. LSS 17, so LSS needs only a draw to win the match.  In view of the crushing (so far) defeat of the CCLA, I have to wonder if anybody at the CCLA, which does not permit engine use, was aware of the fact that LSS has no rules against it. It seems unlikely that CCLA members were aware of the fact and so are losing badly to the LSS engine users.  Not much for LSS to brag about!  This shows the futility of these inter-organization matches unless the rules are clear and the same for everybody.

Another Non-Chess Post

I like this kind of stuff...

Got Real Chess Talent?

This has been around awhile but maybe you haven’t seen it. GM Jonathan Levitt created a simple, self-test to determine chess aptitude. This test is discussed in his book, 'Genius in Chess.'  All it requires is a clock, board, one white knight, and one black queen.  Place the white knight on square b1. Place the black queen on square d4. The knight has to move up the ranks, visiting the squares that are not controlled by the Black Q in order.
      So you visit c1, e1, f1, h1 then a2, c2, e2, g2, h2, and so on until you reach g8.  During the test you cannot take the black queen or put the knight en prise.
      Only do the test once, and time yourself. Supposedly if you can’t do the test in ten minutes or less on the first try then according to Levitt, you don’t have real chess talent.
      This was a lot harder than it looks and I won’t reveal my score but will only say it showed what I already knew: I don’t have real talent. GM Matthew Sadler completed the test in 4 min. and 20 sec. GM Michael Adams in 5 min. and 30 sec. GM Julian Hodgson 7 min.
     

Geller-Euwe Zurich 1953

Engine Analysis Methods

Most people running an engine analysis of a game simply have Fritz run a full analysis for a set time limit per move or a set ply-depth, but that does not always give satisfactory results.  Below is a list of some methods that will give better results, but in the end, if one is going to learn anything or hope for decent results in high level CC events where engine use is allowed, then it is going to require interactive analysis where you work with the engine in trying to ferret out the best move in any position. And that is going to require more than just plugging a game into Fritz and letting it do its thing. It’s going to require patience and, as you will see, making some judgment calls based on your understanding.  Anyway, I hope this brief guide will be of use in assisting readers in understanding how to analyze a game with an engine and perhaps help in using engines in their quest for improvement.


Sparring Partner
      You come up with a plan and use the engine as a blundercheck to see if the move loses material. This is a good way to check out your ideas because engines will put up tough resistance to you moves. This method is also effective because sometimes we get so carried away with our ideas that we can overlook the best moves but the engine will not.
      Another way of using this interactive analysis is, once you have a line you want to analyze, go to the end and keep going back one move and wait to see if the engine’s analysis makes a large change. If it does then you will want to check out those side lines to make sure the engine did not miss anything in its original analysis.
      Note: if the engine pauses for a long time and/or it keeps jumping back and forth between candidate moves, it means it is having a hard time deciding on the move it thinks best. For you, this means it’s a good place to stop and investigate further the move the engine was considering.


Multivariations
      In this mode you click on the + or – to increase/decrease the number of moves variations displayed. When the difference between the first and second choice is about one Pawn and the position is relatively quiet tactically, then the conclusion is that the first choice is probably best. However, in a tactically wild position before concluding that the first choice is clearly best, you need a difference of 2 or 3 Pawns before concluding that the first choice is definitely the best one. If the difference is about a half Pawn, you can’t draw any definite conclusions.


Multiple Engines
      Running more than one engine at the same time is one of the best ways to analyze a position because different engines will not always come up with the same first choice. When you get different suggestions, you will have to investigate them further and make a decision as to which move offers the best possibilities. Another point to understand is that when it comes to positional evaluations, engines can vary greatly in the numbers they display. Usually the difference will only be a half-P or less which is insignificant, but it can also be quite large. When this happens we usually either go with the engine showing the largest difference or the one that’s rated the strongest, but this can be misleading in positions where there are material imbalances but one side has attacking possibilities. So the question then becomes one of which engine are you going to believe?


Engine Tournaments
      Running a tournament with multiple engines from a given position is another way of testing a position. After the tournament you can look at the games to get an idea of different liens of play and see where they lead. One word of caution though…the results can be skewed by later engine errors, so don’t take the results at face value without checking them out first. The most effective positions to evaluate in this manner are those in which the next few moves will affect the game in some way. Examples: which side to castle on, P-moves that close the center or result in isolated or doubled P’s, exchanges leading to material imbalances, or positions that are complicated and open.


Deep Position Analysis
      This method of analysis is one that establishes an analysis tree and you can adjust the length of the branches. This method is probably the least desirable method and is best used when you don’t want to spend time interacting with the engine and are content to just let the engine do all the work. On the other hand if one’s understanding of chess isn’t very good this method is satisfactory.

