Author: Mark Rawlings
Date: 15:58:36 12/08/02
Go up one level in this thread
Stephen-
I greatly enjoyed following your games against the computers! Any thoughts of a
rematch? Out of curiosity, how do you do against Fritz at standard time
controls?
Also, I remember you had plans at one time to publish a more detailed account of
the match. Was that ever done?
Thanks,
Mark
On December 08, 2002 at 16:35:46, Stephen Ham wrote:
>"snipped"
>
>Anatoli: So, it sounds that cor.
>>players do not analyze their positions together with Fritz anymore, but they
>>only use it afterwards to check their possible blunders ! What a nonsense ! You even found another excuse – after the blunder check you sleep better! From a
>>medical point of view, what can be better then a peaceful sleep. You provided
>>here your way to use your Nimzo, but I don’t believe it. You mention that first
>>you find a move, and only then then you check it with your chess engine ! It is
>>amazing! Do you call it as a blunder check? But if your Nimzo shows to you, that you indeed lose a piece in 2 moves ? So, you turn your computer off , then
>>return back to your chess board and keep looking for another move ?! And you are not curious what Nimzo propose you instead of your blunder? How many times do you have to check your blunders and walk up and down between your chess board
>>and PC ?
>
>Stephen: Dear Anatoli, I expected that being on the honor system (claiming to
>not use any computer aids in my match games versus Fritz 6a and Nimzo 7.32) that
>some cynics would publicly accuse me of cheating. To my surprise, you are the
>first I've seen! That's OK. But since I'm a 2500-rated player anyway, I might
>expect to do better than lose my matches with a score of 1.5-2.5. Also, you
>wrote that you followed my games. Then I'm certain that you must have seen
>multiple examples of my human mistakes. For example, I was blowing Fritz 6a off
>the board tactically in Ham-Fritz 6a. Then I overlooked a neat defensive
>maneuver that Fritz had in the King's Indian Defense (A maneuver that I use
>myself as Black in a Yugoslav Dragon Sicilian. I still can't figure out how I
>missed this. Maybe in being on the White side of it, I psychologically just
>never saw it.). Had I been using a computer at just that moment only, that
>defense would have shown up and I would then have adjusted my attack and quickly
>defeated the machine (see my notes for the proof). Since I missed Fritz's
>defense, the result was a draw rather than a quick victory. Another example of a
>human error: this time caused more by late night fatigue, was in Ham-Nimzo 7.32.
>I failed to see the point of Nimzo's locking up of the pawn wall. As a
>consequence, I worked out a nice technical win for myself in one line. Instead,
>had I had a computer turned on at just that one moment only, I would have seen
>Nimzo's defense in the game line and adjusted my technique to win via another
>route. The result again was a draw when I should have won. So rather than being
>2-0 with White, it was 2-draws. Then as Black, I was blown off the board by the
>tactically superior Nimzo 7.32. Had I had a computer switched on, I'm certain I
>could have done better. Still, Nimzo's play was brilliant. In Fritz-Ham, I had a
>superior endgame in which I erred and a draw was the result. So Anatoli, had I
>had a computer tuned on just once, at the right place in each game, the result
>might have been 3.5-0.5 or 3-1 in my favor. But since it was just me, without
>any computer help, I lost.
>
>Anatoli, you asked what I would do if a blunder check revealed a blunder. Good
>question, because it's yet to happen, although it surely will some day. I hope
>to find a replacement move on my own. But, it's possible that I might find a
>replacement move while the computer is still running and make a computer
>assisted selection of a replacement move. Still, I'd certainly only analyze the
>subsequent tree of analysis for that move on my own. Anatoli, I only play CC for
>enjoyment, since there's no money and no adoring fans or groupies out there for
>CC winners. Since there's neither fun nor intellectual challenge in winning when
>the computer does the work for/with me, I won't do it.
>
>Anatoli: Stephan, you played against Fritz and Nimzo for a few months. Did you
>use an engine for your blunder check? After each move you published mountains of
>>analyzes. Were they the results of “blunder check”, or you set up chess pieces
>>on the board and found those 10-15 move lines yourself ?
