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Topic: Elista World Chess Championship. (Read 702 times) |
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Blunderov
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Elista World Chess Championship.
« on: 2006-10-10 04:54:07 » |
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I haven’t posted anything about the current chess world championship unification match taking place in Elista until now. My reasoning has been that anyone who pays attention to these matters probably is already doing just that, and that those who are perhaps mildly interested would be more likely to appreciate a wrap-up than a blow-by-blow account.
Things have gotten more than usually interesting though!
Kramnik started in grand style picking up 2 points without ever once having had the initiative. Topalov got some great positions but unaccountably for a man of his abilities, could not find the winning moves when it mattered.
And then Bladdergate. Topalovs manager produced a trumped up complaint to a flagrantly biased-towards-Topalov committee on the subject of Kramnik’s frequent bathroom visits. It was very strongly implied that Big Vlad was using computer assistance out of view of the CCTV. This was very cheap. Kramnik has been suffering for some time with significant health problems and has only just recovered. To suggest that someone of Kramnik’s integrity and artistry would cheat by using computer is a very grave provocation. Kramnik has handled the matter with great dignity IMV. Sadly though he forfeited a game because the committee locked his restroom unilaterally and illegally; in retrospect he should have played the game under protest. He then resumed the match, drawing and then losing to tie the scores. The match is currently tied with two games remaining in the match.
The match so far seems to have been characterized by a great many blunders which has drawn considerable criticism from both fans and professionals. IMV this is not entirely justified. The chess has been very complex. Topalov specializes in positions with mixed material and he looks at all times to generate this kind of position. He is known for his ability to engineer situations in which the sacrifice of a rook for a piece is favorable. Already this ups the ante for any of his opponents; it increases the burden of calculation and it expands the psychological dimension of the game no little.
The big picture here is just how very much computers have changed chess. Unassisted correspondence/e-mail chess is now a thing of the past, a quaint and sepia-tinted relic of a long ago golden age of personal integrity and sportsmanship. Increasing incidents of digitally assisted cheating are reported from around the world, some of them quite amusing. In one incident an unknown (who had been continuously wearing headphones during play) was handily beating everyone in sight including seasoned grandmasters. However when invited to solve a mate in one in a test position he ran off never to be met with again.
The other big picture, to my mind, is how these shenanigans confirm so powerfully the proposition that we live in a world where the only morality that of victory and defeat. Honor is dead. Perhaps I am sentimental, but I really hate that.
Best regards.
http://www.chessninja.com/dailydirt/2006/10/interviews_a_gogo_1.htm
October 9, 2006
WCh Interviews a Go-Go
The game 10 press conferences are up here. More from Kramnik, of course. He was as surprised by 24..f6?? as anyone. They talk about Topalov's fast play being a strategy to keep Kramnik out of the rest area and to disturb his habits, but Topalov was playing quickly in the first games, too.
On Saturday, Topalov had a more opinionated interview in the Bulgarian press, reproduced at ChessBase here. His "my manager Silvio Danailov did an extraordinary job" will go down in history in the same category as Bush's "you're doing a heckuva job, Brownie" after Hurricane Katrina. But as I said a few days ago, it's true to a point, or, the point. Topalov got a free point with black as a result of these provocations and there are precious few downsides to having your reputation scarred in the chess world as long as your rating is high. It's not as if kids aren't going to buy the new Air Check Topalov shoe from Nike because of these dirty tricks.
But Topalov should realize that he can't complain about unfavorable coverage. ChessBase has simply reflected the twenty to one (minimum) ratio of commentary against his actions. You can see the same in the comments here. It's not ChessBase's job to artificially balance its coverage if a bunch of fans and GMs write in to praise Kramnik and/or criticize Topalov. You don't want to end up with damaging pseudo-objectivity of the sort we see in the media on topics like climate change. A few thousand scientists on one side, a handful of corporate stooges on the other and it's a "debate" with equal time to both sides. Ridiculous. ChessBase could have done more to get "the other side" from FIDE and such, but it's not as if they wouldn't have printed it had it been sent in.
elitsa posts a link below to a typically obscure item from topalov.net (apparently not directly endorsed by Topalov but they seem to have good sources from his camp) saying Kramnik "refused" to take a doping test after game nine. This is pretty much meaningless out of context. Is this a scheduled test, random? Are they mandatory? Is he going to take it later? More Danailov slander? Who cares?
