Originally posted by RagnorakNot picking on Ragnarok specifically here, because I see this viewpoint expressed by other people, too.
I only started using databases a couple of months ago when I realised that the top players here destroyed me straight away within the first 6-7 moves. Since I started using databases for my first few moves, I got a draw off a player rated ...[text shortened]... rs 1850+, and some great games against other high rated players.
So, bottom line, [addressing the group], this is "what it's all about" at RHP, then? The primary purpose of being here is not "so you can play chess and win", but specifically "so you can beat someone who has a rating higher than yours"?
And...this proves...what?
Sign me,
BAFFLED
Is it a guy thing?
Originally posted by ChessMomYou can look at it like that if you want.
So, bottom line, [addressing the group], this is "what it's all about" at RHP, then? The primary purpose of being here is not "so you can play chess and win", but specifically "so you can beat someone who has a rating higher than yours"?
I prefer to look at it this way. When I play one of the higher rating players and we get past the opening games without either of us being at a significant advantage, then chances are that neither of us are going to make a significant blunder (there are always exceptions). The game of chess can then be played out using all the skills that we have. That is what I was referring to. A good/great game of correspondence chess to me is one where 1 person's skills outmatches anothers. Not where the game is won/lost due to inferior opening knowledge or a blunder. That's why I referred to players rated higher than me. Players lower than me are more prone to blunders: ie: gifting me the game.
Previously, before I knew any openings (ie: before I started using databases to learn them), more often than not, against higher rated players the game was over before we got to move 10. Now, I don't consider what follows to be necessarily a good game of chess.
D
Originally posted by ChessMomFrom http://www.chessclub.com/help/CC-Events
Question: What about the Internet Chess Club?
http://www.chessclub.com/
Is the basic underlying assumption there *also* that everybody is using databases during play? I don't see a FAQ offhand. Anybody know?
For all rated events, COMPUTER USE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. You may refer
to books and other printed material, as well as databases, but you may
NOT use any chess-playing engine for assistance.
I don't think u can assume that *everybody* is using databases, but you can definitely assume that *everybody* is allowed to use databases if they so wish.
D
Originally posted by RagnorakYou've said it better than I could.
You can look at it like that if you want.
I prefer to look at it this way. When I play one of the higher rating players and we get past the opening games without either of us being at a significant advantage, then chances are that neither of us are going to make a significant blunder (there are always exceptions). The game of chess can then be played o ...[text shortened]... ot to move 10. Now, I don't consider what follows to be necessarily a good game of chess.
D
I have no idea of the numbers of people that use databases during play. However I don't see why it should matter to ChessMom as she hasn't played a single move.
Without database use many correspondance players would be basically reinventing the wheel every game. Instead they can concentrate on new moves and because of that the games produced are of a higher quality.
Looking at some of the games between the top players on this site I find them easily equal or better than many OTB GM games I've looked at.
And anyway there is an art to using a database. Following blindly on with the most common reply in all situations will lose you more games than it will win against a careful opponent.
Originally posted by AThousandYoungMe neither. Got no books, no database. But I don't worry about those who do: it is just part of the corespondance chess world. Consulting a database / book while playing cc is permitted. One would like to think that people only consulted them before games but that would constitute a subjective ethical distiction rather than a rules distinction. I'm sure there are many players who consult databases during a game without qualm and good luck to them. Its just not for me.
Nope. I'm 1610 and I don't.
There is some historical perspective at play here: when the rules of cc were refined, there were no computerised databases: the vast databases now available may not have been what was intended. However, the idea that cc allows books is obvious: cc games can last months and serveral games overlap, so not looking at any chess books during playing time effectively means stop reading chess books.
What is slightly odd is that while looking up a book is fine, what if somebody just reads you the bit in the book? But only slightly: you'd have to be a bit of a pedagogue to really have a go at that one.
Originally posted by ChessMomWhen I play chess on RHP, I sit a few feet from 130 chess books at a machine with over 5 GB of chess data. I play games without consulting any of this, and I play games where I may have used these books and a database through the first 20 moves. When I'm really ambitious, I may look through books on the middlegame and endgame in search of patterns similar to my current games. This use of reference materials is permissible in correspondence play, but forbidden in OTB (over the board) play. The ability to use such aids is part of the appeal of correspondence chess.
And a little bit disappointed. 🙁 I hadn't realized that apparently, everyone playing games on RHP is using books and databases to tell them what the good moves would be. So, all those games I've been studying here, that people are lin ...[text shortened]... g chess, not on their own "tick", but with guidebooks in hand?
