Calculation versus Intuition

The top computer chess programs (or engines) are much higher rated than the strongest humans. Top chess engines can play some very interesting games. This is a collection of about 40 annotated games from games between the very strong Stockfish and Leela chess engines. Games are from one of their matches in the Top Chess Engine Championship (TCEC). They are annotated by Bill Jordan, a chess coach, Fide Master and national senior champion. Notes are written in the style of notes for games between humans. Games can be played through with or without a board and set. Players of any level can learn from them or they can be played through just for fun.

There are only decisive games. Draws are not included.

To prevent games being repeated, openings are fixed. Each engine plays both white and black in each fixed opening position. Some openings are risky and dubious. In some cases both engines lost when playing one colour.

A wide variety of openings has been selected, including gambits and some leading to highly unbalanced positions.

Stockfish plays good solid chess, relying on a deep and fast search and good positional evaluation. Stockfish represents calculation.

Leela generally plays well strategically, especially for an engine. However it often does not mind sacrificing material for piece activity. Leela searches deeply with it’s Monte Carlo Tree Search, but does not search as many positions as StockFish. The contrast of styles makes for interesting chess. Leela represents intuition.

While Stockfish was the overall winner, Leela won it’s share of games.

Adventures in Correspondence Chess

This is a book about some of my experiences of playing correspondence (also called postal) chess. It was a time when chess by email was new and chess engines were not as strong as they are now. Playing correspondence chess can teach many things. The book includes some games I played when I was a junior, still new to chess.

CC Master Tim Runting wrote in the national correspondence chess magazine: Bill Jordan's winning of the 1995 Australian Championship with 12.5/13 in what was one of the strongest events ever has unfortunately gone unnoticed in the CC world. Although chess engines were around then, I won the event without using a computer. This book includes all my games from the championship.

How to Write a Javascript Engine

There are a number of reasons why you may be interested in how a chess program is written:

• You are learning programming and interested in learning something different.
• You are a programmer who is interesting in developing their programming experience.
• You are a chess enthusiast and would like to improve your chess by learning how chess programs work.
• You are interested in developing a chess program and playing against it.
• You are interested in developing a chess program and having it play other engines.
• You do need to be an expert programmer to understand this book. The code is written as simply as possible. The code is designed to be simple even for intermediate and even novice programmers.

If you are not a programmer, but am interested in chess, this book may be of interest.

The book includes annotation of the source code for a complete chess engine the author has developed as a teaching tool. The complete source code is available at GitHub. The program can be edited with any text editor and run on a web page. You can alter the code and see if you can make it stronger.

The program is a derivative of my program referred to in my earlier book How to Write a BitBoard Chess Engine.

The engine is strong enough to beat most social players.

Features of the engine include:

• It can play a human or itself.
• It has the ability to load positions.
• It is reasonably fast.
• It displays the best line of play for both sides.
• Detects checkmate.
• Detects draws by repetition, 50 move rule, stalemate or reduction of material.

Evaluation

The engine evaluates elements of a position including:

• Material.
• Piece position.
• King safety.
• Pawn structure.
• Passed pawns etc

Search

The engine uses a standard alpha-beta minimax search including:

• Cut offs.
• Move ordering.
• History moves,
• Hash tables.
• Extensions.
• Reductions.
• Capture search.
• And much more…

My other books on computer chess include How to Write a Chess Program, The Joy of Chess Programming, How to Write a Bitboard chess Engine and Think Like a Computer.

How to Write a BitBoard Chess Engine

Introduction
There are a number of reasons why you may be interested in how a chess program is written:

• You are learning programming and interested in learning something different.
• You are a programmer who is interesting in developing their programming experience.
• You are a chess enthusiast and would like to improve your chess by learning how chess programs work.
• You are interested in developing a chess program and playing against it.
• You are interested in developing a chess program and having it play other engines.

You do need to be an expert programmer to understand this book. The code is written as simply as possible. The code is designed to be simple even for intermediate and even novice programmers.

If you are not a programmer, but am interested in chess, this book may be of interest.

The book includes annotation of the source code for a complete chess engine the author has developed as a teaching tool. The complete source code is available at GitHub. The program can be compiled using a freely downloadable compiler. You can alter the code and see if you can make it stronger.

The program is a derivative of my program referred to in my earlier book How to Write a Chess Program, which did not use bitboards. The book explains how bitboards work and some of the many ways they can be useful in programming. The bitboard version runs considerably faster and is consequently stronger.

Alternatively you can simply download the exe file and run the program.

The engine is strong enough to beat most social players.

Features of the engine include:

• The ability to load positions.
• The ability to play in chess engine tournaments, with programs such as Arena.
• Its very fast.
• It displays the best line of play for both sides.
• Detects checkmate.
• Detects draws by repetition, 50 move rule, stalemate or reduction of material.

Evaluation

The engine evaluates elements of a position including:

• Material.
• Piece position.
• King safety.
• Pawn structure.
• Passed pawns etc

Search

The engine uses a standard alpha-beta minimax search including:

• Cut offs.
• Move ordering.
• History moves,
• Hash tables.
• Extensions.
• Reductions.
• Capture search.