Note that the schedule was changed slightly after the scandal. They play on the 10th and the 12th with tiebreaks on the 13th (no rest day prior).
[Bl.]IMO Garry Kasparov is still the strongest player in the world. It remains to be seen whether this loss to chess is to be the gain of politics
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3410
Elista 2006: Kramnik wins game ten, score now 5:5
08.10.2006 Garry Kasparov, watching the game on Playchess and analysing 24...Bxb5!?, took all of fifty milliseconds to react to Topalov's 24...f6?? "But doesn't that lose? Of course it loses!" Right he was, the game, which had brought Kramnik advantages out of the opening, was now a clear win. With two games to go the score is now 5:5.
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Blunderov
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Re:Elista World Chess Championship.
« Reply #1 on: 2006-10-10 07:26:17 » |
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[Blunderov] I would greatly appreciate it if there is Virian with a knowledge of statistics who has the time to critique the appended implied allegation that Kramnik must be cheating because so many of his moves correspond to the moves that would have been selected by a particular chess engine.
From what I can judge, the allegation is nothing more than a slander. Using this logic ISTM the fact that not 100% of the moves can be correlated with the program is just as much proof that Kramnik is not cheating.
If just one of the moves corresponded to a Fritz move, why would this not be similar evidence of cheating? It is perfectly possible to cheat just once with total efficacy. All one needs is just one very strong move in one very critical position. Chessplayers know when a position is juicy even if they can't always see the one natural born killer move in the maze of variations on offer. Futhermore the certain knowledge that a very complicated move is definitely correct is worth far more than gold at the board.
Why should it be at all suspicious that some, even most, moves should correlate with the moves of a chess engine at the very top level? We have all been influenced by Fritz and his friends. We have all learned to be very much sharper players than we were 20 years ago, perforce. How much more true must this be for a SuperGM who has played high profile matches against this very engine?
ISTM that this statistical argument is also dishonest in that it does not declare those instances in which the Fritz move is the only reasonable move available, one that even a patzer would play. This happens quite a lot; many moves are quite automatic re-captures or are otherwise forced.
Furthermore, no comparison is presented between Kramniks statistic's and, say, Topolov's own statistics. I would be willing to bet that Garry Kasparov's statistics would be the same as Kramniks or even higher. Would this mean that he must have cheated even more? Or that he is/was an even stronger player than either Kramnik or Topolov?
In short, it seems to me that Topalov's manager is a lying sack of shit.
http://www.chessbase.com/eventarticle.asp?newsid=3401
Silvio Danailov accuses Kramnik of using Fritz 9
04.10.2006 "After very detailed analysis of all games of the match," the manager of Veselin Topalov writes this morning (15 minutes before the start of game seven), "we would like to present to your attention coincidence statistics of the moves of GM Kramnik with recommendations of chess program Fritz 9." What's going on?
Coincidence Statistics of the moves of GM Kramnik
with recommendations of the chess program Fritz 9
Elista, October 4, 2006
After very detailed analyze of all games of the match we would like to present to your attention coincidence statistics of the moves of GM Kramnik with recommendations of chess program Fritz 9.
First game:
From 75 moves: After the 12th move of Topalov Ba6, a novelty, from 65 remaining moves – 41 moves match with the first line of Fritz 9. (63% of matches)
Second game:
From 63 moves: After 17th move, where the theory ends, from remaining 46 moves – 40 moves match with the first line of Fritz 9. (87% of matches)
Third game
From 38 moves: after 10th move, when the theory ends, from 46 remaining moves* – 40 match with the first line of Fritz 9. (86% of matches)
Forth game:
From 54 moves: After 14th move, when the theory ends, from 40 remaining moves – 30 match with the first line of Fritz 9. (75% of matches)
Sixth game:
From 31 moves: After 13th move, when the theory ends, from 18 remaining moves – 14 match with the first line of Fritz9. (78% of matches)
Thus, out of 5 games – 78%** of GM Kramnik’s moves match with the first line of Fritz9.