Learning opening systems is an important part of chess improvement. If someone is following the databases without understanding, the database will cease to be of help after a few moves. If, on the other hand, a player has learned good opening principles, his or her games will conform to those in databases through the first few moves even without such assistance. Players are well-advised to read something like Reuben Fine, The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings before they play extensively with database assistance.
For more than 25 years, I've played the Sicilian Defense, and many a game with and without databses has begun (here I will type with no outside assistance): 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e5 6.Ndb5 d6 7.Bg5 a6 8.Bxf6 gxf6 9.Na3 b5 10.Nd5.
When I wanted to learn the French Defense, I developed a process for learning the opening:
1. I looked through a small number of games by GMs.
2. I played the opening in some internet blitz games.
3. I read a book on the French, concentrating on the discussion of the ideas, and not getting caught up in all the variations.
4. Played a few more.
5. Went through my losses looking for patterns of deviation from the main line.
6. Started a few correspondence games with the French. Played these by the numbers--choosing moves with the best scoring percentage.
7. Read more deeply in my book on the French.
8. Played the opening in an OTB tournament.
9. Analyzed that game with my opponent and help from another player, better than us, and who knows the French well.
10. Played more blitz.
This process of learning the French has gone on now for a little more than two years. I can play the opening with or without databases. Databases help me hone my repertoire, particularly when I'm playing against stronger players, but they don't earn me wins I could not get on my own.
A fun aspect of learning the French after playing the Sicilian many years has resulted from being able to transpose from one to the other. For example, in the past year I've had many games begin (again I'm typing with no outside assistance): 1.e4 e6 2.d4 c5 3.Nf3 cxd5 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3. This position is comfortable for the Sicilian player, but it started as a French. This opening is especially fun in a three minute blitz game because I can get there in two seconds, while my opponent will often use up to half a minute.
One final note: when I was skipping out on my homework in high school, it was often to study a textbook called Chess Openings: Theory and Practice. I became aware ten years later, while in graduate school, how much I had benefitted from that study. Chess openings study taught me both discipline and pragmatism (the relationship between ideas and consequences), proving indispensible in my academic work.
Originally posted by ChessMomThe underlying assumption there is that anyone caught using such assistance will have a "c", meaning computer, after his or her handle. ICC is for real-time online play, generally at blitz time controls. Three minute games are quite popular. Databases are useless at such speed.
Question: What about the Internet Chess Club?
http://www.chessclub.com/
Is the basic underlying assumption there *also* that everybody is using databases during play? I don't see a FAQ offhand. Anybody know?
ICC does offer correspondence chess, where the rules have already been noted by Ragnorak.
I've played over 25,000 games at ICC without any assistance ever. In two of those games I won with Legall's pseudo-sacrifice only a few weeks after reading about it in a book. The same opponent was my victim in both games.
I explained this in my Profile, which is why I put it in there, because I knew people would wonder.
That's the short version.
Here's the long version.
I'm a 49-year-old stay-home mother of three teenagers (one in college) who started playing chess a year ago because yet another study came out that showed that continuing to learn things and keep the brain active into your "golden years" helped stave off Alzheimers.
Crossword puzzles were singled out as being particularly conducive to this.
I hate crossword puzzles.
I looked around for something else to "learn". I had always wanted to know how to play chess, but always bogged down with difficulties visualizing how the knight--irritating creature that he is--moves. "Two steps over and one step up" never seemed to work for me, somehow.
Anyway, strongly motivated by a mid-life "fear of drooling senility" crisis, and chess seemed complex enough to fit the bill (Scrabble isn't really in the same category), I went to the library and got out their entire selection of beginning chess books, and it was the Everything Book of Chess that clicked. It said to visualize the knight's move as a 6-square rectangle: he moves to the opposite corner from where he is, catty-corner.
And I was like, "Oh."
*click*
So then I Googled around for "children chess", because, I reasoned, if somebody somewhere has a Chess Method for teaching kindergartners to play chess, it ought to work for me, the congenitally logic-challenged.
And I found Learn to Play Chess with Fritz and Chesster, which was very highly recommended, and basically I haven't looked back.
I finally "know how" to play chess. I've added other chess software to my collection. I'm collecting chess sets (but only inexpensive ones). So far I haven't descended into drooling senility or started forgetting the names of my children, so it must be working. And I'm having a blast.
The only problem is, I apparently really suck.
I can just barely beat Chess Tiger on the two lowest levels, the ones where it gives you a disclaimer, "Warning! At this level, ChessTiger makes really stupid moves!" Even with ChessTiger playing like a toddler stoned on Benadryl, getting to an end game is problematic, and if I do manage to get that far, I still have to run around the board with my queen and take all his pawns, and then corner him with both rooks, the queen, AND the king.
