Data-mining chess databases

This is a report on the data-mining of two chess databases, the objective being to compare their sub-7-man content with perfect play as documented in Nalimov endgame tables. Van der Heijden’s ENDGAME STUDY DATABASE IV is a definitive collection of 76,132 studies in which White should have an essentially unique route to the stipulated goal. Chessbase’s BIG DATABASE 2010 holds some 4.5 million games. Insight gained into both database content and data-mining has led to some delightful surprises and created a further agenda.

Uniqueness in chess studies

Van der Heijden’s ENDGAME STUDY DATABASE IV, HhdbIV, is the definitive collection of 76,132 chess studies. In each one, White is to achieve the stipulated goal, win or draw: study solutions should be essentially unique with minor alternatives at most. In this second note on the mining of the database, we use the definitive Nalimov endgame tables to benchmark White’s moves in sub-7-man chess against this standard of uniqueness. Amongst goal-compatible mainline positions and goal-achieving moves, we identify the occurrence of absolutely unique moves and analyse the frequency and lengths of absolutely-unique-move sequences, AUMSs. We identify the occurrence of equi-optimal moves and suboptimal moves and refer to a defined method for classifying their significance.

Intrinsic chess rating

This paper develops and tests formulas for representing playing strength at chess by the quality of moves played, rather than by the results of games. Intrinsic quality is estimated via evaluations given by computer chess programs run to high depth, ideally so that their playing strength is sufficiently far ahead of the best human players as to be a `relatively omniscient' guide. Several formulas, each having intrinsic skill parameters s for `sensitivity' and c for `consistency', are argued theoretically and tested by regression on large sets of tournament games played by humans of varying strength as measured by the internationally standard Elo rating system. This establishes a correspondence between Elo rating and the parameters. A smooth correspondence is shown between statistical results and the century points on the Elo scale, and ratings are shown to have stayed quite constant over time. That is, there has been little or no `rating inflation'. The theory and empirical results are transferable to other rational-choice settings in which the alternatives have well-defined utilities, but in which complexity and bounded information constrain the perception of the utility values.

Zugzwangs in chess studies

Van der Heijden’s ENDGAME STUDY DATABASE IV, HHDBIV, is the definitive collection of 76,132 chess studies. The zugzwang position or zug, one in which the side to move would prefer not to, is a frequent theme in the literature of chess studies. In this third data-mining of HHDBIV, we report on the occurrence of sub-7-man zugs there as discovered by the use of CQL and Nalimov endgame tables (EGTs). We also mine those Zugzwang Studies in which a zug more significantly appears in both its White-to-move (wtm) and Black-to-move (btm) forms. We provide some illustrative and extreme examples of zugzwangs in studies.

Chess endgame news

Reports the availability on the web of the entire run of Beasley's 'British Endgame Study News', and reviews a recent report by Bourzutschky and Konoval on their discoveries with 7-man endgame tables.

Position criticality in chess endgames

Some 50,000 Win Studies in Chess challenge White to find an effectively unique route to a win. Judging the impact of less than absolute uniqueness requires both technical analysis and artistic judgment. Here, for the first time, an algorithm is defined to help analyse uniqueness in endgame positions objectively. The key idea is to examine how critical certain positions are to White in achieving the win. The algorithm uses sub-n-man endgame tables (EGTs) for both Chess and relevant, adjacent variants of Chess. It challenges authors of EGT generators to generalise them to create EGTs for these chess variants. It has already proved efficient and effective in an implementation for Starchess, itself a variant of chess. The approach also addresses a number of similar questions arising in endgame theory, games and compositions.

Understanding distributions of chess performances

This paper presents evidence for several features of the population of chess players, and the distribution of their performances measured in terms of Elo ratings and by computer analysis of moves. Evidence that ratings have remained stable since the inception of the Elo system in the 1970’s is given in several forms: by showing that the population of strong players fits a simple logistic-curve model without inflation, by plotting players’ average error against the FIDE category of tournaments over time, and by skill parameters from a model that employs computer analysis keeping a nearly constant relation to Elo rating across that time. The distribution of the model’s Intrinsic Performance Ratings can hence be used to compare populations that have limited interaction, such as between players in a national chess federation and FIDE, and ascertain relative drift in their respective rating systems.

Western Chess: Endgame data

This spreadsheet contains key data about that part of the endgame of Western Chess for which Endgame Tables (EGTs) have been generated by computer. It is derived from the EGT work since 1969 of Thomas Ströhlein, Ken Thompson, Christopher Wirth, Eugene Nalimov, Marc Bourzutschky, John Tamplin and Yakov Konoval. The data includes %s of wins, draws and losses (wtm and btm), the maximum and average depths of win under various metrics (DTC = Depth to Conversion, DTM = Depth to Mate, DTZ = Depth to Conversion or Pawn-push), and examples of positions of maximum depth. It is essentially about sub-7-man Chess but is updated as news comes in of 7-man EGT computations.

Western Chess: Zugzwang data

This data is derived from Eugene Nalimov's Depth-to-Mate Endgame Tables for Western Chess. While having the move is normally advantageous, there are positions where the side-to-move would have a better theoretical result if it were the other side to move. These are (Type A) 'zugzwang' positions where the 'obligation to act' is unwelcome. This data provides lists of all zugzwangs in sub-7-man chess, and summary data about those sets of zugzwangs including exemplar zugzwangs of maximum depth.

Chess endgame news

This article reviews the KQPKQP endgame of the ROOKIE-BARON game of the World Computer Chess Championship, 2011. It also reviews the decisive KRNPKBP endgame in the second Anand-Gelfand rapid game of the World Chess Championship 2012. There is a review of parts 2-3 of the Bourzutschky-Konoval 7-man endgame series in EG, of the new endgame software tool FinalGen, and of the 'Lomonosov' endgame table generation programme in Moscow.

Chess Endgame News

This review starts with a demonstration of the power of FinalGen and the new Lomonosov 7-man endgame tables, each giving an alternative 'bionic' ending to the 'five Queens' Hao-Carlsen (Tata Chess 2013) game. The completion of the Lomonosov 7-man DTM EGTs is announced. The final two parts of the Bourzutschky-Konoval 7-man-chess series in EG are summarised.

Chess Endgame News

Three topics are discussed. First, an issue in the epistemology of computer simulation - that of the chess endgame 'becoming' what computer-generated data says it is. Secondly, the endgames of the longest known games are discussed, and the concept of a Bionic Game is defined. Lastly, the set of record-depth positions published by Bourzutschky and Konoval are evaluated by the new MVL tables in Moscow - alongside the deepest known mate of 549 moves.

WCCC 2013: the 20th World Computer Chess Championship

The 20th World Computer Chess Championship took place in Yokohama, Japan during August 2013. It was narrowly won by JUNIOR from JONNY with HIARCS, PANDIX, SHREDDER and MERLIN occupying the remaining positions. There are references to the detailed chess biographies of the engines and engine-authors in the Chessprogramming Wiki. The games, occasionally annotated, are available here.

WCSC 2013: the 3rd World Chess Software Championship

The 3rd World Chess Software Championship took place in Yokohama, Japan during August 2013. It pits chess engines against each other on a common hardware platform - in this instance, the Intel i7 2740 Ivy Bridge with 16GB RAM supporting a potential eight processing threads. It was narrowly won by HIARCS from JUNIOR and PANDIX with JONNY, SHREDDER and MERLIN taking the remaining places. Games, occasionally annotated, are available here.