all chess is empty and meaningless
Reminds me Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti's "The game of chess is a waste of time..."
Logically fallacious, you are utilising a false analogy which is so far removed from the original premise as to be considered absurd. Stating that chess is empty and meaningless is not synonymous with saying that its a waste of time.
In Arabic language these words are same: meaningless = waste of time!
In Arabic language these words are same: meaningless = waste of time!
fine then your logic is unassailable and i bow!
I have this feeling when I play long chess ( 1 to 3 days) online games, here in chess.com. I simply can´t say if my opponent is using some engine or not. Well, I do not use engines. What I think is that I may improve my chess playing more and more, trying to analyse my games after they finnish, reading good articles, books, etc. I think that if I improve in that way it will be some real improvement. But, at the same time, I also feel that there are lots of players who think like me, I can see by the analysis of the games I have played. Not only me, but also my oponnents make mistakes and blunders, so I can imagine that they are note using engines. Anyway, I will keep like this.
Another thing I just noticed: in the article, the champion talks a lot about his preparation and the time he devotes to it, which I don't doubt did happen. But as I was looking at the crosstable (https://www.iccf.com/EventCrossTable.aspx?id=37632 for the most recent ones), I don't see a lot of evidence of human influence. Essentially all the games between the top 10 man-machines are draw, which is what you'd expect if the machines are just playing each other. The final outcome seems to be decided only by the results against the last 3-4 boards, which for all I know could just mean some people didn't tune their engine properly or have inferior hardware.
Quite the opposite is true. I'm an active player on ICCF, so I can speak from experience on what's going on in the crosstable, as well as how modern ICCF games are played:
As you climb the ICCF ranks, your opponents become stronger and stronger. Not because of hardware power, but because they have more experience on how to specialize in opening preparation. They got to where they were NOT by blindly letting their engines play, but by becoming experts in openings/middelgames that give the most chances for incredibly complex positions that allow for more human guidance of the engine. Now what happens in these world champion finals is everyone by that point is extremely well-versed in opening theory/research, so it becomes extremely difficult to catch them in a new creative line that offers a complex difficult position to analyze with an engine. As such, the vast majority of games reach a middlegame position that black (or even some rare cases white) can hold the draw with patient and deep analysis on each move.
As I've crossed 2500, I've come to realize that my opponents are so competent in the opening now that I can no longer play double-edged openings as black in order to try and win from that side. The opponents simply have too much experience and knowledge of how to avoid falling into a trap as white. Instead, I now have to use a new repertoire based on preventing white from gaining a complex position with any meaningful advantage. An example of this would be to adopt the Berlin defense. The main line of the Berlin exchanges queens, and in the ICCF arena, it becomes virtually impossible for white to create the kind of tension needed press a win from a micro-mistake black might happen to make. The engines are strong enough now that a simple quad core machince can hold the draw in the Berlin even against a $100,000,000 supercomputer. There just isn't enough complexity to trip the engine up. As such, your stronger ICCF players know this, and will avoid the Berlin even if it means playing something like the Italian game.
This is the real problem right now that we face on ICCF: Once your opponent becomes skilled enough in opening theory, your chances of finding a win become extremely remote. In fact, the crosstable shows the Leonardo winning 4 games in the event is actually an incredibly impressive accomplishment. I can tell you without a doubt he had to work VERY hard in the opening and come up with some creative lines in order to even reach a potentially winning position in each of those games. That's how ICCF is played now.
I myself only play on ICCF because I love being able to outsmart my opponent in the opening in spite of them having likely powerful hardware. My computer itself is just a standard desktop from 8 years ago, yet I was able to make USA CC Champion, Senior IM, and 2500+ rating from it, and that's all because of the hard work approach I take to analyzing the game and opening research. If I were to just let the engines play the game, I wouldn't have won anything with my old hardware. And that's why I get so annoyed when layman read articles about modern CC accomplishments and then ignorantly bag on it like they have any clue what it takes to win such events. It's a lot harder than you think, and even the draws that are predominant now typically had a lot of hard work put into them. I've had several games where I worked really hard and just BARELY missed the win, or my opponent came up with a brilliant game-saving line that computers would miss by themselves. But you would never know this, because all you see at a glance is 1/2 - 1/2.