Full Analysis and Blunderchecking
      This is good if you want to check a game for tactical errors, but remember that this analysis will be pretty meaningless in closed positions and setting blunderchecking at any value of a half-P or less will result in “improvements” that are, generally, meaningless.

Bobby Fischer from Chess Genius to Legend by Eduard Gufeld

I recently came across a copy of this in a used book store so of course snatched it up. The book is a collection of stories by people who knew Fischer: Eduard Gufeld, Carlos Almarza-Mato, Mike Morris, Wolfgang Unzicker, Gudmendur Thorarinsson, Bragi Kristjansson, and Bob Long, the book’s editor.

Fischer turned into a pathetic, repugnant character in later years…actually he was always a rather repugnant person but much of his behavior was excused because of his talent. When he quit playing chess there was nothing left BUT his loathsome character. In his latter days he called chess mental masturbation and made a lot of crazy and even downright ugly accusations against a lot of players and other people. Fischer was paranoid, racist, anti-Semitic and known for coarse vulgarity. I lost all respect for him as a person during his match with Reshevsky in 1961. OK, so Mrs. Piatagorsky acted like a real bitch, but that still did not justify Fischer’s language which was fit for the gutter.

Back to this book… the first 100 pages or so are by Gufeld who adds nothing we didn’t already know. It’s just a bunch material regurgitated from other sources. The writing was apparently left exactly as Gufeld wrote it which is “weird” and evidently was not proofread and corrected. For example: “Fischer correctly evaluated the game, having taken the game to an few pieces ending.”

In one place Gufeld said the first game of the 1971 Larsen-Fischer match was the most creative and that it would be worthwhile studying it. He then gave the unannotated game for the reader to play over. If the game was so worthy of study why didn’t the GM add some notes?! Some of his historical “facts” are also suspect.

As for the other contributors, much of what is contained in the book is hogwash. What does “May Caissa illuminate all of us in our chess initiatic paths so as we will be able to understand, discern, and learn” mean?! Also included in the book is trash written by authors, obviously hostile to the US, blaming the US government and anybody else you can think of for Fischer’s mental condition. I don’t agree that the US government was the fault of Fischer’s mental problems, but it’s OK to include it in the book because, after all, this is a democracy and everybody has the right, including Fischer and anti-US authors, to voice their opinions.

Overall I’d say if you see this book in the library it’s OK to check it out because it’s free and you can read it while you’re sitting on the toilet. If it didn’t belong to the library, it could be safely flushed after reading. If you have to PAY for it, save your money!

Interesting Game by Lower Rated Players

I came across this game that was published in Chess Life & Review magazine in 1975.  It was played between two “class” players; White was rated ~1650 and Black ~1550.  It contains some mistakes, of course, but Black’s 29^th move was very nice.  It might be worthwhile to play over the game and see if you can spot all the tactics.

Dumb Advice

      This is from a guy who’s been trying to reach 1700 for several years:  It doesn't matter if your position is superior if you blunder pieces and fall into mates so you need to study tactics before you study strategy and endings.
      This guy has played more openings than I have socks and his “study plan” consists of studying tactics and playing blitz games on ICC. The blitz games reinforce his bad habits and encourage superficial thinking.  Constantly changing openings is not to be recommended either. He is constantly advising players who want to improve that tactics and blitz is the way to improve and they should avoid studying strategy and endings until they are at least 1800.  He will likely never get there. I gave up giving him advice a couple years ago.  The other day a long-time master told him he needed to play a lot and then analyze the games (he was not referring to blitz games) and he needed deepen his knowledge of the positions from his openings by studying master games, study strategy and endings. A waste of breath if you ask me because the guy turned right around and complained that he lost his last couple of tournament games because of tactical errors so he was switching back to a previously played opening and was going to have to hit the tactical servers harder. Apparently it has never occurred to this guy that you can’t keep doing the same thing (changing openings, studying tactics and playing blitz) and expect different results (improvement). 
      Most players will never master tactics or any other phase of the game. That’s why they are not masters; they haven’t mastered anything.  Anyway, let’s say it’s a 40 move game and 10 are opening moves; that leaves 30 moves and let’s say a player makes 5 errors that could have lead to loss of material or mate.  That leaves 25 moves where he was doing what?  Just aimlessly shifting pieces around and probably weakening his position?  Or was he applying principles of sound strategy? Why can’t one study tactics, strategy, endings and play over master games to increase one’s pattern recognition skills simultaneously? 
      Yes, as CJS Purdy advised, you comb the board for tactics at every move.  But if you don’t find one, and most of the time you won’t, what are you going to do? Also, as an afterthought, I can’t help but wonder, if this guy keeps losing due to overlooking tactics, why does he insist on playing gambits? If he is devoting so much time to studying and not improving, then he’s doing something wrong.

