If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Policy / Politique
The fee for tournament organizers advertising on ChessTalk is $20/event or $100/yearly unlimited for the year.
Les frais d'inscription des organisateurs de tournoi sur ChessTalk sont de 20 $/événement ou de 100 $/année illimitée.
You can etransfer to Henry Lam at chesstalkforum at gmail dot com
Transfér ŕ Henry Lam ŕ chesstalkforum@gmail.com
Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
General Guidelines
---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
Some Basics
1. Under Board "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQs) there are 3 sections dealing with General Forum Usage, User Profile Features, and Reading and Posting Messages. These deal with everything from Avatars to Your Notifications. Most general technical questions are covered there. Here is a link to the FAQs. https://forum.chesstalk.com/help
2. Consider using the SEARCH button if you are looking for information. You may find your question has already been answered in a previous thread.
3. If you've looked for an answer to a question, and not found one, then you should consider asking your question in a new thread. For example, there have already been questions and discussion regarding: how to do chess diagrams (FENs); crosstables that line up properly; and the numerous little “glitches” that every new site will have.
4. Read pinned or sticky threads, like this one, if they look important. This applies especially to newcomers.
5. Read the thread you're posting in before you post. There are a variety of ways to look at a thread. These are covered under “Display Modes”.
6. Thread titles: please provide some details in your thread title. This is useful for a number of reasons. It helps ChessTalk members to quickly skim the threads. It prevents duplication of threads. And so on.
7. Unnecessary thread proliferation (e.g., deliberately creating a new thread that duplicates existing discussion) is discouraged. Look to see if a thread on your topic may have already been started and, if so, consider adding your contribution to the pre-existing thread. However, starting new threads to explore side-issues that are not relevant to the original subject is strongly encouraged. A single thread on the Canadian Open, with hundreds of posts on multiple sub-topics, is no better than a dozen threads on the Open covering only a few topics. Use your good judgment when starting a new thread.
8. If and/or when sub-forums are created, please make sure to create threads in the proper place.
Debate
9. Give an opinion and back it up with a reason. Throwaway comments such as "Game X pwnz because my friend and I think so!" could be considered pointless at best, and inflammatory at worst.
10. Try to give your own opinions, not simply those copied and pasted from reviews or opinions of your friends.
Unacceptable behavior and warnings
11. In registering here at ChessTalk please note that the same or similar rules apply here as applied at the previous Boardhost message board. In particular, the following content is not permitted to appear in any messages:
* Racism
* Hatred
* Harassment
* Adult content
* Obscene material
* Nudity or pornography
* Material that infringes intellectual property or other proprietary rights of any party
* Material the posting of which is tortious or violates a contractual or fiduciary obligation you or we owe to another party
* Piracy, hacking, viruses, worms, or warez
* Spam
* Any illegal content
* unapproved Commercial banner advertisements or revenue-generating links
* Any link to or any images from a site containing any material outlined in these restrictions
* Any material deemed offensive or inappropriate by the Board staff
12. Users are welcome to challenge other points of view and opinions, but should do so respectfully. Personal attacks on others will not be tolerated. Posts and threads with unacceptable content can be closed or deleted altogether. Furthermore, a range of sanctions are possible - from a simple warning to a temporary or even a permanent banning from ChessTalk.
Helping to Moderate
13. 'Report' links (an exclamation mark inside a triangle) can be found in many places throughout the board. These links allow users to alert the board staff to anything which is offensive, objectionable or illegal. Please consider using this feature if the need arises.
Advice for free
14. You should exercise the same caution with Private Messages as you would with any public posting.
Two postings from the For Sale section of the English Chess Forum:
Correspondence Chess postcards
1) Post by Kevin Thurlow » Sat Nov 18, 2017
I have about 350 of these, which I was about to put in the recycling, as I now play CC online. However, if anybody does play the old way, they are welcome to the cards, as long as the postage is paid. Please PM me if interested. I'm not holding my breath!
Sir, I am not surprised that a computer can quickly master chess (“Robot becomes world-beating chess grandmaster in four hours” Dec 7). I enjoyed chess as a child but my performance gradually got worse. I found that as well as using their skill, many opponents were memorising games. Once many games are memorised, a chess player can look for positions that come from a known game, with known winning moves. As memory, rather than skill, plays such a large part of success in chess, a computer will obviously be able to master the memory side of the game very quickly. We should perhaps reassess our view of chess as a game of skill rather than our view of computers.
Sir, Peter West (letter, Dec 8) is wrong to suppose that computers’ great strength at chess is based on memory. It is their ability to calculate so accurately and quickly that produces their advantage over humans. In terms of general understanding and strategy of the game, areas where memory can play an important part, humans are still far superior.
"I forgot that chess is not checkers, and that captures are not compulsory." :)
GM Eduard Gufeld, commenting on a calculation error which cost him a game.
World Chess unveiled the new logo for the World Championship Match, London 2018. Its statement:
Key visual for the 2018 WCC is controversial and trendy, just like the host city.
As organizers of the Match, we’ve been busy for over a year working with artists and designers to develop a perfect key visual, the image that will be associated with the 2018 Match.
The image, which shows intertwined human-shaped figures holding a chessboard has been branded by some as “Tantric Chess” that could have come straight from the “Kama Sutra”.
This elicited this reader comment on the World Chess site:
mrbelding: Hilarious. "Controversial & Trendy" is code in the design world for "We paid up front and got a hot mess of garbage and now have no money or time to have someone with talent to redo it"
Kirsan Nikolaevich says "Chess instead of a Kalashnikov"
Kirsan the Magnificent does it again. lol.