I appreciate your detailed post, FirebrandX, and that you have crossed the 2500 barrier. However, in essence what you have written is little different than GnrfFrtzl's two sentence description, "moder (sic) correspondence chess is more about advancing opening theory, and searching for the perfect game than playing."
It's true that even traditional, pre-database, per-engine correspondence chess required a player to gather his resources together from books and know how to come out of the opening at least equal. Now one has to be even more on top of all the nuances because the tools are that much more sophisticated and unforgiving.
Man is inevitably a toolmaker, and he will use tools to extend his capabilities as is evident here, but you can't deny this reduces the artist element and greatly elevates the purely scientific, reducing chess to a sort of research paper on mathematics where there is a "solution." Unfortunately, Tal would die under such "perfecting" constraints.
I am left wondering "And this is progress?" As an American you will likely answer in the affirmative, but America's utilitarian, technological culture has rarely been able to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom. Utilitarianism assumes without question that if something can be done, then why not do it no matter where it leads. This will continue to be the driving force behind and the common thread between the "perfectibility" of correspondence chess on the one hand and the degeneracy of faster time controls in classical chess on the other. Neither is wise, but that doesn't matter; we never ask where we are headed.
I'm just glad of a site like chess.com which still offers correspondence chess with software help prohibited and a serious policy of detecting and banning software cheats. I gave up correspondence chess for many years because of the widespread use of software help, and I have only recently taken it up again here with enormous enjoyment.
FirebrandX' explanation, and that of others, of the serious and very difficult task of playing modern top correspondence chess with software help is fine, and I can appreciate the serious sporting nature of this modern top-level game. But as a mediocre CC-player, this modern version doesn't interest me. I enjoy CC play without software help and am grateful that it is still possible.
Correspondence chess is snail mail chess and vice versa. Only human brain use allowed. Dagnabit.
FirebrandX, I thank you for your opinion. I really appreciate you coming in and provide the view from within the trench (so to speak). I have a question for you though: isn't there some concern that "correspondence chess" (the way it's being played now at the ICCF) is leading to a dead end?
As I read what the champion said, it sounds like the main objective there nowadays is to play near perfect (or as near perfect as possible) chess, because, in his words, "you simply cannot afford one single sub-optimal move". He said he only play a limited set of opening because of that (which I assume is the case with most of the top players there too). But machines and engine are still improving, and over time they're going to converge on what the single best-optimal move is. Right now he can still achieve 4 wins out of 17 (a great achievement as you said) because he was able to exploit some "sub-optimal" move made by the bottom 4 boards. But they're going to wise up, right? There will come a time when even the bottom 3-4 boards will recognize a move as sub-optimal and avoid that, right? Then how are we going to distinguish who the winner is? (Even in this tournament, if we just let the top 12 play with each other, it's already very hard to tell who the winner should be). Isn't there a concern that there'll come a point where every optimal move you can think of is already recorded in the ICCF DB somewhere, and everyone will just repeat the best (but used and drawish) line from before, because you cannot afford to use a novel but sub-optimal line knowing you'll get crushed? There'll be no point in competing anymore, right?
FirebrandX, I thank you for your opinion. I really appreciate you coming in and provide the view from within the trench (so to speak). I have a question for you though: isn't there some concern that "correspondence chess" (the way it's being played now at the ICCF) is leading to a dead end?