Are chess engines ruining correspondence chess?

      Aren’t chess engines so good that humans cannot win against them? The truth is, at least at higher levels of CC play, that engines still have disadvantages. And in order to overcome those disadvantages, it still requires input from humans.
      To analyze a position to full accuracy, chess engines need to check all possible moves, all their countermoves and so on. This means their ability to look ahead and see developments is limited. To compensate for that, chess engines use different criteria to select moves which they believe are worthy of further analysis.
      For example in a middle game, where each position allows for 30 different moves, the engines would need to look at 531,440,000,000,000,000 positions to reach a depth of 12 ply (6 full moves). At an average speed of 1.2 million positions per second it would take, for all practical purposes, forever to compute. By limiting the number of moves they consider and including the different search algorithms used by different engines, they do make mistakes in evaluations.
      Another argument is that the use of chess engines allows weaker players to successfully play against stronger players so the gap between low rated and high rated players has been narrowed.
      Actually the gap between strong players using chess engines and the weak players using chess engines remains the same. Look at any GM CC tournament and you will find some players winning almost all their games while some players lose almost all of them. The result is not because of engines alone. It is because of a difference in human skills when it comes to correctly evaluating positions. The chess engines neutralize each other so the difference is based on chess skills.
      From a practical stand point let’s assume your average player lets his engine run for only a minute or two then selects its first choice. Let’s assume the stronger player lets his engine run for several hours, looks at the position and then evaluates its output and then runs though its analysis and in addition considers some moves of his own based on his understanding of the position. What's going to happen is that the stronger player will probably win. 
      When I started at LSS I lost a lot of games owing to using Fritz 5.32 and an old, slow computer. I never relied entirely on the engine to select my moves. I also tried out moves that looked best to me but did not realize I was not allowing sufficient time to get anywhere near a reliable analysis. The result was, believe it or not, a few moves that actually turned out to be tactical errors, and quite a few losses. As my knowledge of how to use engines, coupled with an upgrade in equipment, I’ve had much better results and have even bettered my overall score to a plus 2!
      Did chess engines change correspondence chess? Yes, they did, significantly so. If we look at games of the times before chess engines, we frequently find bad mistakes in the play of weaker players, including gross blunders. Today, we do not see such blunders even in the games of low-level players.
      The requirements on players have changed. Besides their chess skills and knowledge, players now need to know how to use chess engines efficiently and to complement to their own skills. Players need to know the strengths and limits of their engines. Another quirk of engines is that sometimes they do not consider moves until prompted to by the human. Also, in many cases you’ll see their evaluations fluctuating as they go deeper into the position. This means they are having a hard time finding the final solution and ultimately may require some human guidance. This is what makes correspondence chess interesting for some of us although I recognize this is not the case for everyone. In fact it has taken me a few years since returning to CC in 2004 to come to this conclusion. And, as my understanding of engines has gradually increased, my results have improved and my enjoyment of CC has returned.

Gull & Strelka vs. Houdini

       I recently downloaded a couple of new (to me) engines, Gull and Strelka.  According to the download site, Gull is rated 3000 and Strelka 2850. A very quick and unscientific test in some 5 minute games against Houdini showed that Houdini is, for the moment, still the strongest engine available.  I’ve entered another tournament at Lechenicher Schachserver, so I will continue to use Houdini as my engine of choice.
      These days I am finding that LSS, where engine use is not prohibited, is my site of choice for playing correspondence chess.  The main reason is that on most sites when you are playing at around 2200 and above most people are using engines despite the fact that they are prohibited.  I don’t have a problem using an engine when I know my opponent is, but on a lot of those sites you run into opponents who are rated under 2200 and they probably aren’t using engines. And then there is always the possibility that your 2200-2300 rated opponent is legitimate.  This means there is a problem of making a decision as to which opponent is using and which isn’t and to be fair you don’t want to be firing up your engine against somebody who is not using one.  On the other hand, you don’t want to find yourself playing unaided against somebody who is using Fritz because usually by the time you confirm your suspicions it’s too late.
      So, I prefer to avoid facing such a quandary by playing on a site where I can use an engine.  The problem with that is that I’ve had to try and acquire a whole new set of skills because, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, there’s more to playing CC than just letting an engine choose your moves…at least there is if you are serious about CC and want to feel like you’ve accomplished something.  Yes, just like winning a well-played game unaided gives one a feeling of accomplishment, teaming up with Houdini and outplaying some guy who’s teamed up with his engine will also leave you feeling like you’ve accomplished something.  Maybe not like the feeling I got 40 years ago when I knocked off a 2400 otb rated player who was in the top ten in the US in CC, but …well anyway, back to the Gull, Strelka, Houdini stuff…
      Gull vs. Houdini resulted in three draws though in the first game Houdini had a B+2P’s vs a lone N but could not win owing to running out of time.  Another alleged Rybka clone, Strelka, was crushed by Houdini when it lost 3 out of 3.  In the first game Strelka walked into a pin that lost a piece and in the other two games it also appeared to be inferior tactically.  The rating list on Zarkon Fischer’s site seems to bear out the results of my quick tests that Houdini 1.5a remains the strongest engine.  The top 8 engines on the IPON rating list, which didn’t have Strelka listed are:

