The New Houdini Chess Engine

     When Houdini 5 was released November 7, 2016, nearly 3 years after the previous version, it was advertised as being vastly improved to the tune of about 200 Elo stronger than previously. The main improvement was to its positional evaluation function. Then in November 15, 2016, Houdini 5.01 was released with minor bug fixes and improvements.
     There's also a Houdini Pro version that's intended for power users with high-end hardware. The Pro version supports up to 128 threads, 128 GB of hash memory, large memory pages, the use of Nalimov end game table bases and it is NUMA-aware. For most users the plain old Houdini 5.1 will be the engine of choice. 
     The redesigned evaluation function is supposed to take better take king safety and piece play into account which gives it a combination of an aggressive playing style plus sound positional and strategic understanding. Supposedly, when other engines see no way to make progress, or head for a draw, Houdini sometimes comes up hidden resources. The ads state that the preliminary release version of Houdini 5 won convincingly ahead of all other top programs in the recent “TCEC Season 9 Rapid” tournament, scoring 50 wins and 12 draws and the final release of Houdini 5 surpassed this performance by another 30 Elo points. I noticed this was a “rapid” tournament and some programmers tune their engines to perform well in these rapid events, but that's not what interests us. We want to know how good does the engine perform at slow setting and how does it do against Stockfish and Komodo? 
     On the IPON rating list games played at 5 minutes plus 3 seconds per move (mean game length is abou6 16 Minutes), Stockfish 8 (rated 3390) is still first. It's followed by Komodo 10.4 (3387) and Houdini 5.01 (3281) 
     On the CCRL 40/40 rating list Stockfish 8 is also rated number on at 3390. Houdini 5.01 is second at (3387) and Komodo 10.4 is third at 3383. 
     In head to head competition on CCLR, Stockfish holds the edge over Komodo, scoring +7 -4 =41 and against Houdini it has a more modest +14 -3 =123. Houdini 5.1 has the edge on Komodo 10.1 by a score of +8 -4 =40. 
     So, it appears that Stockfish 8 is still the best deal. Houdini 5.1 costs about $40 and the Pro version about $64. Komodo 10.1 costs about $60 and with the cost for the 3-5 updates per year is about $100. Stockfish 8 costs $0.00, and it seems like both Houdini and Komodo have a ways to go to catch up, especially since Stockfish is free. 
     Here is a game in which Stockfish defeated Houdini 5.01. Even to my amateurish eye it looks like Stockfish is still the better engine. 
 

Potpourri

Back in January I failed to mention the passing of Hans Berliner at the age of 87. 
New York Times Obituary 
ChessBase Tribute 
Carnegie-Mellon University Tribute 







Yet another cheating incident was uncovered at the Dubai Open last month, this time by a player rated 1764!

Borislav Ivanov got arrested for selling fake drivers licenses and fake university degrees.

