Online Pseudonyms

As loyal readers of this blog know (both of you) - I like to play chess online at chessworld.net. I've been playing in a few tournaments and doing OK - but I've been on a losing streak in the past couple of weeks. But that's not really the point of this post...the point is that most people on that site (and most gaming sites as far as I can tell) don't use their real name, but rather some sort of pseudonym or handle. Even in the blogosphere (damn, I thought I'd never use that term), people shroud their identities with handles - see Jim Hinckley (my former alias for posting comments), Kimota94, The Man From Mars, etc.

Anyway, on Chessworld my handle is currently, the o-so original, "James Hindle" - my real 'meatspace' name. I'm playing against people like "Kingcrusher", "KillerLee", "phys-glue-stick", "MrFishy", "Metroline Busman", and so on...

I think it's time to change my handle - so I'm open for suggestions. Here are some I'm considering:

• Jim Hinckley
• The Artist Formerly Known as James Hindle
• The Human Calculator
• 4A4D48
  

(Oh and a blogpoint for the suggester of the chosen nickname, and 2 blogpoints for anyone who knows how I came up with 4A4D48)

Chess is breaking the Internets

I tried to go to chessworld.net this evening to check if any of my current games are waiting for me to move and what did I get but an error message:

The page cannot be displayed

The request cannot be processed at this time. The amount of traffic exceeds the Web site's configured capacity.

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Please try the following:

• Click the Refresh button, or try again later.
• If this error persists, contact the Web site administrator to inform them that this error continues to occur for this URL address.

HTTP Error 500.13 - Server error: Web server is too busy.
Internet Information Services (IIS)

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Technical Information (for support personnel)

• Go to Microsoft Product Support Services and perform a title search for the words HTTP and 500.
• Open IIS Help, which is accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr), and search for topics titled Monitoring and Tuning Web Application Performance, Performance Monitoring and Scalability Tools, and About Custom Error Messages.

Chess Tournaments

For the first time I decided to enter some online correspondence chess tournaments over the holidays. I've never done this before because I've preferred to play more friendly games against people I know. But I decided to broaden my horizons a bit and potentially improve my play.

I play at chessworld.net (link with referral code on right hand side) and entered three different tournament with mixed results:

Knockout:
The first tournament I entered was an 8 person, single match, open knockout tournament. 'Open' means it is open to anyone of any rating. The 8 entrants are seeded based on rating with #1 playing #8, #2 vs #7 and so on. #1-4 have white and must win to advance (i.e. Black can advance with a win or tie). I was seeded 4th with a rating of 1895 against a player with the handle 'Trapper D' from the USA. We quickly exchanged pieces and I ended up making a blunder in the endgame and resigned - thus quickly ending my first online tournament.

All-Play-All:
In this style of tournament every entrant plays two games (one as white, one as black) against each other entrant. You get 1 point for a win and 0.5 points for a draw - the entrant with the most points after all games are played wins. I chose a 4 player tournament, so I have siz games to play. So far I won one game with Black and drew another so I have 1.5 points. The other games I'm playing are against much stronger opponents - I hope to be able to salvage a win and a draw out of what is left.

Pyramid:
This isn't really a tournament in that there is no fixed end. Rather it is open to as many people that want to play. There are 7 levels to the pyramid - each with about a third as many people as the level below. You start on the 1st level, and advance by beating a player in the level above you. You can also be demoted a level if you lose to someone on the same level (or a level below you). I've won all three pyramid matches I've been involved in so far, so I'm on level 3. Below is the current distribution of players in the pyramid:

Level	Players
7	2
6	4
5	20
4	75
3	224
2	564
1	1487

Overall, I'm quite enjoying the tournament play - lots of chess boards to move on and lots of new and interesting people to play against.

It Would Be So Nice

I am on an email mailing list for a company that produces high end chess boards and chess sets (the pieces) called the 'House of Staunton'. Each year around this time they have a promotion called the "12 days of Chessmas" where they offer a new special each day for twelve days.

This year they introduced a new line of chess sets called the "Gardena Art Chessmen". These pieces are a wonder to behold. If anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas one of these chess sets or the Nintendo Wii would be great ;)

See Emily Play #7

Well it's over. Kramnik lost with the black pieces today. His strategy of simplification at all opportunities by exchanging pieces was effective in that he managed to draw 4 games (and could have drawn the second if not for overlooking a mating attack by the computer) . He fared much better than Mickey Adams did against Hydra a couple of years ago.

The Fritz 4.0-Kramnik 2.0 score matched my prediction, but I envisioned a win and two draws for the human instead of four draws.