And much more…

My other books on computer chess include How to Write a Chess Program, The Joy of Chess Programming and Think Like a Computer.

Tactics Move by Move Books 1-5

This is a series of 5 puzzle books. There are different levels of difficulty. Most puzzle books give a position and then a line of play as the answer. This is different in that you need to find each move of the answer, move by move. Note that Look Inside removes page breaks, the full Kindle version has page breaks before moves are shown.  

Why learn tactics?
The most important skill in chess is tactical skill. The stronger the player, the faster they can see tactics. There is a good correlation between how quickly a player sees tactics and their rating. There are several ways in which tactics help your Chess skill.

• You can checkmate, win material, queen a pawn or draw a weaker position with tactics.
• Seeing your opponent's tactics helps prevent them from happening.
• You learn to recognise positions that are tactically weak.
• You learn to recognise positions that are tactically strong.

I am an experienced Chess master and Chess coach. I have read many tactics books, and grew up on books like Fred Reinfeld's 1001 Checkmates and 1001 Winning Sacrifices. All the strong players I knew in those days had worked through quite a few tactical puzzles.

Move by Move
You are only expected to find one move at a time, just like in a real game. This is different from most puzzle books where you are given an entire line of play as the answer.

Order of Difficulty
Positions at the start of Book 1 are suitable for novices, while positions in Book 5 are challenging enough for strong club players.

Avoiding Blunders
A point has been made you may only have a few tactical opportunities per game. However, almost every move you have the chance of making a tactical blunder. Tactical skill is invaluable in checking whether a move is safe or not, before you play it!                  
How difficult should positions be?
Easy positions means you will get through more positions and become familiar with more themes. Difficult positions helps develop the ability to calculate variations in complicated positions. I prefer the first approach based on my coaching experience. It's the easier and more efficient approach.

Comments about notes
Here are explanations for some of the notes. Mating on the file or mates on the file, typically mean it will be mate soon after one or more useless blocking moves. The same applies to mating on the rank or diagonal.

A contact check is when a piece is one square away from the king. If the checking piece is defended a contact check is often strong. Queen contact checks tend to be especially strong.

A discovered check often wins material.

A double check forces the king to move.

Notes sometimes refer to tactical devices such as pins, skewers etc. There is more information about tactical ideas in my book Tactical Patterns Made Easy.

The notes are written are in a way to demonstrate how different types of moves fit together.

Enjoy the positions and have fun!

Other Books
You can view my author page billjordanchess on Amazon. Some of my other books include :

• Chess Basics Made Easy.
• Chess Concepts Made Easy.
• Tactical Patterns Made Easy.
• Opening Moves Made Easy.
• Opening Strategy Made Easy.
• How to Write a Chess Program and other books on computer chess.
• Optimise your Chess Thinking.
• Play Fast, Positionally and Accurately.
• A series called Tactics Move by Move.
• A series called Endgames Made Easy.
• A series called Play Like a World Champion.

     

Play Fast, Positionally and Accurately

When I played in the World Junior, I met International Master David Strauss He was the second of US player Larry Christiansen, who came second in the event. David Strauss gave me this advice. Play fast, play positionally and analyse accurately. What did this mean?

Play Fast

This does not not mean to play so fast that you make silly mistakes. It means you play fast enough to avoid getting very short of time. Playing fast and soundly puts pressure on a slower moving opponent. Playing fast may mean you play more intuitively than otherwise. Play Positionally Playing positionally does not mean always playing timidly or cautiously. It means having a sound positional basis for your moves, regardless of whether the position is quiet or wild.

• Keeping your king safe.
• Placing your pieces on good squares.
• Taking the pawn structure into account.
• Making good exchanges.
• Aiming for good endgames.
• Analyse Accurately.

There are some good intuitive positional players who make errors because they don’t analyse (or calculate) enough when needed. Accurate calculation helps avoid tactical errors. Combining These Combining playing fast, playing positionally and analysing accurately together helps you bring out your best. This book includes 25 annotated games.

I have used some of my own games. This makes it a little different from most chess books.

It is unlikely that you have seen the games before (unless you were one of the players)! I know what I was thinking and feeling during the games. There is very little computer analysis, which can be overwhelming. The focus is more on why moves were played, not what was missed. There are good moves and not so good moves. Games may fluctuate. One has to play the move that creates the best chances.

Games

Games were played in State Championships over the last 3 years. Each championship was a ten player round robin. The time limit was 90 minutes for the game plus a 30 second increment per move. There is a wide variety of openings played and types of middlegame and endgame positions.

I believe you will find the games interesting and instructive.

Enjoy!

Bill Jordan Chess Facebook Page

I have created a new Facebook page to enable people interested in my chess books to connect with me and each other. The page is called Bill Jordan Chess and the page is at Bill Jordan Chess. It is early days yet and I am still learning about setting up a Facebook page.