1.Houdini 1.5a              3011  

2.Deep Rybka 4           2954  

3.Stockfish 2.01 JA      2916  

4.Critter 0.90 SSE42    2888  

5.Komodo64 1.3 JA     2830  

6.Naum 4.2                  2825  

7.Deep Shredder 12    2800  

8. Gull 1.1                    2788  

Many of these engines are available for download at SDChess.

Addendum to post on what to study

      In regards to what should be studied, strategy or tactics, I came across an interesting quote by CJS Purdy in his book Guide to Good Chess. “Position play is the art of improving your position in small ways when no sound combination is possible.” The first thing you do of course is as Purdy said, “comb the board for a tactic.” The question is what do you do if there is no combination that is playable? And this will be most of the time. Even so, let’s say you play a game riddled with tactical mistakes. For the sake of argument, let’s say in a 40-move game half the moves should have allowed a combination that lost material or lead to a mate. What were the other 20 moves? One should have been making sound positional moves.
      Realistically though, unless you’re an absolute beginner, tactical blunders are likely to have occurred on only a few moves. Say you make 4 or 5. All the other moves had to be of a positional nature. To concentrate on nothing but tactical study does not seem to make sense.
      Make a lot of positional errors like creating a N outpost for your opponent to occupy, allowing him open files for his R’s and diagonals for his B’s, weakening your K-side with ill-considered P-moves, or any one of a dozen other positional mistakes and you may end up losing in the ending or…allowing him to build up such a superior position that a tactical solution becomes possible.
      By avoiding the study of the positional elements of the game, it seems to me the “tactics only” crowd is avoiding what is actually the thing most of the game consists of…maneuvering your pieces around trying to get them into good positions from where they will have the most potential.

Dutch Defense – Krejcik Gambit

      I stopped by a local club for a brief visit last week and there was a young man sitting there reading an opening book who asked if I’d like to play a game.  I agreed to play a quick game and since there was a clock nearby we decided on G30 and because he wanted to record the game, I thought It wouldn’t be a bad idea if I did also.  When he played the Dutch, I made a spur of the moment decision to play what I thought was a totally new move, 3.g4, but later found out some unknown 2400 beat me to it!  In fact it has a name…the Krejcik Gambit and you can discover more about it at either Chess Tempo or ECO Chess.

       The worst part of playing the move was listening to the guy running his mouth in the post mortem about what a bad move it was.  I just wish I had known it had a name at the time so I could have nonchalantly said, “Oh, didn’t you know it’s the Krejcik Gambit?”  OK, it’s not real good, but if it’s THAT bad, why didn’t he refute it?  Actually I’m not really sure WHY he lost this game, but it seems that starting about move 9 he got infatuated with the idea of harassing my undefended B with his Q and N.  The result was the loss of a little time and getting his Q and N’s on not-so-good squares.  All I kept doing was playing aggressive moves attacking his K, and before he knew it, his position was untenable.

Free Material for Teaching Beginners

      A 303 page Chess Teaching Manual by IM Ton O’Donnell is available from the Clarksville (Canada) Chess Club HERE.  This giant manual is designed for adults to use in teaching children how to play chess starting from the very beginning. Each lesson is designed to take about 10 minutes and also includes exercise sheets designed to reinforce the lessons. I can see no reason why this manual couldn’t be used to teach adults also.

      The Rockford Illinois Chess Club also has a lot of free material available designed to teach beginners as does Professor Chess.  While you’re at Professor Chess you might like to try their "Recon64" page where you can try to guess the next move in some master games. In order to gain full access to all of their resources individuals have to pay $10 per year but they also offer a lot of free downloadable material suitable for small chess groups. Worth a look if you are in a teaching situation.