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Mar-05-14
 | | davide2013: I tried on chesstempo, with this sequence of moves: 1.b3,d5; 2.Bb2,Nf6; 3.e3,e6; 4.Nf3,Be7; 5.c4,c6; and 8 games come out (like in chessgames.com database, with the difference that they are really 8), the first one is Tot Bora vs Asztalos, Lajos of 1938.
two things are strange:
1. Chesstempo games database didn't know it shouldn't find something which didn't happen.
2. The mistake on white's player name is the same, so who knows who copied it from whom. Since the white player correct name is: Toth Bela, not Tot Bora. |
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Mar-05-14
 | | SwitchingQuylthulg: <davide2013: As example also in the French exchange there are a lot of transpositions, in the lines with 4.c4 which are also coming from the queen's gambit, and that is a problem for a database, if it doesn't give you what you are searching for.> In such lines you'll find the Opening Explorer will in fact quite happily give you what you are searching for. The same goes for other common (and uncommon) transpositions... it even suggests 2.e4 as the apparent most common reply to the From Gambit (1.f4 e5) - Opening Explorer - simply because that transposes into the King's Gambit. If in the position at Opening Explorer you want the Explorer to suggest 5...c6 as a possible move - even though it's never been played in that position in this database - and call it a "problem" needing to be "fixed" that it does not... well, it <could> be "fixed", but only at an enormous increase in either the space required by the Opening Explorer or the computational time and power required by the Opening Explorer or both, and doing so would create as much confusion as it would clear up. Finally, always keep in mind that if you want to find all games that reach a given position, you can simply search for that position - by FEN string - and the Explorer will give you just that, just as a database program would. |
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Mar-05-14
| | SwitchingQuylthulg: <davide2013: I tried on chesstempo, with this sequence of moves: 1.b3,d5; 2.Bb2,Nf6; 3.e3,e6; 4.Nf3,Be7; 5.c4,c6; and 8 games come out (like in chessgames.com database, with the difference that they are really 8), the first one is Tot Bora vs Asztalos, Lajos of 1938. two things are strange: 1. Chesstempo games database didn't know it shouldn't find something which didn't happen.> In their database (which is larger) the move 5...c6 did happen, providing the critical link between those two positions. (The specific game is http://chesstempo.com/gamedb/game/2....) If that game were added to the Chessgames database then the Chessgames Opening Explorer would also provide 5...c6 as an option - by the same token, if you limit your ChessTempo search to 2300+ vs. 2300+ then 5...c6 will not be offered as an option even though five of those eight games you mentioned were between two 2300+ players. The two Opening Explorers behave identically. |
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Mar-05-14
 | | chessgames.com: I follow what both Switching and davide are saying. A few points: • As Switching rightly points out, the Opening Explorer doesn't make a link between positions unless there is actually a game where that transposition took place. There are arguments both for and against this methodology, but over the years we've come to consider that this is the best way to do it. • Transpositions are trickier than most chess players realize. When work on the Opening Explorer started many years ago I felt that I firmly understood the concept of transpositions as well as any grandmaster; after all it's just a mathematical structure and not a specific chess talent. However, since those carefree days, I've been greatly humbled and now see how very slippery some of the nuances can be. • We have an Opening Explorer FEN Lookup that sometimes can reveal transpositions that might be missed using a move-by-move approach. • Switching's discovery of that odd node 4663975 is a surprising anomaly. It may be difficult to discover how that crept into the database, but I remember processing a game that started 1.e5 or something like that, so perhaps a broken game left a nonsensical stranded node in the tables. I'll look into it a little deeper and see if it's tied to a specific game. |
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Mar-05-14
| | SwitchingQuylthulg: <davide2013: 2. The mistake on white's player name is the same, so who knows who copied it from whom. Since the white player correct name is: Toth Bela, not Tot Bora> It would be interesting to know what you base this claim on. Quite a few games in this database from the 1930s and 1940s were once attributed to Bela Toth, but they were all reattributed to Bora Tot on the grounds that Tot was active in the right area at the right time (and is credited by independent sources such as Chessmetrics as having played in the actual tournaments involved) whereas IM Tóth was born in 1943. Béla Tóth is a common enough name there could be another player by that name, but... |
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Mar-05-14
| | chessgames.com: About the anomalous node 4663975 it seems to have something to do with weird openings such as
Stockfish vs Houdini, 2013. (There are at least 4 or 5 similar games in the database, where the players dance their knights back and forth before actually playing the game properly.) This doesn't fully explain what's going on but it's a hint in the right direction. Question: it is a fact that you cannot play a legal game of chess wherein the starting position appears with Black to move, is that correct? No amount of clever knight dancing can create that position? |
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Mar-05-14
| | SwitchingQuylthulg: <chessgames.com: Question: it is a fact that you cannot play a legal game of chess wherein the starting position appears with Black to move, is that correct? No amount of clever knight dancing can create that position?> Right.