Sincerely
Silvio Danailov
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Hermit
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Re:Elista World Chess Championship.
« Reply #2 on: 2006-10-10 11:18:32 » |
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[Blunderov] I would greatly appreciate it if there is Virian with a knowledge of statistics who has the time to critique the appended implied allegation that Kramnik must be cheating because so many of his moves correspond to the moves that would have been selected by a particular chess engine.
[Hermit] Steps up to the crease (Americans, think plate)
Even if this statement is sustained after neutral investigation, I don't see 78% as conclusive of anything. In my opinion this conclusion takes a greater knowledge of chess than of statistics, I have both (though no time to play these many days), but statistically speaking, this result would not amaze me in the slightest unless the game, unlike chess, offered equal chances of any player making any move.
The reason that they don't is that at least at the master level and up, chess is, by and large, an extremely defensive game. It has to be, as any plausible opponent will undoubtedly extract every possible advantage of any small mistake, and the evenness of world class players practically guarantees that this will result in a lost - or at best drawn - game. Strangely to say, in my experience it is almost always possible to detect a stupid move just as you remove your hand from the piece and lose the possibility of trying to minimize the impact. It is also true that when an opponent moves his hand away, that one can inevitably tell, pretty much at a glance, whether his move is a good, neutral or bad move on his part, even when it takes much longer to figure out why. I have a rule for myself when playing a master or better and see a bad or neutral move, that that is a very good moment to take a break or go for a walk, because I am probably being set up for something. Stupid and wasted moves simply should not happen at this level of chess. This "rule" of mine suggests that even when not really consciously aware of the strategy being developed by an opponent, that there is some kind of gestalt which allows you to measure how well he is doing.
In addition to the above, which shows that there are many situations when any really good chess player will make the same move, it may well take 10 to 15 moves to develop an attack in a non-obvious fashion, and at some time in that development, there will likely be move sequences which will almost invariably have precedent**. One principle difference between the really good player and the grandmaster is that the grandmaster is quite likely to not only notice this, but can probably tell you who the players were and when they played it. At which point I go all English and suggest that practising beforehand takes the fun out of it***.
My thinking has generally been, and remains inclined towards the opinion that except for some very fancy "tweaked-in-play" systems, a grandmaster can still at worst hold his own, but generally beat, computer play. I'm sure that Kramnik feels the same way about it. As such, even if it were psychologically possible, which, being a chess player and knowing many good chess-players, seems doubtful; playing a move because a computer told him to do so would be seen by him (and me) as a good way to lose (as well as demeaning). So, my preliminary hypothesis, trivial to test (infra), is that Fritz 9 (which I don't know) is a very good chess player: recognizing mistakes and more importantly perhaps, avoiding them; as well as evaluating games for "recognizable sub-positions" and playing the winning role out of them. Both of these parallel exactly any competent chess player, and Kramnik is much more than competent.
I would only be inclined to doubt my first hypothesis if previous games played by Kramnik, particularly previous games with Topalov, which did not show a similar magnitude of correlation with the same version of Fritz 9 (assuming that the asserted correlation is sustained by investigation).
Kind Regards
Hermit
*And more so today than in years bygone, as computers have taught us that silly moves will invariably be taken advantage of.
**And again more so today than in years bygone, as better record keeping and the Internet has made many more great games available for discussion, education, comment and recognition than ever before.
***Flanders and Swann again.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:Elista World Chess Championship.
« Reply #3 on: 2006-10-13 12:53:13 » |
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[Blunderov] Vladimir Kramnik wins the world chess championship and becomes the unified champion. Kramnik, with the white pieces, won the 4th game of the tiebreak to win the match and title.
Many will feel that justice has been done. The public has reacted badly to Dainolov's unscrupulous psywar against Kramnik. ISTM that caissic justice has been done too; Kramnik's solidity has stood him in good stead.
Ice has trumped fire for the moment.
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