In the year 2000, GM Vladimir Kramnik shocked the world, beating the great Garry Kasparov to become world chess champion. In 2024, GM Kramnik continues to shock the world, albeit in a very... different... way: I will keep publishing various st...
Previously on this blog I've looked at how one can estimate the values of the pieces, based on the number of moves they have from each square. This post has the same goal of estimating piece values, but will use a different approach- random chess ...
OK, you caught us. We've been employing a person who has been doing some really terrible stuff. But in our defense- he's really good at chess. Like, REALLY good at chess.Just so we're all clear, we've known about this stuff for years. And rather t...
Chess has been captivating players for centuries with its elegant blend of strategy and tactics. From grandmasters to casual enthusiasts, the game continues to fascinate and challenge players of all skill levels. In recent years, the rise of artif...
I didn't cheat in those chess games. I swear it. Everyone who says I did is just jealous and can't handle how great I am. I've never cheated in a game over the board. I cheated before but that was online which isn't the same thing. Do you know h...
With GM Ian Nepomniachtchi clinching the 2022 Candidates tournament with a round to spare, the chess world knows one participant in the upcoming 2023 World Chess Championship. And although it is GM Magnus Carlsen's right to defend his title, there...
The story of Hikaru Nakamura, as only Hikaru can tell it.
A few months ago ChessBase released Fat Fritz II, setting off a firestorm of criticism from the open-source chess community. I covered that controversy in a previous blog post, predicting that nothing would result other than a lot of shouting. As ...
The Chess.com Computer Chess Championship (CCC) just played every opening in the ECO, which is a fun event. It allows viewers to see some lesser-known lines, and the opening explorer gives the opening names. But let's just say that some of those...
If you think reading's lame and just want to play Turochamp, click here. We all know that Deep Blue was the first computer to beat a reigning world chess champion. But what was the first engine to beat ANY human? The answer is of course T...
Anyone who's been paying any attention to chess Twitter or Twitch in the past few days will have heard of Fat Fritz II, the new chess engine from ChessBase and Albert Silver. They also will know that it's ignited a controversy that's spr...
Stockfish 12 introduced the chess world to NNUE, a new and improved type of neural network. And since its release there has been a wave of projects implementing NNUE: Dragon, Igel, Minic, RubiChess, and others. All reported huge strength improveme...
"If there had been a crime, this would be a good clue." The above quote comes from Gabriel García Márquez' Love in the Time of Cholera, an 1985 classic written in Spanish (El amor en los tiempos del cólera). A...
Currently in the Computer Chess Championship (chess.com/ccc), we're running a bonus event! Stockfish and Lc0, the two top engines in the world, are playing every line in the Encyclopedia Of Chess Openings. Even at 1|1 bullet, playing all 2014...
What's the biggest event in chess? The World Chess Championship? The Puzzle Battle World Championship? Whenever Magnus Carlsen finally loses a game? Not even close. Everything else pales to the upcoming release of Stockfish 11! The Champi...
Hello everyone! This is less a post and more a collection of fun links. The Stockfish project usually releases a new version (Stockfish 8, 9, 10) after about 50 Elo of improvement. But in the meantime, there is constant updating and patchi...
Initially AlphaZero was something of a mystery to me. Like everyone else, I knew it made use of a neural network, but to me that didn't mean much. Add in the fact that it learned from selfplay and you might as well have called it magic. But sinc...
Anyone who's played over-the-board knows how to read and write algebraic notation. While you're playing you probably don't have time to reflect on the notation (you've got other things to think about!) But one esoteric question you might ask is, "...
The Computer Chess Championship (CCC) is currently between its ninth and tenth editions. It's worth checking out (I love it!), but it can be disorienting for the first-time viewer if you can't tell one engine from another. There are engines you ...
When sitting at a chessboard, what are players thinking about? Much of their time is spent answering a simple question: "Is this position good or bad?" They might have incredible vision, they might never miss a forcing line... but if at the end of...
When you were first learning to play chess, you probably were told that each piece was worth a certain amount. A pawn is worth 1 point; bishops and knights 3 apiece; rooks 5; and the queen a full 9 points. Then you might have been told that one sh...
On his first move, white can play any of 20 legal moves. Several of these moves are good; a few more are probably playable; the rest are bad. But whichever white chooses, black will have 20 responses available to him. This means that by white's se...
Deep Blue vs. Kasparov. Deep Junior at Dortmund. Deep Fritz vs Kramnik. Leelenstein vs jjosh? The history of humans playing computers is not a long one. The period in which chess engines and strong human players could compete on level footing wa...