The background story of Stockfish vs Houdini, 2013 is that the organizer decided to play one pair of games with no opening book at all, making the computers think from move one, but all other games were played from pre-decided 16-ply opening variations and that was what the computer interface had been set to expect. So the no-book games started with 16 plies of useless knight hopping :) |
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Mar-05-14
 | | notyetagm: <CG.COM>
Can we please have forums for the ongoing <2014 CAPPELLE-LA-GRANDE OPEN> and the <2014 REYKJAVIK OPEN>? Thanks
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TWIC REYKJAVIK PGN -> http://www.theweekinchess.com/asset... TWIC CAPPELLE-LA-GRANDE PGN -> http://theweekinchess.com/assets/fi... |
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Mar-05-14
| | notyetagm: <CG.COM>
Also, the <2014 NOTEBOOM OPEN>. Thanks
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TWIC NOTEBOOM PGN -> http://www.theweekinchess.com/asset... |
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Mar-06-14
 | | Check It Out: <CG.com> I'm sure this has been brought up before, but the quality of the Game Of The Day could be vastly improved by uncoupling it from the puns. In addition to improving the quality of the games, it would allow you to be more flexible and topical in your choices, for example celebrating top players' birthdays, featuring an exciting game from an ongoing tournament or recently finished tournament, etc etc Puns restrict the choices and since puns aren't technically chess related and are relatively unimportant that seems a strong argument for for making the change. Also, the GOTD is the top link on your homepage and you want to make a good first impression for new browsers. That doesn't mean puns need to go away. You could do both. |
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| Mar-06-14 | | Everyone: <chessgames.com> May I ask you to look at and take action towards the trolling / spamming /stalking of User: Moszkowski012273 against one of the most respected chessgames.com members. TY |
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Mar-06-14
 | | Eggman: <Chessgames> Did you overlook my post here: chessgames.com chessforum? I didn't get a response. |
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| Mar-06-14 | | RedShield: <most respected chessgames.com members.> Behave! Dumb Americans trolling one another accounts for about 90% of the site content. Do you want to put cg.com out of business? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertain... This should improve site content, however. |
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Mar-06-14
| | chessgames.com: <Eggman> Sorry for the nonresponse but yes, we read your suggestion and pretty much agree. We're working on the Candidates newsletter right now and will probably make some small changes before the event starts, like a logo and links to relevant sites. <Check It Out> Puns aren't technically chess related? Puns are relatively unimportant? You are trodding on years of tradition there! |
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Mar-06-14
| | Check It Out: <chassgames.com> You wouldn't need to stop the pun tradition. You could still have a pun of the day. But just think of all the great games that could be GOTD once you no longer had to worry about a pun being formulated for it. It would be much easier for you guys to choose the daily games and their quality would be higher. In terms of tradition the quality of the GOTD must rank higher. This is not to say there aren't many good GOTD, but we all know that clunkers are used frequently simply for the pun. Uncouple them and have the best of both worlds! |
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| Mar-08-14 | | Blunderdome: To be honest, if not for puns, I doubt I ever would have gotten into chess in the first place. |
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Mar-08-14
 | | Shams: <cg> I'd like to second this request: <Can we please have forums for the ongoing <2014 CAPPELLE-LA-GRANDE OPEN> and the <2014 REYKJAVIK OPEN>?> |
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Mar-08-14
| | Shams: Thanks that was very prompt. :) |
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Mar-09-14
| | davide2013: Do you think it is possible to add this game to Guess the Move? Reti vs Tartakower, 1910
Because I knew this as a position from different sources (Chessimo, tactics trainer, and so on) but didn't know it belong to an actual game! And it is amazing to know it happened between players of this caliber. |
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Mar-10-14
| | chessgames.com: <davide> We try to avoid games that are ended by a single combination in the opening, but in that case it's an incredibly famous game with a beautiful shot that probably deserves to be an exception to the rule. |
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Mar-10-14
 | | Domdaniel: <Check It Out> has a good point, I think. The GOTD puns are generally fine, and I like the tradition ... but many games tend to be selected because of some quirk in the players' names. One possible solution is to invent a new tradition: *two* daily games, one with a pun, one without. The punning game would have no particular quality requirement, though (as now) it would be good to have an interesting struggle. In contrast, the non-pun game would be chosen for reasons of quality -- perhaps existing collections could be mined for top-quality games. Would this work? I'm not sure. One potential problem is that people might ignore the punning game (tradition or no tradition!) and migrate to the 'quality' game. Hmmm. Drawing board, back to. |
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Mar-10-14
| | Domdaniel: As I say, "many games tend to be selected because of some quirk in the players' names". Of course, that does not prevent some of these finds from being diamond-like in their crystal beauty:P Gems vs R Quirk, 2011. Nor should we forget <Domdaniel's Law>: Almost all French games are interesting (to someone). |
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Mar-10-14
| | SwitchingQuylthulg: I don't see a need to reinvent Game of the Day but putting a bit more emphasis on the quality of the game might not hurt. <tpstar> manages to come up with puns for the top 10 games every year; of course, not all of them are brilliant, but I'd rather see average puns for good games than average puns for dull, uninteresting games. (The ideal, of course, would be good puns for good games, but <offramp>'s First Law makes that very difficult... <offramp: Clever puns will not get votes in the Pun Voting Booth>.) Incidentally, it would seem the unintended feature of a full stop between a link and a closing pointy migrating outside the pointy but still remaining coloured has not been removed. |
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Mar-10-14
| | chessgames.com: The "Game of the Day" feature has always been a big challenge. It is possible to make a great pun for a great game (in my opinion we've seen a few in just the last week) — but you can't expect that to happen every day. The tradition must be 10 years old by now, so ignoring repeats that's 3650 game/puns! Some of them have been shamefully bad, and not the "bad is good" way, but genuinely bad. But I think that's what makes it fun: it can be brilliant, mediocre, or downright horrible. And remember: There's no rule that says that the only game to be discussed today is the GOTD. We don't have to declare a game like Rotlewi vs Rubinstein, 1907 to be GOTD for it to deserve attention. Classics like that are games for every day. True chess aficionados carry these games in their hearts wherever they go, 365 days a year. In short, I am very sympathetic to these criticisms, but at the same time I think the tradition deserves preservation—warts and all. |
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Mar-11-14
 | | Stonehenge: What about a 'Bad Pun Week', where the games should be of high quality and the puns awfully bad :) |
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