As I read what the champion said, it sounds like the main objective there nowadays is to play near perfect (or as near perfect as possible) chess, because, in his words, "you simply cannot afford one single sub-optimal move". He said he only play a limited set of opening because of that (which I assume is the case with most of the top players there too). But machines and engine are still improving, and over time they're going to converge on what the single best-optimal move is. Right now he can still achieve 4 wins out of 17 (a great achievement as you said) because he was able to exploit some "sub-optimal" move made by the bottom 4 boards. But they're going to wise up, right? There will come a time when even the bottom 3-4 boards will recognize a move as sub-optimal and avoid that, right? Then how are we going to distinguish who the winner is? (Even in this tournament, if we just let the top 12 play with each other, it's already very hard to tell who the winner should be). Isn't there a concern that there'll come a point where every optimal move you can think of is already recorded in the ICCF DB somewhere, and everyone will just repeat the best (but used and drawish) line from before, because you cannot afford to use a novel but sub-optimal line knowing you'll get crushed? There'll be no point in competing anymore, right?
Not quite.
What will most likely happen is they'll keep on playing longer games, having the first 35 moves established, as you say.
Instead of having 60 move long games, we'll have 70-80 move long games.
And each 'season' (by that I mean improvement of engines and growth of databases) we'll have longer and longer games, exploring more and more sidelines.
This will go until another point of view emerges.
Another type of engine, radically different than the ones now existing, completely rewriting theory.
This is the same in OTB chess.
Every generation creates their own theory, and every generation has players that completely turn the tables and play in a style we have not yet considered.
If you take a look at books from 20 years ago, they contain sidelines that are completely refuted and discarded today.
20 years from now on, players will play different openings than now, creating new lines that will also be refuted in sometime; it's a neverending cycle.
Think of current correspondence chess like this.
It's a neverending argument on how chess should be played, of where theory should go.
And since chess is virtually limitless (at least, in a sensible, human sense), the argument will go on for a few thousands of years, just as it has been in the past, and is now.
Hey robbie! Whit ur ye daen' oan a correspondence threid? Ye cannae read or rite.
How yeh no oot an aboot moochin aboot the edinburgers congress, just wrap yer buckie bottle up an tell em its ribena and you'll be awright.
Imo yes it has lost meaning.
Us yins dinnae dae Buckie in ra East. Fine ye ken it's just frae jaikies frae Govan 'n that.
OMG. Great English 
Us yins dinnae dae Buckie in ra East. Fine ye ken it's just frae jaikies frae Govan 'n that.
OMG. Great English
Its actually lowland Scots :D
Us yins dinnae dae Buckie in ra East. Fine ye ken it's just frae jaikies frae Govan 'n that.
dinnae dae Buckey??? yer no content till yer swagging it doon like straweberry jelly an ice cream!
ach yer bum, biggest swaggers o the monks amber nectar is yown neds frae Alloa, they pit amphetamines in their Buckie an swag it doon, once they are wired tae the moon it takes them days tae reel themselves in frae orbit, pure spangles. Yeh no playin in the endinburgh congress kaydo, a wiz gonnae but they couldnae gaurantee that naebody wid steal ma trainies fae under the table when a wiz thinking aboou ma moves.
Please don't hijack an interesting thread. I'm keen to see responses to GnrfFrtzl's last posting about games likely becoming longer as the boundaries of chess get pushed back by ever-improving software and hardware.
Please don't hijack an interesting thread. I'm keen to see responses to GnrfFrtzl's last posting about games likely becoming longer as the boundaries of chess get pushed back by ever-improving software and hardware.
Whatever you were expecting from these two, really.
Hey this is TUTtokings I am on a fixs income but upgrade I will ?. how would a person get that award I seen after winning 15/10 contest it would be nice on my wall please.thank you. can you email to me
Your definition of interesting obviously must prevail.
They do seem sticklers for what they consider to be proper forum etiquette. They do seem rather stiff if I do say so myself. I wonder if they take the same approach when dressing for dinner? Nothing we have posted has prevented them or anyone else from adding anything of 'interest'.
well let me think of a few very simple ways. you can hide a tablet in the bathroom and periodically check the moves there. you can use earphone spies and so and so on.
you can go Boris Ivanov and hide the tech in a huge pair of training shoes (sneakers to our American cousins)
thatsrather primitive way of cheating lol unless shoes smell awafully
when asked by an arbiter to remove them he claimed just that, that his socks were smelly and he would rather keep his training shoes on. He lost the game.