It's just an idea - but maybe the move/line forums would work better if we didn't regard them as the private property of their hosts. The counter-argument is that some hosts prefer it like that.

It's partly a psychological barrier - the feeling that you're treading on somebody else's private space. But if the host in question is happy to have an assistant - who can do anything but delete stuff - there shouldn't be a problem.

And there must be some people among the non-prems - or the differently avatared - who'd be willing to try. Ironically, I was going to ask <boomie> - only to find he's now got his own forum going.

Sorry to add to your burden, but please take my web link out of the announcements. I am suspending the site indefinitely.
No pressure on tonight's vote it seems. Finally a consensus. And I am glad my method of stringing moves in the forum top line is becoming accepted. It seems by the end of this game we may have a good system in place.

Take care.

themadhair -- 33...Rf8

jepflast -- 33...Bxf6

We have played 33.Bf6 to reach this position (Black to play):

click for larger view

If participants have analysis they would like to add to the Compendium, they are welcome to submit that analysis on my forum, and I will add it to the Compendium.

To make the Compendium, I had to comb through the various forums to find the relevant lines of play. I won't be doing that going forward.

So if others would like to have their work included in the Compendium, they will need to be encouraged to post their work on my forum.

I do foresee a problem, however. Like my mini-compendia from six moves back, yours will start to go out of date surprisingly quickly. I'm not saying that YOU must trawl the byways for updates - but WE as a collective certainly should. Leviathan is too important to let it die on the vine.

There was a marked silence on the main page today when you announced it was ready. I suspect an awful lot of people had gone to your forum.

<Hiya Ohio,
Top of the morning to you!

Wake up to a yet another query:

Is there a place where reachable pre-endgame positions are or could be posted?

So we can all judge which position it would be best to proceed from?

I am particularly concerned with our upcoming choice between THREE feasible Rook moves: R1f2 - R1f3 (my baby) -R1f4

The endgame is troubling me in more ways than I can count. There's a much more marked difference in player strength, both between us and GMAN and between various team members. Engines aren't quite so reliable. Books are often out of date. People post 'won' positions that aren't, and 'drawn' ones that are winnable. Everything is different.

Just lately, though, I've been seeing a few good ending analysts emerge from hiding. You've seen 'em too, I suspect. But it's almost like breaking down the old (implicit) pecking order and building up a new one...

The work I do for a living makes me a good candidate for creating and updating the Leviathan Compendium.

<But even before that, I sometimes only got as far as RV's main lines, plus selections from Thorsson and a few others. The things just sprout so many sub-variations that it's very hard to keep up.>

Keeping up can be a challenge, but the most difficult task is the reformatting of the Compendium so people can actually read it. Even then, some of the branches are six and seven variations deep, which makes most over-the-counter chess books seem like they are for rank beginners.

<Like my mini-compendia from six moves back, yours will start to go out of date surprisingly quickly.>

What will need to change are the superfluous branches, the ones no longer needed. Who wants to read that stuff, right?

<I'm not saying that YOU must trawl the byways for updates - but WE as a collective certainly should.>

There hasn't been much activity today, so there's very little to collect. In making the Compendium, I went though about six different forums and read all the posts. The one's that were relevant, I copied into a Word document, and then printed it. From there, I entered all the moves into Fritz.

Now maybe if I had Chessbase, or something like that, I could have created a massive database, but I'm only guessing about the power and flexibility of Chessbase. Fritz is not too bad, but it does have it's shortcomings.

<Leviathan is too important to let it die on the vine.>

I'm really not attached to it. The Leviathan is like old programming code, not very useful once it's outlived its purpose.

<I notice, BTW, that you (deliberately?) left out evaluations at the end of most lines.>

Every single line, without exception, showed a sizable advantage for White so I didn't bother. I think it's important for the serious analyst to play whatever line he or she may need, and then to make up his or her mind about it. Fritz is just too optimistic.

<...but do you think /- marks, when they are beyond question, would help?>

Yes and no. If I were a grandmaster, then I would feel qualified to mark the lines; otherwise, it may be a little misleading. And in some lines, if we are to put the optimism of Fritz aside, the final outcome could be unclear.

I will try to think of a way to make the Leviathan more useful. After the next several moves, my job may become easier.

Going forward, we might want to suggest to the analysts to turn the board around and play the Black pieces. The object should be to find the draw, or maybe a win. In that way we will be working as hard as possible to avoid an inaccuracy that will lead to a draw in our game.

It's not a particularly difficult job, though it can be time-consuming if you land a 'busy' line. I'm sure you've seen how it works in practice. So I'll give you one of the quieter lines to start with, just to get your hand in.

I think Leviathan could have a very important impact on the game. RV has really been our standard baseline until now, but Leviathan complements his work by being so detailed. People can easily check to see if they're duplicating previous work, and so on. It's likely that the actual continuation of the game is in there somewhere too.

I just checked some of the Fritz/chessbase games I saved earlier. The whole sequence up to move 33 was visible 10 or 12 moves earlier, in among other variations that never happened. btw, the free version of Chessbase - chessbase light - is simple to download and has most of the features of the real thing. It can be hard to understand, though - so for some database functions I use BookUp. It's much more user-friendly and also has a free version, Bookup Xpress.

One other question - do you want to return to hosting move/line forums - perhaps later in the week? - or will Leviathan come first?

He has played 33...Rf8 to reach this position (White to play):

click for larger view

after the forcing sequence 33...Rf8 34.Bxg7 Rxf3 35.Rxf3 Kxg7 (which neither side can really deviate from), we have no less than SEVEN playable options on move 36.

Artar1 (in his Leviathan compendium) and RandomVisitor both list the same 7 moves. I'll give them here in RV's order together with his 24-ply evaluations:

36.b4 +(1.28)

36.Qd8 +(1.23)

36.Rf2 +(1.22)

36.Qf4 +(1.20)

36.Qg3 +(1.10)

36.b3 +(1.02)

36.Qc1 +(0.95)

Despite these numbers I still regard 36.Qd8 as our main line.

We don't have much prospect of setting up seven distinct forums - certainly not at once. But we'll have about a week for this - it's 8 days to move 36, even if GMAN responds each time in 24 hours.

The priority is forums for the top two moves, 36.Qd8 and 36.b4

After that, any of the others - though the two lowest ones aren't too important unless their evals suddenly change.