And I've lost count of the number of times I've checkmated the drugged baby by accident. "Checkmate!" ChessTiger cheerfully informs me, to my astonishment. All I was doing was running around the board trying to back him into a corner--and I won? Inadvertently.
So my performance with my other chess software isn't much better. I can beat the Hoyle Board/Table Games "Beginner" level most of the time now, but if I bump Gax up to "Medium", he beats the pants off me.
Ditto King Kaleidoscope and Chesster.
And when I play Fritz's Drunk and Moron, they generally resign halfway through, which is annoying, so I play the Patzer, but even the Patzer routinely beats me.
And playing "Friend" games with Fritz, I am currently at a 403 handicap, and the Help file says, helpfully, "If your handicap goes up to around 400, you really need to stop playing and go back to square one and, like, focus on the basics."
So, all in all, it seemed like coming in here and actually challenging a real human being to a game of real-time chess on a serious chess-playing website would be just...masochistic in the extreme. Why do something that is virtually guaranteed to involve pain, shame, rage, and utter humiliation in less than 10 moves? 😀
Not me. So I'm just kibitzing and reading threads. It's actually been quite educational, even if it was kind of a shock to realize that everyone is looking things up during games with books and databases. I grew up with the kind of chess imagery like "two mental giants facing each other across a chessboard, a silent Clash Of Titans, nothing but their own resources to rely upon", and it's a little disconcerting to find that...um...apparently chess isn't like that. I didn't know that you were allowed to go look things up during tournament adjournments, for example. I also didn't know that people played cc by looking moves up in books. I always assumed that they received the latest move on a postcard, sat there and thought about it for a while, then sent off their move in return.
So I was just a little...startled...to find that chess wasn't always quite the pure mano a mano combat I had always imagined.
But I'll get over it. 🙂
ChessMom, I remain concerned about the violation to your sense of fair play regarding the use of databases. I know you are not alone in this matter. Although I suspect the rules are clear by now, you still seem to be suffering from some disillusionment.
Database use does not permit a player to avoid calculation and planning. In fact, it may increase the demands.
If you would like, take a look at Game 843496. This game was my first here at RHP that I failed to win. After each player moved twice, we reached a position that I see rarely. It might have been a good time for me to tap into the databases--with 40+ games going on six sites, I simply cannot find the time to use databases in every game. I did not use these aids in this game. But, if I had, I would have learned the following from my main db:
There are 5100 games that reached this position in the db.
17 different white moves have been played. The most frequent are
3.Bf4 1592 games, white scored 60%.
3.c4 1448 games, white scored 64%.
3.g3 826 games, white scored 65%.
3.e3 665 games, white scored 63%.
I played 3.c4, a move that is neither the most frequent, nor that has the highest scoring percentage among the most common moves. Had I used the database, I still might have chosen this move, but as you can see, a choice and some data analysis would have been needed.
Looking through a database of my own games--mostly internet blitz games--reveals that I've faced this particular position in 43 previous games. My overall scoring percentage from this position has been 65%: 25 wins, 7 draws, 12 losses. 3.c4 has been my first choice by an overwhelming margin, but I have played 1.g3 frequently, and 3.Bg5 (the fifth most common move) several times. I also played the rare 3.Nbd2 once. I have played neither 3.e3 nor 3.Bf4.
Had I been using my databases for this game, it likely would not have changed my play.
I understand the rationale for using databases. I understand the bit about the player having to make the ultimate decision about what move to play.
But unfortunately, to me, the Starry-Eyed Idealist, it still looks like you're just using the "Hint" function. I can win against Chesster the Rat if I play the entire game taking the Hint function's advice. But, so what? What does that prove? Not much, IMO.
To me, using databases still *looks*, if not like outright "cheating" (I understand that's an emotionally-charged buzzword), then at least "unfair" to the other guy. What if the other guy doesn't have as comprehensive a database as you do? What if you just happen to be better at looking things up in a database and utilizing the information you find? Then the chess game becomes nothing more than a test of "who's better at looking stuff up", or "who has the better database".
"Dueling Databases", IOW.
And, it seems to me that if you get used to always being able to access a book or database before you make your moves, then when you're playing OTB, doesn't that cramp your style, to suddenly *not* be able to? So maybe IRL, the player who *wasn't* accustomed to always being able to look stuff up would actually have a slight psychological advantage over the other guy, who was sittin' there sweatin' because he missed his database.
If it's so "okay" to use databases and books--i.e. to use the "Hint" function--then why aren't they allowed during regular (non-adjourned) tournament play? If there's really "no problem" with it, how come you aren't allowed to sit there with Pocket Fritz logged onto an online database through your cell phone?
Or are you?