Kramnik walks away with half a million dollars and his reputation intact despite losing to the machine. It was unfortunate we didn't see him go all out with some sort of sacrificial exchange might have worked or might have failed quickly in the final game since he had nothing really to lose - a draw didn't help his cause. But that would have been against his style.

See Emily Play #6

The last game for Kramnik with White ended in another draw. With one more game to play, the score sits at Fritz 3.0 - Kramnik 2.0. So at best Kramnik can hope for a drawn match by winning the last game with the black pieces - no easy feat.

Fritz has proven to be a stiff competitor, but it hasn't launched any spectacular attacks. It defended precisely as you would expect a machine to do, and took advantage of Kramnik's mistake in game 2 to capture the only decisive match so far.

Despite the score, I would say I've been impressed with Kramnik's preparation and play, and disappointed with the computer.

See Emily Play #5

Kramnik and Fritz had another draw yesterday. Initially it looked as though the computer would win easily as it had a significant advantage in terms of development. But Kramnik managed to simplify the position by exchanging pieces and lead the computer into a Bishop vs Knight endgame.

He was then able to construct a fortress and was happy to move his king back and forth between two squares until the computer had to offer a draw because it was unable to penetrate Kramnik's defense.

I must admit Kramnik is doing much better than I had expected...or maybe it's the computer that's doing worse. Either way it is now Fritz 2.5 - Kramnik 1.5 with two games remaining.

See Emily Play #3

Game 2 in the Man vs Machine match ended in a win for the Machine.

Kramnik had black and it started with a fairly strange opening focusing on the Queen side. It looked even to me for the majority of the match, then Kramnik made a slight mistake in his defense which Fritz took advantage off without mercy. It ended with a Queen/Knight mating net on the black King.


Score so far: Fritz 1.5 - Kramnik 0.5

See Emily Play #2

Game 1 in the Man vs Machine match ended in a draw. Kramnik had white. Both side seemed content to exchange pieces at will. No real chances on either side. It seemed as though Kramnik wanted to be sure to get at least a draw in his match. Hopefully there will be better matches to come.

I don't think I mentioned this before, but if Kramnik wins he gets $1 Million. If he loses or the match ends in a draw he gets $500,000. Not bad either way...

See Emily Play

OK...not Emily exactly...starting tomorrow there is a 'Man Vs. Machine' chess match featuring Vladimir Kramnik against Deep Fritz 10.

Kramnik is the current FIDE World Chess Champion and the 14th Classical Chess Champion (like boxing Chess has splintered due to political/organizational disagreements and there are multiple 'titles' a player may hold). He is coming off a successful defense of his Classical Chess Championship against Vesselin Topolov and is playing better than he has in three or four years.

Deep Fritz 10 is the latest offering from chessbase.com and is sure to prove a mighty opponent for Kramnik. At the championship, Fritz will be running on a standard Intel PC with 4 processors.

The format is 6 games over 11 days of play. I don't think Kramnik stands much chance of winning. In fact I'll make a prediction that he will win 1 game and draw 2.

You can follow the action online at either playchess or at the official site.

One Slip

As I mentioned on a previous post, I play chess online sometimes. If you want to replay a game I'm pretty proud of, go here and you'll see me beat Pete Baljet (one of my co-workers).

He and I are pretty evenly matched most of the time, but he made a blunder (one slip) in this game that let me finish him off pretty convincingly.

Us and Them

In this case, by Us and Them, I mean the black and white sides in a chess game.

I love chess. I love playing it. I love analysing my previous games. I love 'watching' professional games. I love reading about it. I love reading about professional players.

I think the reasons I love chess, are fairly simple. It is a struggle between two initially equal forces and, like Newton said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It amazes me that in the hundreds of thousands of professional games played, players still break out novel moves after 7 or 8 reasonable starting moves. After one of these novel moves, if the resulting position looks promising, an army of people start analysing the novel move and it gets added to encyclopedia and repetoire waiting for people to find the appropriate refutation.

Computationally we're at a point where a cheap PC or handheld device has enough power to be able to beat 99% of people using brute force. That's unfortunate, however, now chess programs are able to teach and train beginners. It's to the point where even professionals regularly use computers to analyse positions and are a key part of their training regimen. I use Fritz from ChessBase to help me train. And I play online at playchess.com for complete games or letsplaychess.com for 'correspondence' style games

Despite my love for the game, and my above average memory in most aspects of my life, my chess skills are probably just average to slightly below average. I think the big reasons for this is that I haven't played enough and I get too focused on my own plans and strategy and sometimes blunder a piece away because I can't give up my plan. It's something I'm working on...

If anyone out there ever wants to play a friendly game - I'm always up for it.