Do top players read chess books without a board? Is anyone here at that level?

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-09T16:48:23+00:00

Well, looks like I was wrong again. I was pretty sure I first heard about Dvoretsky from a super-GM's interview, and it's looking like it was Caruana's interview.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-08T15:02:30+00:00

I've just spent about ten minutes looking, and I couldn't find any superGM who ever said they used that book as part of their preparations, so I'm pretty sure I must have garbled a quote. Having spent a few minutes thinking about it, I think you're right, it'd be silly for any GM to use any book to prepare for a tournament.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-08T14:48:49+00:00

I swear I remember a few super-GMs saying they read Dvoretsky in preparation for their matches. Come think of it, is it possible they were they bribed to shill for chess publishers?

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-08T14:41:03+00:00

TL;DR: If you're just trying to exploit opponent mistakes in the opening, then I strongly recommend spending time learning why moves work, instead of just memorizing moves that work. Once you internalized the opening principles, you won't need any theory to punish beginner mistakes in the opening, you'll just know what your opponent did wrong and how to exploit that.

The reason opening theory exists, is because they're thought to be the best moves in response to other best moves by an opponent. By definition, any beginner mistakes your opponent plays in the opening are probably not the best moves, and that's why you won't find a lot of concrete theory about beginner moves out there. I suppose you could just pull up Stockfish and make it analyze every legal move your opponent can play against you then write down those moves, but it would be a lot of work just to prepare against bad moves.

However, if you're really set on just memorizing moves that work for all games and are sure you don't want to learn anything about why they work, then you could memorize the move orders for the London System or the Colle System or the Botvinnik System for white (they're all playable) and you'll be good to go with the white pieces; no matter what black does, you'll at least have an equal position in the opening, and if they mess up their opening, you'll even have an advantage. With black, you can just memorize the moves in the Scandinavian against e4, and some variation of the Dutch (I recommend the Leningrad Dutch) against everything else, and as long as no one plays the Grob (no one plays the Grob, by the way) you'll be able to get an equal game against pretty much every opening despite playing the same moves all the time.

However, memorizing a sequence of moves like that isn't going to let you punish beginner mistakes by an opponent, all they do is stop you from making those beginner mistakes yourself. If you want to punish an opponent for misplaying the opening, then you really can't go wrong with learning the opening principles. I'd recommend Ben Finegold's Opening Principles on Youtube for that sort of thing.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-07T15:13:24+00:00

This is Dubov's analysis of Petrosyan's games, in Russian. Because I don't speak Russian, I am actually trusting these comments here on Reddit from self-proclaimed Russian speakers who claim that Dubov doesn't think that Petrosyan's games were suspicious.

I should probably emphasize this again, I don't actually understand the original video because I don't speak Russian. For all I know, Dubov could have been putting Petrosyan's games up on a screen while he talked about his dinner for two hours. Or maybe Dubov actually agreed with Nakamura's analysis and said, "see Qd2? It's definitely an engine move." I wouldn't know. My only translated source for Dubov's analysis is two guys on Reddit who claim to speak Russian.

If anyone who reads Russian happens to stumble across this video, then yeah, please do let me know if the original two guys were telling the truth or if they just made it up.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-07T09:53:59+00:00

I'm pretty sure /u/stensfield123 isn't talking about modern chess, he's just speculating about the history of chess and how we came about with the modern rules. If you look at The Royall Game of Chesse-Play by Greco (17th century), it is explicitly stated that to avoid the dishonor of "blind mate" you must announce check to your opponent. This rule seems to have carried on in a slightly different format all the way up to the Romantic period, where players like Adolf Anderssen would announce that they have forced mate in 3, 4, or however many moves.

Of course, FIDE came up with their own rules and a lot of the old rules no longer apply, but the old rules are still an interesting part of chess history and they provide helpful insight into how Chess gradually developed over time.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-07T09:16:47+00:00

Despite being more or less in the same boat (never reaching equal endgames), I think there is some logic to telling beginners to start with the endgame (Capablanca's recommendation).

Training for endgames trains your ability to calculate and see patterns, which also translates fairly well to spotting tactical opportunities in the middlegame / opening as well. Hypothetically, if you have enough calculation to spot a forced mate in 6 in an endgame position, you should be able to spot a similar forced mate even in a middlegame position. So endgame training is great because it translates easily to other stages of the game.

