Life In 19x19

So I ran some old chess games through a strong chess engine (Houdini Pro 4), and the results were a bit surprising to me, similar to those noted by Mr. Fairbairn.

I looked at just five games. There were played in 1992 at a small local FIDE invitational. At the time my FIDE rating was in the low ...

Bartleby, a few points:
- I agree that as chess and go are different games with different number of reasonable moves etc the exact metric will be different. But what would be useful is how much of an outlier from typical values is strong enough to declare cheating. So if chess players of your level ...

although in chess a 98 percent agreement between an engine and a player would be considered very strong evidence (even the best chess players in the world who train with computers all the time don't score nearly as high).

When you talk of agreement with a chess engine do you mean playing the top ...

I have no opinion whether there was cheating in this particular game, although in chess a 98 percent agreement between an engine and a player would be considered very strong evidence (even the best chess players in the world who train with computers all the time don't score nearly as high).

However ...

I don't have this Soltis book. However, I do have GM-Ram, Essential Grandmaster Knowledge , by Russian GM Rashid Ziatdinov. I highly recommend it. IM Silman's review: m and GM Kavalek's review: m

At a simpler level, but with the same concept of knowing a few fundamental positions, is American GM ...

It's a legitimate site and I have made multiple orders from it. In each case, I received what I ordered from it (including the Kwon books, all of which I got from this site).

That having been said, they are sometimes (but not always) VERY SLOW by American/Canadian standards. I once sent them an e ...

What is the topic? I'm just curious because it seems to have deviated from the original post somewhat.

Bantari, I like your one post because it has multiple colors.

Other than that, this thread just makes me blue.

There used to be a school of thought in chess training that you should study the old masters first and work your way up through the modern masters. You will still hear some top players (e.g., Kramnik, Kasparov) refer to "chess culture," which I take to be a reference to studying the history of the ...

The fact that I look at other similar fields. For example: chess. I know a lot of formal research has been done in chess, especially in the old Soviet Union, tremendous amounts of money have been spent, and yet it did not seem to have contributed very much.


People refusing to apply it stay weak ...

It's not a question of "street cred," billywoods. There is nothing wrong with giving advice, and even constructive criticism can be helpful under the right circumstances. I will assume that you are trying to be helpful in your own way.

The problem is that you are coming off as criticizing TMark and ...

I ultimately went with the Agathis board, along with some slate and shell stones and some wooden bowls, all of which I ended up buying from Gogameguru.

I'm very happy with everything. The board is a big solid piece of wood; I guess it will last me for quite a while (actually, at my age it will ...

I also like handicap games in both directions (I am usually at +/- 6 stones on automatch on KGS).

It's a good exercise to give a handicap and try to beat your opponent without making overplays, just by punishing the mistakes you recognize.

Also, big handicaps are the only way I ever get to play ...

I more of a chess player than a Go player, so I've played a lot of chess online.

As mentioned, FICS is free, and not a bad place to play casual games. If you are looking for a free site to play live games, it is probably the best one out there.

The best commercial (i.e., you have to pay) chess ...

In an ideal world, I agree that having cheaper books available in English would be nice. But Go books are very much a fringe market in the West. I doubt the profit margin is very high (where it exists at all) for translations of CJK books into English. I don't think we can ignore the economic ...

I am curious about what type or level of problem books we need more of? It woud be helpful for people to be more specific because there are already a lot of problem books out there already that are accessible to English speakers. If there are specific areas where good problems are lacking, it would ...