>
>Stephen: No, Anatoli, I did no computer blunder checking during that match.
>Again, that would have been a violation of the rules. Some proof of this is seen
>im my all-too-human play (see above) which resulted in a lost match for me.
>Also, all the analysis ("mountains") I printed out during the game were 100%
>human. I've subsequently tested that analysis with Nimzo 7.32 and Fritz 6a
>(which ChessBase USA gave me after the match) and found plenty of errors and
>second best moves in my notes. Please keep in mind though, that I played these
>games at the sprinter speed of one move/day! That's exceptionally fast. I don't
>normally play at this rate, but there was a huge audience watching and I enjoyed
>that. I wanted to keep that audience watching and felt they'd get bored if I
>played at my normal speed of about 3-5 days/move. So playing at this rate of
>speed affected my play and certainly affected the quality (or lack thereof) of
>analysis I generated. Please don't think that I'm mentioning this as an excuse
>for my loss. Instead, it's meant as an excuse to explain why I think my printed
>analysis wasn't up to my normal level.
>
>Anatoli: And last thing. You are going to play on by correspondence. You still
>have just Nimzo 7.32 and this is definitely not enough to compete with the other
>ICCF players. You have to invest in new Fritz 8. All IM and GM use high speed
>PC andif you are too honest, you have very little chances in this struggle.
>Fritz/Tiger/Shredder is getting stronger and stronger and PCs are more and more
>powerful. It becomes very difficult for a busy person to play cor. chess in
>these conditions. It is a must to have a good PC + fritz on it, if he wants to
>reach a sort of success in these new conditions. It is very difficult to
>sacrifice a pawn for an unclear initiative to say nothing about a piece. Your
>opponent will switch his “blunder check” on and fritz would show him in 5
>seconds how to kill your initiative.
>
>Stephen: Anatoli, thanks for your concern, buddy. Chances are that as the
>computers and programs get stronger, my rating will drop...unless I can get
>stronger myself. Already my rating has fallen from 2508 to 2492. Is this the
>reason? Maybe, maybe not. But I don't care about ratings and I won't use
>computers to analyze current game positions. I have subsequently purchased Fritz
>7 (from ICD, naturallY!), but use it only to test my opening ideas against. I'm
>truly a computer dummy and so I like to keep things simple. I find Nimzo 7.32 to
>be the most tactically skilled program I have (my perception only, although it
>clearly has the most erroneous evaluation function!) and so it's my choice for
>use in blunder checking. My games tend to be far more technical and stategic
>than tactical (the exceptions are when I get to play the Sicilian Dragon) so I
>doubt that chess programs would be helpful anyway in the positions that I like
>to play.
>
>Anatoli: We have IG Tunc ( I forgot his surname)from Austria at CC Forum.
>According to him, he plays dozens of games at the highest level and he found a
>lot of spare time to arise different discussions. It is impossible for a busy
>cor. player, who doesn’t use fritz, to have pastime like this ! Each position
>requires a few hours of hard work and he has dozens of them. So, I check his
>games together with fritz . Try, Stephan, you will have a
>>lot of fun !
>
>Stephen: Yes, GM Tunc (pronounced "Toonj") Hamarat, who's playing in the current
>World Ch Final with expectations to win it, admits to using computers for move
>generation and analysis. This is true for MANY strong players. For example, IM
>Kenneth Frey admits to having 7-computers going at any given time, analyzing his
>games. My reply: Good for them! I thinks that's perfectly fine...for them. Maybe
>if I ever make it to the World Ch. Finals, I might do that too. After all, their
>goals are different than mine are presently. At that level, the score and the
>result is everything, and so if these tools help them, then I think that's 100%
>acceptable. There's nothing morally wrong with that. But I'm not at that their
>level...so I just play for fun. Anatoli, you said you checked Tunc's games with
>Fritz and I presume that you found a high corelation of computer moves. OK, I'll
>trust you there. But even with OTB GM's, surely the majority of their middlegame
>moves will be found by computer too. If you have the time, please look at my
>4-games versus the computers. I'm curious to know if a similar number of my
>moves are found my your machine.
>
>All the best,
>
>Stephen
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