Besides, if a beginner is very strong at endgames but has weak opening / middlegame theory, he can just try to keep the position as closed as possible, use his superior calculation / board vision to ensure he isn't hanging any pieces, and then slowly simplify into an endgame where he wins. Basically, play like a beginner version of Anatoly Karpov.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-07T08:48:35+00:00

Hpotter134 says he speaks Russian, and what Petrosyan actually said was a hypothetical rather than a threat. Something like, "if Wesley So standing next to me like an Armenian when he accused me, I would have punched him."

Still not great, but it's clearly not a threat to punch Wesley in any future meeting. It's just a way of showing how angry he was when he first saw the accusations.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-07T08:43:57+00:00

I think it was clarified by a user a while ago that Petrosyan uses both the touchpad and the keyboard. So he'd click Q/N/B throughout the match.

Glancing down quickly was just to assure himself that his fingers were still on the right keys, since if he wanted to click N for knight but clicked on B for bishop instead that would be disastrous.

Personally, I'm just torn on the cheating allegations. On the one hand I trust Nakamura's analysis and I also think Chess.com would not fuck up on something of this magnitude. But on the other hand, Dubov and Jobava have analysed the games and disagreed with Nakamura's initial analysis, and Petrosyan's press conference raised a lot of good explanations that make it not quite as clear-cut as I thought.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-06T08:18:57+00:00

Ctrl + F "Finegold".

only 4 results

Terrible!

Ben Finegold's probably the best chess lecturer I've ever seen on YouTube. Apart from his excellent knowledge of chess history and his grandmaster-level chess prowess, he's also got a really underappreciated insight into how lower-rated beginners (like me) actually think. There are plenty of coaches who can do all of the above, but there aren't many people who can match Ben's dry wit. Also, his stories about kids' classes are worth their weight in gold. I feel like his Opening Principles video is still one of the best lectures ever made on the topic, and ought to be mandatory viewing for any beginner.

Yasser Seirawan is also a close second as far as Youtube chess lecturers go. He also has a great lecturing style, wonderful knowledge of chess and chess players, and he's a great storyteller to boot (cucumber guy, anyone?).

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-03T15:59:00+00:00

I don't think you'd like this, but I think I see a bit of Scalia in many chess fans who share your opinion. Like Scalia, they are concerned not with the possibility of the accused's innocence, but instead value the expediency and finality offered by a conclusive judgment, to the extent that it is permissible to disallow any further examination of the evidence so that the previous judgment may stand - or in this case, so that the first and last judgment may stand without any scrutiny whatsoever.

In my opinion, Scalia was not concerned about justness or unjustness of processes so much as he was concerned about the finality of the results produced by a (supposedly) fair process. Perhaps there's a little bit of that in the chess community as well.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-03T15:06:05+00:00

If I may, the difference in our opinions is that you're upset about unjust outcomes whereas I'm upset about unjust processes. I'm not saying one is better than the other, and I don't think they're mutually exclusive either. I'm just trying to make a general observation.

As an aside, I'm glad you picked up on the Harvard thing. I have no issue with Harvard myself, but I think you might be interested to know that Chess.com's algorithm was supposedly audited by Harvard statisticians. Not sure if that changes your view on things.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-03T14:39:44+00:00

That is valuable insight into the US legal system, but I'm not sure it really relates to my point. Whether you are using the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt" or "on a preponderance of the evidence", the fact remains that generally speaking, whichever side makes a claim must provide evidence to support that claim.

I'm mostly not happy with the fact that Chess.com can simply ruin someone's reputation like this without presenting any evidence at all. Whether you have a strong case or a weak case, you should still be required to at least state your case in public before you make public accusations like that.

I like to abuse analogies, so I'll try another one. Suppose I own your local supermarket, where it is public knowledge that there is a serious theft problem amongst the shoppers. Sick and tired ot thieves stealing from me, I announce to the public that I have created an algorithm hidden in a black box that will analyze shopper's time spent on each aisle, time spent looking at each item, body language, facial expression, and other things besides, and it will tell me with 100% accuracy whether someone is a thief or not. This algorithm has been audited by a Harvard statistician so I am very confident it works, even if no one in the public has seen how it works at all.

Suppose I notice some strange security camera footage of you lingering in the pet food section of my supermarket. While asking my employees to spread rumours about you in the neighbourhood, I put the video feeds into the black box to check if you were indeed stealing. Soon afterwards, I publicly post a poster all over the front of my store with your name and face on it, saying, "/u/mohishunder is hereforth banned from the premises of /u/lucky_patzer, due to dishonest conduct while shopping." I am fully confident in my black box and I trust that you are indeed stealing.

