Nov-22-12
 | | jnpope: I figure today would be a good day to launch my CG forum. I just uploaded a bunch of new columns at the CA site. Have fun reading/researching this weekend! |
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Nov-22-12
 | | OhioChessFan: Hey jnpope. Glad you got your forum open. What do you mean by the CA site? How about a link? |
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Nov-22-12
| | jnpope: You can always find the latest upload list here:
http://www.chessarch.com/journal/jo... |
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Nov-22-12
 | | TheFocus: <jnpope> It's about time you did this. Your forum is a welcome thing. And your insights into chess history are also welcome. |
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Nov-22-12
 | | brankat: It's good to have this forum open. No doubt chess History topics will be interesting. |
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Nov-22-12
 | | Benzol: Hello <jnpope>. Just thought I'd pop in and say hi. :) |
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Nov-24-12
 | | parisattack: Very happy to see this forum! |
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Nov-28-12
 | | Mrs. Alekhine: Wonderful, welcome to forum land!
For all, this is a must read- still the only decent biography of <Pillsbury> in existence: http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Nelson-... |
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Dec-27-12
| | jnpope: As Max Judd is the player of the day, I thought I toss a few thoughts into the public arena... At best I think Judd could be considered a disputed US Champion (much like Lasker and Hodges). Showalter caused a lot of confusion with his championship claim despite whatever prior match he had just lost. As near as I can deduce through my research the US Championship timeline is best summarized in this table: http://www.chessarch.com/archive/US...
The "lineal" column is my best bet on determining who the "official" title-holder would be based on the lineal "man who beat the man" conditions used in sorting out a similar title-holder problem found in boxing. |
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Dec-27-12
 | | Phony Benoni: The lineal idea seems to simplify matters. That would give MacKenzie 25 years as champion. Not quite up to Marshall's 27, but it seems an accurate assessment as he was probably the strongest. But a MacKenzie-Mason match would have been interesting. If I wanted to be silly, I could claim that the title reverted back to Stanley when MacKenzie died. Of course, Lipschutz would probably dispute that. But it is interesting that the 1936 US Championship tournament was not held until after both Showalter and Lewis T. Haller died. Just clearing up any possible loose ends, I guees. |
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Dec-27-12
| | jnpope: If one wanted to maintain "lineal" continuity they could claim that when Morphy retired the title reverted back to Stanley, who then lost it in Jan. 1866 when Mackenzie defeated him in a six game match. |
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Dec-27-12
| | jnpope: Side note: I'm still looking for game 3 from Mackenzie-Stanley, NY 1866. |
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Dec-28-12
| | jnpope: <But a MacKenzie-Mason match would have been interesting.> As one of my little side projects I've written a program that allows me to run complex Markov simulations. At the moment I have models of Morphy 1857 (derived from 1st American Chess Congress); Morphy 1858, Anderssen 1858 (both derived from Anderssen-Morphy 1858); Anderssen 1866, Steinitz 1866 (both derived from Anderseen-Morphy 1866); Steinitz 1883 (London 1883). At present I am adding models of McDonnell 1834, Bourdonnais 1834 (both derived from their 5th match 1834); Staunton and St. Amant (1843 Paris match) and Pillsbury 1895 (Hastings). I could probably come up with Mackenzie and Mason using the 3rd-5th American Chess Congresses... |
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Dec-28-12
| | Phony Benoni: I already have a bit of a headache this morning, so I won't ask you to explain complex Markov simulations. (I already looked in Wikipedia. That's why I have the headache.) But I am curious what information can be derived from the process. What will these simulations tell us, and how can they be used? |
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Dec-28-12
| | jnpope: Basically I break-down the strength of a player's moves as responses to the strength of his opponents moves*. With that I build a response matrix and then convert those matrices into individual Markov "engines". Once that is done I can basically pit two "players" against each other and programmatically run those engines against each other a great number of times to eventually come up with a win/draw/loss probability set. All I know for certain is that the program tells me the probability that the matrix for "player A" will win/loss/draw against the matrix for "player B" under the conditions stipulated by the arena program. What I hope it shows me is along the lines of going back in time and grabbing Morphy at the end of NY '57 and say Steinitz after his match with Anderssen in 1866 and have them play each other. What it doesn't tell you is each player's capacity to learn from their previous encounter/mistakes. So it is not like having Morphy and Steinitz actually play each other x-number of games as in a match (i.e. games in series), but more like having them play each other x-number of times in parallel, i.e. their knowledge is static and does not improve. I have not come up with any other useful metric for comparing the abilities of two players, so this is the best method I have come up with for having two historical figures "battle" each other. * Not an easy task. This break-down takes a lot of computational time using commercial chess playing software... sometimes it takes weeks to break-down a single game. |
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Dec-30-12
| | jnpope: Morphy vs Maurian, 1869 It is worth pointing out that 23...dxe4 would allow White to mate in three, which is why Morphy could get away with capturing the knight. |
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Dec-31-12
| | TheFocus: Happy New Year <jnpope>!! |
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| Feb-02-13 | | optimal play: Hi jnpope. I've been looking at the "Chess Archaeology" website recently, and in particular the page for the 1881 Blackburne-Zukertort, London Match which I note you were the researcher for. You've done some great work there, and I've been using it to obtain Steinitz's commentary on this match which was printed in "The Field". However I note that it ends after the 13th game.
Do you know if his commentary for the 14th and final game is extant or was it simply not written for some reason? Anyway your contribution to the understanding of this match is certainly appreciated and acknowledged, especially since that match is now complete on CG.com |
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Feb-06-13
| | jnpope: Interesting. It appears that when I converted the format over from individual games per page to a single page format I left off at game 13 and I also omitted the epilogue... I must have gotten distracted by a shiny object at some point and never returned to that project. I'll work on getting that rectified this week. |
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| Feb-07-13 | | optimal play: It's there now!
Great work, Nick. Thanks for making it complete. |
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