Just two days ago, I was in Afghanistan. There, I distributed chess sets among children under the slogan "Chess instead of Kalashnikov". I asked them to give Taliban children a thousand chess sets so that they would play chess instead of fighting and carrying out terrorist attacks.
Not all chess players are crazy. I'm willing to venture that. But not much more. Eccentricity does reign in our precincts. In my 20s, I used to hang out at the Boston Chess Club. The front of the club was a bookstore in which you'd mill around, choose a partner, put your money down with the manager and go to the back room -- 20 or so boards set up in utter barrenness -- for some action. (At five bucks an hour it was cheaper than a bordello, but the principle seemed disturbingly similar to me.)
I remember one back room encounter quite vividly. The stranger and I sat down to the board together. I held out my hand and said, "Hi, I'm Charles." He pushed his white king's pawn and said, "I'm white," fixing me with a glare that said, "Don't you dare intrude into my space with names." It was dead silence from then on.
A psychiatrist colleague of mine came by to fetch me a few hours later. He surveyed the clientele -- intense, disheveled, autistic -- and declared, "I could run a group in here."
After the first day of Blitz in The World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships 2017 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Magnus Carlsen looked way back in the field and Nick Faulks wrote this in the English Chess Forum:
(Jonathan Rogers) “At Round 11, Carsen really is out of it now.”
(Nick Faulks) “That isn’t completely clear since with ten rounds tomorrow, he is only one point out of third place. If he could perform to his (now historic) 2986 rating, that might be enough.”
Prophetic words indeed. This is how Carsen fared the second day:
What does a chess journalist think about other than the games he should be following?
There is an amusing set of chess blogs from the Groningen Chess Festival written by Benno de Jongh. This is Column #8 (Dec. 30, 2017) in the series for this year’s tournament.
We all have dreams. As I am sitting in my living room behind my computer here in Groningen, I take a look outside at the grey, misty sky. I imagine myself at the South coast of Italy. I am in a small hotel where I’m one of the few guests. In the morning, I work on my novel. In the afternoon, I eat a pasta dish with fresh seafood that the cook prepares just for me. I then take an after-lunch nap and drink some cocktails with the other guests. I do a little more writing and then –in the evening – I eat a pasta dish with a sage/butter sauce, drink a nice glass of local, red wine, and joke a bit with the waiter. In the night time, I go for a swim between the rocks of the Mediterranean Sea. The water is still warm from the past summer and I am accompanied by a girl from the local village, who happens to be there too. Once the temperatures in my home country rise again, I go home and meet my family and friends. At that point, my novel has been translated into seventeen languages. After spending the summer in the Netherlands, I return to the hotel in Italy.
Dreams don’t often come true. Or, as the Belgian writer Willem Elsschot put it in a more literary way: ‘Because in between dream and act / there are hindering laws and practical issues / and even melancholy / that no one can explain and that comes at night / when we all go to sleep.’ The Dutch/Italian philosopher Marco Borsato maybe said it even more powerful: ‘Most dreams are just lies, and when I wake up I’m still dreaming.'
Benno de Jongh writes daily columns during the Chess Festival, published around 3 pm on playing days. De Jongh is a journalist and a chess player, who has never reached the rating of 2000, and probably never will. Despite that fact he is one of the world’s leading experts on the Elephant Gambit and working on a book on the subject, (working title: The Elephant Gambit, A Rare Black Beast with a Proboscis on the Board, publication expected in 2032). De Jongh’s opinions on several chess- and non-chess-related items do not in any way reflect the policy of the organisation of the festival.
I am still trying to work out the implications of this possible rule change. Does anyone really object to quick mates? Here it is for what it is worth:
To eliminate quick mates I propose the following new chess rule "You may not move a non-pawn onto your opponent's side of the board until all your non-pawns have been moved at least once" "No draw offers during that time either" So may it be posted. So may it be implemented globally
Last edited by Wayne Komer; Friday, 5th January, 2018, 11:55 PM.
News Item: In a learning phase (training) the Alpha Zero program used 5000 "first-generation" TPUs from the Google hardware park to play games against itself. 64 "second-generation" TPUs were used for the training of the neuronal network. And after only four hours of training Alpha Zero played better than the Stockfish chess engine, winning a one-hundred game match.
Tweet: GM Jan Gustafsson
7 Dec 2017
Just played chess with myself for 4 straight hours. Learned a lot! Next step will be 100 games vs. Stockfish
An interview with Anatoly Karpov, conducted by Dmitry Sokolov of the Russian magazine “Sobesednik,” talks about his meeting with Salvador Dalí at a New York restaurant in 1979...
Karpov and Dalí conversed in English. Karpov was 28 at the time; Dalí was 74.
Ironically, Dalí was an artist interested in chess and asked Karpov some technical questions on the game and Karpov was a chess player interested in art,
claiming he owned an extensive collection of Dalí 's works.
Since Gala Dalí (born Elena Dyakonova) was from Russia, Karpov said he expected Dalí to have many questions about Russia, but he didn't.
Karpov noted that Dalí was accompanied by two gorgeous women while he himself was accompanied by a KGB agent.
On the wall, high above the playing hall at the Tata Steel Chess Tournament 2018:
Normal people have to see Naples before they die... but a Chess Grandmaster has to win Wijk aan Zee first.
Bent Larsen
_______
Martin Kusch in 2017:
The Larsen Thesis modified. -- Bent Larsen once said: "Normal people have to see Naples before they die, but a chess grandmaster has to win Hoogovens first." He was referring to the famous chess tournament that takes place in Wijk aan Zee every year (and that starts today). Come to think of it, I would rather attend this tournament -- even if only as a spectator -- than visit Naples. I guess I am (a little??) abnormal.
Tweet
Comment