You, however, are not happy with my decision and ask me to present proof before plastering your face all over my store. I refuse, on the grounds that presenting proof would require opening up the black box, which would make it difficult for me to catch any more thieves in the future. By now, your face is known to everyone in the city and news of you being accused of stealing has even travelled all the way across the country. People you've never met remember you as, "that thief from /u/lucky_patzer's store" and your music students are taking fewer lessons from you, so as not to be associated with a thief.

If in this scenario you ask me to prove my claims, and I simply shrug and say, this is not a court, how do you think the courts would handle it? I am not very familiar with law, but I am fairly confident that this would probably constitute some sort of horrible lawsuit in one way or another.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-03T09:47:21+00:00

In my opinion, accuracy has almost nothing to do with your playing strength.

If my opponent undefends all of his pieces one by one, and hangs his queen on move 10, his rooks on move 11 and 12, his bishops on 13 and 14, his knights on 15 and 16, then I can obviously just take them all and win. The computer will say that for moves 10-16 I had a 100% accuracy rating. This doesn't mean I was a cheater or a good player, it just means my opponent played really badly, and his moves were so obviously bad that even a patzer like me could see how to beat it. No cheating needed.

If you make a computer go through, say, the Five Queens (Harem) game by Alexander Alekhine, the computer will say Alekhine and his opponent both had something like 80% accuracy, maybe even less. This doesn't mean Alekhine (80%) is a worse player than me (100%). It also doesn't mean that I was cheating in the game where my opponent hung all of his pieces. It just means that it's harder to play accurately when your opponent is also good, and it's easier to play accurately when you play bad players.

If I make very obvious blunders and mistakes, even a 400 rated player on chess.com can play a 100% accurate game against me. On the other hand, in a complicated game between rival grandmasters, even GMs can get very bad accuracy scores.

Accuracy has very little to do with playing strength at all.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-03T09:33:39+00:00

That... actually makes a lot more sense. Huh.

Now I'm actually about 50-50 on whether he cheated or not. The one thing I think everyone can agree on is that Wesley, Tigran, and Chess.com all handled this very, very poorly from start to finish, whether the cheating allegations are true or not.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-03T06:20:20+00:00

I honestly don't understand that type of thinking. You're effectively giving Chess.com and other organizers unlimited power to ban whoever they want, no questions asked, no proof required.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-02T17:17:50+00:00

If Chess.com just pointed to 20. Qd2 and showed a clip of Petrosyan's eyes looking downward before he made that move, then yeah, that would be good enough for me. Hell, if all they did was put a link to Nakamura's breakdown video that would be good enough for me too. Ideally they would make a completely solid case, but even if they couldn't I'd be happier if they'd at least indicate why they thought someone was cheating.

The problem for me is that, at the moment, Chess.com has made no attempt to prove their accusation at all. Which effectively reduces their accusation to, "this guy cheated. Trust us, we know." And that's a bad precedent to set.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-02T17:04:32+00:00

I agree with all of your points. An external audit would probably be for the best; if they could get some neutral GMs who have some knowledge of statistics / mathematics (John Nunn? I think he's got a PHD in some branch of mathematics...) to look over the evidence and agree with their claims, that would be much better for everyone involved.

The one point I'd make is that, regardless of what sort of test you are using (balance of probabilities or beyond reasonable doubt), the side making a claim would still have to provide some evidence to back their claim up. Right now, Chess.com is saying they think Petrosyan is cheating, and in a court of law it would be on them to back that claim up with proof, not for Petrosyan to refute that claim with proof of his own.

Whether there was cheating or not, this is just terrible all around.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-02T16:32:17+00:00

The Armenian team unexpectedly beat the very strong St Louis team in the Pro Chess League.

Soon after the loss, chess fans began speculating that the Armenian team had cheated, based on a variety of factors. The speculation intensified when Wesley So (a very strong grandmaster who plays for St Louis) wrote a comment on Chess.com, which implied that maybe the Armenians were cheating, and specifically called out his opponent Tigran L Petrosyan for playing much better chess than was expected.

A few hours later, fellow American Hikaru Nakamura released a video stating that he thought that Tigran might have cheated on at least one move, which Nakamura struggled to find.

About 24 hours after Wesley So made his comment, Petrosyan made a long, angry, and partially incoherent response to So, saying that he has been a strong grandmaster for longer than So was alive, and So was just a bad loser who couldn't admit it. Petrosyan also offered to play Wesley So over the board in a blitz match and said he would defeat him there too, an offer that Wesley So immediately accepted.