Ratmir Kholmov

     Kholmov (May 13, 1925 – February 18, 2006 in Moscow) was not well known outside the Soviet Union, but inside the country he was known as a dangerous attacking player and at the same time a strong defensive player. In his career he collected the scalps of the likes of Keres, Tahl, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer and Kasparov. 
     Kholmov learned the game at the age of 12 and by 14 he was the champion of Archangelsk. From 1960 to 1970 he was one of the strongest GMs in the Soviet Union, qualifying for the Soviet Championship seventeen times. 
     After moving to Moscow in 1967 his state pension amounted to $50 a month which wasn't enough to live on, so he supplemented his income playing chess in the clubs around Moscow. In an interview near the end of his life Kholmov stated he didn't care for the new, faster, FIDE time controls, but felt they benefited the older players because they didn't have to play for long hours which was very tiring. On the other hand, he believed rapid controls were bad because they spoiled the game. His best solution was to let players choose between what type of tournament they wanted to play in, rapid or long games. 
     During his career Kholmov won many international tournaments in Eastern Europe.  Kholmov made his international debut at Bucharest 1954 with a tied 3rd–4th place; Viktor Korchnoi won. Probably the best result of his career was when he tied for 1st–2nd with Smyslov at the Moscow International 1960. As a result he was awarded the GM title that same year.  He tied for the Soviet Championship in 1963, but lost the playoff between him, Boris Spassky and Leonid Stein.
     His biggest disappointment was the the Soviet Zonal tournament in Moscow in 1964, where he scored 6 -6 and finished in 4th place. Only the top three qualified for advancement to the Interzonal. His single appearance on the USSR team was when he played board ten at the European Team Championships in 1970 where he won the board gold medal with a score of +3 =3 −0. 
     In 2000 Kholmov tied for the World Senior Championship with Mark Taimanov, Janis Klovans and Alexander Chernikov.  Then he placed 2nd–4th in the same event in 2001, tying with Klovans and Vladimir Karasev. 
     Kholmov played competitive chess virtually right up until his death in early 2006 at age 80. He appeared in a Senior event in Dresden, 50 years after he won a tournament there.
     Kholmov came from a family that was politically suspect and because of that and other black marks on his record, for political reasons he was allowed to participate only in a few tournaments abroad, all of them in Socialist countries; he never got to play in a Western country until 1990 when he was 65 years old. 
     His father defected to the Communists during the Russian Civil War and joined the party in 1918 and then served in various government positions. In the late 1920s he was arrested and shipped off with other convicts to build the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Although many prisoners died horrible deaths, he managed to survive and made it home where he obtained another government job. But then in 1938 he was arrested again during the Great Purge, a political campaign from 1936 to 1938 which involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants and the Red Army leadership, and widespread police surveillance, suspicion of saboteurs, imprisonment, and executions. Nobody knows what happened to him...he was never heard from again. 
     Kholmov was a sailor in the merchant marines and spent World War Two in a Japanese prison camp after his ship was seized.
 

Nanny McPhee of Chess

     It's been a while since I have posted one of my games and I know readers are just dying to see a recent example. The main reasons for not presenting one is because I haven't been playing a lot online and when I do then go over them with Stockfish, the games remind me of Nanny McPhee. She was ugly with mottled skin, a large tooth sticking out of her mouth and a large potato-like nose with hairy warts. Just like Nanny McPhee, my games look disgusting. In the end Nanny became beautiful, but my chess seems destined not to duplicate her experience. This game is so full of warts that only a toad could love it, but it was a lot of fun. 

Your Actual Mistakes – Exeter Chess Club 

     I was going to post a couple of links to some excellent articles by Dan Heisman. When I visited his site here's what I saw...Members enjoy access to all archived content, including thousands of PDFs and hundreds of Ebooks - all free! To join: make a $25 (or more) tax deductible donation to ChessEdu.org and we will send your log in details for one-year access. (It may take up to 72 hours to receive your log in.). Interesting...“all free” but it costs you $25. Sounds like Mr. Heisman has been watching too many televangelists!
 

A Recent Example of the Classic B Sacrifice

     I don't often post recent games, but the following game which was played in the recently concluded St.Petersburg tournament caught my attention. The event, a 12-player round robin, was played from March 18th to March 23rd. 

Final standings: 
1) Evengy Alekseev 8.0 
2) Evengy Levin 7.0 
3-4) Ilya Duzhakov and Alexei Saveliev 6.5 
5) Ilya Azimov 5.5 
6-7) Sergei Lobanov and Kirill Alekseenko 5.0 
8-12) Vasily Usmanov, Dmitry Fraiman, Artur Dilmukhametov, Maksim Schekachikhin and Denis Pershin 4.5 

     First of all, the opening was an old favorite, the Winawer variation of the French Defense and secondly, there was a Bishop sacrifice on h7. You don't often see a sacrifice like that in modern games, especially in games between 2400s; modern players are just too alert to the possibility. 
     The old Bxh7+ trick is one of the oldest and most explored of all the sacrifices and it illustrates the weakness of h7 and f7. Max Euwe called it a “break up combination” because the King is deprived of its Pawn protection and he pointed out that these combinations will only be successful if the number of attacking pieces greatly exceeds the number of defending pieces. After the sacrifice the number of pieces left must be sufficient to either mate or gain some other decisive result. It is particularly important for the attacker to have at least one Rook on an open file which can quickly join the attack. In the case of a sacrifice on h7 the following conditions must be present: 

1) a Rook must be immediately available 
2) the enemy must be unable to defend his King 
3) the King cannot escape via f8 
4) the refusal of the sacrifice must have serious disadvantages 
5) the attacker must be able to get a Knight to g5 
6) the material situation at the end of the combination must be favorable. 
 

