Subject: ICCF Grandmasters. Sat Dec 24, 2022 4:34 pm
How strong are ICCF grandmasters? The very best ICCF players that can compete for the ICCF world championship. And yes, I know computers are allowed as aids.
1. ICCF Grandmasters are much stronger then chess engines.
2. ICCF Grandmaster are slightly stronger then chess engines.
3. ICCF Grandmasters are the same strength as chess engines.
4. ICCF Grandmasters are weaker then chess engines.
Thank you for any opinions.
Have a marry Christmas, and a happy New Year!
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Peter Berger
Posts : 131 Join date : 2020-11-20
Subject: Re: ICCF Grandmasters. Sat Dec 24, 2022 8:20 pm
Merry Christmas.
ICCF grandmasters are completely irrelevant. Most people who are able to understand how chessprograms work will in doubt be able to make better decisions than them.
Or to be a little more precise: all major ideas in games between ICCF grandmasters are from engines. The human may give a little guidance to spare CPU time. But just letting Stockfish run for 24 hours per move will be enough to be virtually unbeatable for them giving their very best.
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mwyoung
Posts : 880 Join date : 2020-11-25 Location : USA
Subject: Re: ICCF Grandmasters. Sat Dec 24, 2022 9:11 pm
Peter Berger wrote:
Merry Christmas.
ICCF grandmasters are completely irrelevant. Most people who are able to understand how chessprograms work will in doubt be able to make better decisions than them.
Or to be a little more precise: all major ideas in games between ICCF grandmasters are from engines. The human may give a little guidance to spare CPU time. But just letting Stockfish run for 24 hours per move will be enough to be virtually unbeatable for them giving their very best.
That was my thought also. But I am no expert on ICCF Chess playing strength. Or why they have a GM title. But some insist on saying and I will quote.
"If you believe Stockfish plays better than ICCF players, then enter an ICCF tournament and play the moves Stockfish indicates. You will lose a lot. Those ICCF grandmasters became ICCF grandmasters because they play much better than John Doe + Stockfish."
So I am comparing moves of all ICCF WC final games by years. Before computers till the year 2020 against Stockfish 2022. As I figured a ICCF GM + Chess engine is no stronger then just the Chess engine.
I will share my results. But if I see just a human standard of play before chess engines were invented, to the ICCF standard of play rising with the chess engines over the years.
That would be pretty conclusive ICCF GM's are not strong GM players, or stronger players then myself + Stockfish.
But are just GM titled humans that play ICCF games with a computer only.
But I will be able to gauge ICCF strength, and I can determine if ICCF GM's played better at anytime in their history. Better then todays chess engines.
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Uri Blass
Posts : 207 Join date : 2020-11-28
Subject: Re: ICCF Grandmasters. Sun Dec 25, 2022 12:50 am
mwyoung wrote:
How strong are ICCF grandmasters? The very best ICCF players that can compete for the ICCF world championship. And yes, I know computers are allowed as aids.
1. ICCF Grandmasters are much stronger then chess engines.
2. ICCF Grandmaster are slightly stronger then chess engines.
3. ICCF Grandmasters are the same strength as chess engines.
4. ICCF Grandmasters are weaker then chess engines.
Thank you for any opinions.
Have a marry Christmas, and a happy New Year!
I am an ICCF Grandmaster I choose 4 because ICCF Grandmasters can make clerical errors that engines do not do.
I think that many years ago when I quit correspondence chess I was not stronger than chess engines with strong hardware Even 10 years ago only in very rare cases I found stronger moves than the move the engine suggested.
I did not play correspondence chess after 2015 and I consider the following game as my best game when I found some good idea that the engine did not suggest.
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mwyoung
Posts : 880 Join date : 2020-11-25 Location : USA
Subject: Re: ICCF Grandmasters. Sun Dec 25, 2022 2:02 am
Uri Blass wrote:
mwyoung wrote:
How strong are ICCF grandmasters? The very best ICCF players that can compete for the ICCF world championship. And yes, I know computers are allowed as aids.
1. ICCF Grandmasters are much stronger then chess engines.
2. ICCF Grandmaster are slightly stronger then chess engines.
3. ICCF Grandmasters are the same strength as chess engines.
4. ICCF Grandmasters are weaker then chess engines.
Thank you for any opinions.
Have a marry Christmas, and a happy New Year!
I am an ICCF Grandmaster I choose 4 because ICCF Grandmasters can make clerical errors that engines do not do.
I think that many years ago when I quit correspondence chess I was not stronger than chess engines with strong hardware Even 10 years ago only in very rare cases I found stronger moves than the move the engine suggested.
I did not play correspondence chess after 2015 and I consider the following game as my best game when I found some good idea that the engine did not suggest.
Thanks Uri, I have a question, Is your GM title affiliated with Fide? Or is ICCF not governed by Fide.
And I have both computers looking at the first 2 ICCF WC championships to be analyzed.
1. Postal WC11/F WC11/World Championship 11 Final 3/1/1983 2. Server WC32/final World Championship 32 Final 6/20/2020
1. Is before chess computers could be any help with ICCF chess. 2. Is the last WC final to be completed, with the strongest chess computer help possible from the year 2020.