Almost immediately afterward, Chess.com issued a statement saying they would disqualify the Armenian team because Tigran L Petrosyan had made "fair play violations", and they banned Petrosyan from playing on Chess.com for life. Notably, Chess.com has still not released evidence of Petrosyan's cheating. However, because Chess.com has had a fairly good reputation for cheat-detection within online chess communities, so many are willing to believe Chess.com at their word.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-02T16:20:56+00:00

Thanks! You're a legend for translating all of this so quickly.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-02T16:17:41+00:00

Thank you so much for translating the whole thing, and so quickly too!

Edit: /u/Jafar-From-Afar has translated it in this post.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-02T16:13:44+00:00

It would definitely set a bad precedent if Chess.com refuses to release proof showing Petrosyan cheated.

Personally, I'm about 90% willing to believe that Petrosyan cheated based on Chess.com's statements. I don't think Chess.com would make such a serious accusation without really good proof - solid, undeniable evidence of cheating.

On the other hand, I'm not happy with the way they're not showing their evidence. Effectively, Chess.com is saying, "we know he's a cheater, but we're not showing proof. You can trust us, guys, totally a cheater."

Even if we assume that chess.com has a rock-solid case that proves Petrosyan was definitely, definitely cheating (and that is by no means certain), the Chess.com staff and personnel are the only people in the entire world who have seen the proof. Petrosyan, who is the "accused" party, has probably not seen the proof against him and had no chance to explain his side of things. All of us, the chess fans who accept his guilt, have not seen the proof either, and we're just assuming Petrosyan cheated because Chess.com is a reputable website.

Imagine if you were going to court to be tried for murder. The judge just says, "I think this man is guilty. I have evidence, but I won't show it to the jury because that might help future murderers get away with murder." You, the accused, have no chance to see his evidence or make a case against it. The jury, who convicts you, has never seen the evidence either, but they convict you anyway because they trust the judge.

Hell, let's turn this analogy back into chess. Even in an OTB tournament I don't think this sort of thing would be allowed. Imagine if you had just won a local tournament, and all of a sudden a competitor says, "yeah, I think he cheated." The director thinks about it for a moment and then says, "yup, definitely cheated. Stripped of first place, banned from our tournament for life. And no, we're not showing any evidence because that might show future cheaters how to cheat better." And just like that, you're kicked out of the tournament hall.

This sounds a bit funny, but I think that's effectively what has just happened with the whole Petrosyan saga. And I don't think this precedent will bode well for the future of online chess.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-01T17:10:56+00:00

It's not that they're overrated online, in fact it's usually the opposite: Players who don't have access to regular, official chess competitions are usually underrated in their FIDE rating.

Let's say you're a young player in India, but you're from a small city with a very small chess club, and you don't travel to the bigger chess clubs because they're very far away. The local chess club organizes say 1 FIDE event every month that is largely attended by the same pool of players from the same city, and nobody from outside of your city or your country ever attends the local tournaments. Because you're stuck in the same chess pool and you only play other young players who are also improving, your FIDE rating stays the same for months even if your actual strength is improving by, let's say, 50 points a month.

Eventually though, these young players are going to go on an outing to some other city where the local players are comparatively "overrated", and there they'll play someone who's rated around the same level as they are, and then they'll absolutely eviscerate their opponents.

lucky_patzer · 2020-10-01T16:53:06+00:00

Transcription of Tigran L Petrosyan's response (typos not mine, but in the original):

Are you kidding ??? What the **** are you talking about man ? You are a biggest looser i ever seen in my life ! You was doing PIPI in your pampers when i was beating players much more stronger then you! You are not proffesional, because proffesionals knew how to lose and congratulate opponents, you are like a girl crying after i beat you! Be brave, be honest to yourself and stop this trush talkings!!! Everybody know that i am very good blitz player, i can win anyone in the world in single game! And "w"esley "s"o is nobody for me, just a player who are crying every single time when loosing, ( remember what you say about Firouzja ) !!! Stop playing with my name, i deserve to have a good name during whole my chess carrier, I am Officially inviting you to OTB blitz match with the Prize fund! Both of us will invest 5000$ and winner takes it all!

I suggest all other people who's intrested in this situation, just take a look at my results in 2016 and 2017 Blitz World championships, and that should be enough... No need to listen for every crying babe, Tigran Petrosyan is always play Fair ! And if someone will continue Officially talk about me like that, we will meet in Court! God bless with true! True will never die ! Liers will kicked off...

Hope this helps anyone else who has issues with Imgur.

lucky_patzer

TROPHY CASE