Free Download - Weird Opening Database

  Bonus post!  ChessbaseUSA has some free downloads available and one of my favorites is the database “Weird and Wonderful” which contains 3,368 games (note: they are in .cbv format) of offbeat openings that were played by players rated over 2000 Elo.

Botvinnik-Flohr Match 1933

Flohr vs Botvinnik, probably in 1935

The results:
Flohr         1 ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 0 0 ½ ½ 6.0 
Botvinnik 0 ½ ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ ½ 1 1 ½ ½ 6.0 

     Shortly after the Soviet Championship in 1933 Botvinnik was informed that a match between him and Salo Flohr had been proposed.  This was big news because at the time Flohr was near his peak and according to Chessmetrics was rated only behind Alekhine and Kashdan. 
     Botvinnik needed to get approval for the match and that was going to be iffy. At the time, Flohr was a citizen of Czechoslovakia and for Botvinnik to lose a match to a foreigner would be disastrous. All the strong Moscow players were of the opinion that Botvinnik would lose the match and suggested a tournament instead. 
     Nikolai Krylenko, on the other hand, claimed that Botvinnik and the new generation of players needed to be tested and that he had faith in Botvinnik. Krylenko was able to convince authorities to release Botvinnik from his work as an electrical engineer and he immediately set about preparing. The authorities gave Botvinnik the use of a rest home for scientists. 
     He managed to find about 110 of Flohr's games from which he concluded that Flohr had originally preferred tactics and attacking play, but by about 1932 he was leaning more towards positional play, exchanges and endings, relying mostly on technique. He also came to the conclusion that psychologically Flohr was not very stable. 
     This psychological observation was probably based on the fact that Flohr, who was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had his parents butchered during World War One. And, as a result, Flohr and his brother were orphans who ended up in Czechoslovakia in 1916. Flohr had trouble with school and problems finding a normal profession. At some point he ended up in Prague where the cafes filled with chess players allowed his talent for blitz to enable him to earn a living playing for stakes. 

House of Staunton's replica of set used in the match

     By the mid-1920s he began playing in tournaments with considerable success. At the outbreak of World War Two, fearing for his life at the hands of the Nazis, he and his family made their way to safety in Moscow where he remained for the rest of his life. 
     Botvinnik was satisfied with drawing the match and although it was not the result Krylenko had hoped for, it gave the Soviet players and authorities a lot of confidence with the result that they began meeting foreign competition more frequently. 
     The following game, the first game of the match, was won by Flohr who later stated that it was marred by nervousness on the part of both players and he won because or greater experience and tactical preparedness.
 

A Wild Tarjan Game

Tarjan in the old days

     In 1984 GM James Tarjan was still in his early 30s when he quit chess to became a librarian and the US lost an exceptional player. Tarjan was a fierce attacking player, but away from the board he was a genuinely nice guy. 
     I remember one incident at the international tournament in Cleveland, Ohio (in 1975) where Tarjan was playing when a bunch us were looking at one of the games in progress.  One of the local masters was demonstrating how, after a certain move, black was winning. Tarjan strolled by on the way to the coffee machine and after a casual glance at the position quickly pointed out the refutation of the master's move. It demonstrated how good a Grandmaster's sight of the board is! It also said something about Tarjan.

Tarjan recently

     In another incident at one of the US Championships a few of us were looking over one of the games when IM John Grefe walked by and stood there looking at the position. Somebody asked him what his opinion was. Grefe's reply was, “Show me some money!” I don't remember what the questioner's reply was, but Grefe turned and walked away. 
     At his peak Tarjan's rating was over 2600, but after he retired a few years ago and returned to tournament play it has dropped to its current level of 2479.  His last event was in a California tournament where tied for 6th and 7th , scoring +3 -0 =3, which included two half point byes. 
     Tarjan's opponent in this game was Peter Cleghorn (born 1938), many time champion of Alaska. Cleghorn has been inactive for the last couple of decades and his last USCF rating was 2405.