The results are so far are striking and stark between the 2 tournaments. As to the players ICCF indicated strength. I will post the results when the first 2 WC finals have been analyzed.
But I can say with 100% confidence from the results so far. The below statement of fact is absolutely FALSE!
"If you believe Stockfish plays better than ICCF players, then enter an ICCF tournament and play the moves Stockfish indicates. You will lose a lot. Those ICCF grandmasters became ICCF grandmasters because they play much better than John Doe + Stockfish."
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Uri Blass
Posts : 207 Join date : 2020-11-28
Subject: Re: ICCF Grandmasters. Sun Dec 25, 2022 2:16 am
mwyoung wrote:
Uri Blass wrote:
mwyoung wrote:
How strong are ICCF grandmasters? The very best ICCF players that can compete for the ICCF world championship. And yes, I know computers are allowed as aids.
1. ICCF Grandmasters are much stronger then chess engines.
2. ICCF Grandmaster are slightly stronger then chess engines.
3. ICCF Grandmasters are the same strength as chess engines.
4. ICCF Grandmasters are weaker then chess engines.
Thank you for any opinions.
Have a marry Christmas, and a happy New Year!
I am an ICCF Grandmaster I choose 4 because ICCF Grandmasters can make clerical errors that engines do not do.
I think that many years ago when I quit correspondence chess I was not stronger than chess engines with strong hardware Even 10 years ago only in very rare cases I found stronger moves than the move the engine suggested.
I did not play correspondence chess after 2015 and I consider the following game as my best game when I found some good idea that the engine did not suggest.
Thanks Uri, I have a question, Is your GM title affiliated with Fide? Or is ICCF not governed by Fide.
And I have both computers looking at the first 2 ICCF WC championships to be analyzed.
1. Postal WC11/F WC11/World Championship 11 Final 3/1/1983 2. Server WC32/final World Championship 32 Final 6/20/2020
1. Is before chess computers could be any help with ICCF chess. 2. Is the last WC final to be completed, with the strongest chess computer help possible from from the year 2020.
The results are so far are striking and stark between the 2 tournaments. As to the players ICCF indicated strength. I will post the results when the first 2 WC finals have been analyzed.
But I can say with 100% confidence from the results so far. The below statement of fact is absolutely FALSE!
"If you believe Stockfish plays better than ICCF players, then enter an ICCF tournament and play the moves Stockfish indicates. You will lose a lot. Those ICCF grandmasters became ICCF grandmasters because they play much better than John Doe + Stockfish."
My ICCF GM title is only by the ICCF chess organization and not by Fide.
I also can say with 100% confidence that even in the time of Rybka you could usually get a draw against ICCF GM's only by following rybka's move(assuming you gave it hours to search for every move).
In the last years I played correspondence chess I tried to use engines in analyzing of different lines in order to find better moves than the top engines but I usually failed and did it only to get maybe half point more in 10 games for cases that I do not fail.
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Uri Blass
Posts : 207 Join date : 2020-11-28
Subject: Re: ICCF Grandmasters. Sun Dec 25, 2022 2:31 am
I can add that I became ICCF GM mainly because I used my computer for more time relative to the opponents and it is not because I had top hardware but because I usually did not play in more than one tournament in the same time so I could give my computer more time to analyze.
I guess the reason that I could win a game against the ICCF world champion(the game I considered my best game) also because most of his computer time went to analyzing his world championship games and he did not devote enough computer time for the game against me.
I was not sure at the time of playing the game what was his losing mistake. I analyze the game again now and it seems that the losing mistake is in the following position
3r4/6bk/R6p/3Bp2P/4P1N1/p5P1/5PK1/r7 b - - 12 42
He played Rc8 that is losing when Re8 was the only move to draw the game. I am not sure about it and did not spend a lot of time in analyzing and it may be interesting if I am right and if it was possible to find the right move with the software of the time of the game in case of using enough time.
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Ozymandias
Posts : 622 Join date : 2020-11-23
Subject: Re: ICCF Grandmasters. Sun Dec 25, 2022 7:42 am
Uri Blass wrote:
I choose 4 because ICCF Grandmasters can make clerical errors that engines do not do.
That's the thing, the engine (or HW) might crash, but it will not enter the wrong move. Getting an extra half point in a hundred or a thousand games will be offset (on average) by human blunder.
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mwyoung
Posts : 880 Join date : 2020-11-25 Location : USA
Subject: Re: ICCF Grandmasters. Sun Dec 25, 2022 2:36 pm
Number 4, or 3 is the correct answer. all the ICCF players are just slightly weaker then the chess engines. But since the tournament was started in 2020. And that would makes perfect sense, as the engines in the ICCF WC were just a bit weaker then the chess engine I did the test with, the current version of Stockfish dev from 22/12/21.
Most of the chess engines were weaker by 0.01 centipawn.
That means all the ICCF players used chess engines, and mostly all the same chess engines. A version of stockfish.
Here are the results from Server WC32/final World Championship 32 Final 6/20/2020
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