English Chess Forum

...the suggestion is that the live feed stopped in round 8 at move 15, and before that Ivanov's moves correlated closely with Houdini, while from move 16 onwards they only correlated in the case of forced moves and captures. I was hoping that Steve Collyer would answer that, but so far he hasn't. L...

Top 1 65% Top 2 80% Top 3 90% Every player who I've analysed/reported with these figures or higher for a large batch of games (usually 20, each with 20+ non-database moves) has either been banned for engine use shortly after reporting, or a little later for some reason or other. This would be over 1...

so it would be interesting (and some would say fair) to remove that game from the results. It depends how you think the hypothetical cheating method worked. If you postulate that it involved the live feed in some way or other, then yes. If it was a concealed device on his person where he was inputt...

The analyses for both batches is finished now. Pre-Zadar 19th: Houdini 1.5a x64 Hash:256 Time:30s Max Depth:20ply { Ivanov, Borislav (Games: 13) } { Top 1 Match: 203/414 ( 49.0% ) Opponents: 217/416 ( 52.2% ) { Top 2 Match: 287/414 ( 69.3% ) Opponents: 296/416 ( 71.2% ) { Top 3 Match: 330/414 ( 79.7...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logical-Chess-E ... 478&sr=8-1
Great book for a beginner.

Ok thanks Mick. It might be interesting to compare Ivanov's engine match rates for the games played in the year prior to the recent tourney with those played in Croatia. Edit: From the link in your post above, I'm analysing these games which were played prior to Zadar 19th. I wanted a medium sized b...

I should also say that the reason I use Houdini for this analysis is that it is the strongest engine available & simply refuses to crash during batch analysis. I've tried many engines, namely Deep Fritz, Deep Rybka, Shredder & a few others. The only engine that seems to occasionally give strange res...

As far as Carlsen not matching Houdini first choice more than 57.6% of the time, it's not surprising at all. Just analyse any great player's games with any engine in multi pv & you will see how often there are several reasonable moves all within a few centipawns of each other in most positions. As I...

Carlsen not a great example for this as he very definitely doesn't go in for very forcing lines at all often. Topalov from a few years back (when he was doing so well) is the sort of player who could well be a little bit higher as he did get quite a few games with very deep, sharp preparation which...

but crucially far more engine-like chess than any of the all-time greats when analysed using the same approach. If played over the board without external assistance, that isn't cheating, however much the engine match advocates might wish it to be so. It's a point Matthew Turner made. If you analyse...

In other words, the more the cynical statisticians looked at the methodology, the more it made sense. I'm just using general reasoning rather than statistics. Engine A analyses old games and finds 13 out of 20 moves match its first choice. That means 7 from 20 don't match. So check with engines B a...

Engine outputs vary somewhat. It's not a case of 13 out of 20 top 1 match 16 out of 20 top 2 match 18 out of 20 top 3 match In practice, it's more a case of 520 out of 800 top 1 match 640 out of 800 top 2 match 720 out of 800 top 3 match I wouldn't get too obsessed with the 65% top 1 match indicatin...

Yes I agree. I thought you meant "players" in reference to online users too. Only if Ivanov had played a significant number of games which were selected in an objective way, analysed, and match rates in excess of the benchmarks achieved, could this methodology be applied. A sample of 600 non-databas...

Roger, the point is that it already has been applied to the very best OTB players... This is how the benchmarks are created! In the absence of additional evidence as to how it was done, you should not accuse players of cheating just because they exceed these benchmarks. The benchmarks also show the...

A 65%+ top 1 match from let's say 800 non-database moves simply means the suspect plays considerably more engine-like chess than any of the benchmarks. You then have to delve into why this should be the case. Using a Page View Log is useful. Most chess server sites have them. It generates an output ...