Blame it on President Trump

     Back in September, 2016 at the start of the Baku Olympiad complaints started when officials tried forcing players who needed to drain the lizard or release a sewer snake to make a written request first. Team captains protested and a petition was circulated to end the practice. Arbiters then tried to justify the demand, presumably to stop cheating. This is just one of many controversies involving FIDE and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, former head of the Russian republic of Kalmykia and head of FIDE for the last 22 years.
     A couple of days ago Ilyumzhinov, resigned...or not. Some say he did, he says he didn't because he didn't sign anything to make it official, emphatically adding that he was NOT resigning. 
     The funny thing is, Ilyumzhinov says he is the victim of a US-led plot to topple him, claiming, "I think there is an American hand in this, and I think it's called a set-up." 
     18 months ago Ilyumzhinov was placed on a US sanctions list for alleged dealings with the Syrian regime and as a result, he was unable to attend last year's world championship match in New York due to the threat of arrest. That was under President Obama, but now that Donald Trump is President and the latest incident happened on his watch, Mr. Trump has to take the blame. 
     Just because someone holds a position of leadership, it doesn’t necessarily mean they should. The problem many organizations suffer from is a recognition problem – they can’t seem to recognize good leaders from bad ones and that seems to apply to FIDE. 

1-Leaders who lack vision cannot inspire or motivate and cannot accomplish anything.
2-When leader lacks character or integrity, they will not be able to lead effectively 
3-Lack of performance is a sure sign of a poor leader 
4-Good leaders are aware of how much they don't know and are willing to entertain the help and support of their subordinates. 
5-Good leaders communicate effectively and are good listeners. 
6-If a leader doesn’t understand the concept of service above self, they are good leaders.
7-Empathy, humility and kindness are signs of good leadership. 
8-The best organizations have leaders who look to he future and are focused on positive change and innovation to keep their organizations fresh, dynamic and growing. 
9-Leaders who don't pay attention to needs of the consumer are destined for failure. 
10- Leaders not fully committed to investing in those they lead will fail. The best leaders support their team, mentor and coach and they truly care for their team. 
11- Good leaders are accountable. They don’t blame others and don’t claim all the credit for the success of their team, but always accept responsibility for failures that occur on their watch. 
12- Good leaders don't demonstrate arrogance or bravado, but real courage to deviate from the status quo and seek new opportunities. A good leader provides a team or organization with vision, values and guidelines; he does not create chaos. And chaos seems to surround Mr. Ilyumzhinov. 
     His statement that there's an American hand in this and he's being set-up is playing the blame game. You play this game when something goes wrong and you identify someone else as being responsible and you refuse to accept any of the responsibility. The thing is, when people play the blame game, they often engage in irrational thinking. When leaders do it, chaos in the organization results. It'll be fun to see where this leads.

   One thing is clear… Ilyumzhinov is no Max Euwe, one of the truly nice guys in chess. In January of 1955, the Cleveland Chess Association sponsored a Chess Week at the Parma (Ohio) Chess Club and the main attraction was Dr. Euwe. He gave a lecture and invited questions and gave special attention to the juniors. After the lecture he went over some games on a demonstration board and told some anecdotes. He was a very imposing man, but was kind enough to give his autograph and jot down the comment, “I wish you good luck with chess interest.” to a shy ten year old kid. I still have it today. 
     During his tenure as FIDE president from 1970 until 1978, Euwe always tried to do what he considered morally right rather than what was politically expedient. As a result, he was occasionally at loggerheads with the USSR Chess Federation because they contributed a large share of FIDE's budget and Soviet players dominated the world rankings.
     When it came to the Fischer-Spassky match, Euwe thought Fischer should have the opportunity to challenge for the title and interpreted the rules very flexibly to enable Fischer to play in the 1970 Interzonal Tournament. Euwe believed it was for the good of chess. 
     When Gennadi Sosonko defected in 1972, the Soviets demanded he should be treated as an non-person, excluded from competitive chess, television or any other event that might be evidence of his defection. Euwe refused even though it meant no Soviet players took part in the 1974 Wijk aan Zee tournament, a major events in those days. 
     When Viktor Korchnoi sought political asylum in The Netherlands in 1976, Euwe opposed Soviet efforts to prevent Korchnoi from challenging for Anatoly Karpov's title in 1978. Korchnoi regarded Euwe as the last honorable president of FIDE. 
     Also in 1976, Euwe supported FIDE's decision to hold the 1976 Chess Olympiad in Israel, which the Soviet Union did not recognize. As a result the Central Committee of Communist Party of the Soviet Union then started plotting to depose Euwe as president of FIDE. 
     When it came to the FIDE presidency and all the problems that accompanied it, Boris Spassky said Euwe was the man for the job. Anatoly Karpov said Euwe was a very good FIDE President. The venerable Yuri Averbakh believed Euwe always sought to understand the opposing point of view and called him without a doubt, the best President FIDE ever had.  Who is the worst?

My Macabre Fascination With Alekhine's Defense

     Countless studies have shown that bad things have far more impact than good things on the human psyche. Bad things are a powerful draw for the curious or thrill-seekers and the macabre is often regarded as a source of significant fear and anxiety. Events and objects belonging to the macabre contain elements of violence, mutilation, mutation, monstrosity, murder and mayhem and are seen as undesirable, horrific, and disturbing occurrences that one should avoid whenever possible, but yet we are often drawn to them. 
     At the most basic level, there’s the excitation-transfer theory. Seeing or experiencing something so visceral and so brutal is a powerful stimulation, not necessarily a good stimulation, but it puts the person in a brief state of excitation, during which other stimulations can be more vivid or intense. We know it’s wrong, unpleasant and grim, but this is what provides the stimulation, so we do it anyway, and get the vicarious thrill. There’s also plain old curiosity. People often feel compelled to know the details purely for their own sake. 
     That's the way I feel about Alekhine's Defense. When I see it, I want to turn away, but am drawn to it and generally can't resist playing over the game. I've even played it a few times with about even results and the few times I've faced it, I have always played 2.Bc4. To date nobody has ever taken the e-Pawn and allowed me to sac on f7 then regain the N with 4.Qh5+ (1. e4 Nf6 2. Bc4 Nxe4 3. Bxf7+ Kxf7 4. Qh5+) even though white has zero advantage. I've done a lot of analysis with this line using engines, but white never gets a hint of an advantage!  In fact, in many cases black wriggles his K out of danger and then gets a strong counterattack. 
     Alekhine's Defense got a boost in the 1970s when Fischer used it in his match against Spassky, scoring a win and a draw. GM Lev Alburt has long been an advocate of the defense and has found many interesting approaches for black, even including the weird 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Ng8. This odd move has been played by Petrosian as well as US Grandmaster Joel Benjamin who named it the “Brooklyn Retreat.” Alburt doesn't recommend it as part of a “healthy” repertoire, but says it's OK to play it against weaker opponents. I'm not sure what that means. Opponents that are weaker than me or opponents that are weaker in general, meaning non-masters. 
     The goal of the Alekhine is to destroy white's center without getting destroyed and the process is not a simple one. One thing, because of the high degree of central tension, is that thematic P-breaks can lead to disaster if played at the wrong time, and sometimes moves that look downright ugly can be very effective. All of this means that even positions that are considered inferior can be played with some degree of confidence if the opponent is unfamiliar with with the strategies of the defense. Actually, I guess the same could be said of any opening, but it's especially true with the Alekhine, probably because it's not a popular defense and most opponents won't be even remotely familiar with the patterns arising from it. 

      In the following game Eric Schiller played the retreat 2...Ng8 and the result was a wild game that white should have won thanks to his forceful play. Unfortunately, time pressure for both sides resulted in Schiller getting the point.