What sort of mental skills/gifts are basic to becoming a good/great chess player?

He-he … if you achieve something you’re even slightly proud of, you can take a screenshot on the tablet by holding down the “volume down” and “power” buttons at the same time … :slight_smile:

I was taking back moves and retrying a few things, so this is not exactly my original checkmate, but close (in 29 moves total). Notice, however, that at this low level of play, Shredder has a look-ahead depth of just 1. That means it essentially has no strategy – it simply makes the best possible move it knows how at each board position without regard for how it will play out further down. With deeper look-aheads, when you respond it essentially says, “Ha! I anticipated that, and this is how I planned to answer …”.

I note also that it has the grace to offer to resign when it knows its position is hopeless, but gives you the option to play to the bitter end. Being polite, I don’t think it ever suggests that YOU should resign, but when that little dial is pinned to the opposite of your side, it’s a good hint that you should!

And when you DO resign, Shredder politely says, “Thank you.” :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m sure that any half-decent chess player would regard that checkmate as laughably inelegant overkill, and achieved only by crippling the program to a low level of play. :nerd_face:

Incidentally, I don’t know about the Android version of Shredder, but the PC version, much like a human player, is always thinking, even when it’s the opponent’s turn. It uses the time to anticipate the opponent’s likely moves, and is already figuring out counter-moves while the opponent is still pondering his move. I thought that was a cool feature. Would not have been so cool back in the days of MacHack, when computer time was metered and on the PDP-10 timesharing system you were billed for actual CPU execution time. Of course in the university environment that was mostly “funny money”, but there was a finite amount of it. Now there is more computer power in a phone or tablet than in an entire PDP-10 mainframe. Apologies for going way off topic here, but computer chess programs have fascinated me since childhood.

This is my thread, and I like you, so you can veer off topic a bit if you want to. :dog:

In the episode of Endeavour and I referred to, they use the computer to search for an address. They load the voter rolls literally on rolls of tape and then ask for a name. It takes hours for the computer to come up with the answer. That show is set in the mid-60s when I started college. Now we can search google for anything and get the results virtually instantaneously. That is a LOT of change in a very short time. I can never get used to the wonder of it.

Holy shit, lookit what I just did in 15 moves!! :grinning:

I’m gonna have to crank that sucker up to a higher level of play pretty soon!

OK, I promise to stop posting my little victories, but this one was really unusual for me!

It gave me an amazing new rating which is completely unrealistic, as this was just dumb luck!

Not at all. This is an appropriate place to share them. :+1:t4:

Paper Clip Man is telling me to “encourage everyone to get involved in the conversation.” :roll_eyes: And that if I want to continue with this particular user we should get a room. Buzz off, Discourse. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Here’s an entertaining game I played v Shredder (I was White):

If you click on the link, you can replay the game.

@glee

Can you confirm or correct something for me? I’ve always heard that chess problems (FIDE chess) are not valuable for playing the game, although they do, of course, follow the rules of the game; they’re artistic puzzle constructions. On the other hand, Shogi, Janggi, and Xiangqi problems are either from real games or are positions that are likely to occur in real games. What’s the scoop on that?

In looking at that last game again, it’s obvious that black’s last move, Q/d6-g6, was an absolutely terrible blunder. Lest one conclude that Shredder is a poor chess program, I’ll say again that it’s been well established that this is absolutely not the case. Beating MacHack was a hell of an achievement, IMO, and beating it even at tournament mode settings was even more impressive! Shredder is just very sensitive to playing skill settings, all the more so because at novice settings it’s designed to deliberately make novice-like mistakes.

Even as a poor chess player myself (and any good player is welcome to correct any silliness I may say here) it’s clear that if black’s queen had been left at d6, the fatal knight check would not have been possible. Furthermore, if instead black had moved up the f pawn, it would have attacked the white bishop and boxed it in, rendering it pretty much useless and cutting off its control of that long diagonal. I’m sure that Shredder would have done something like that, or even better, at slightly higher settings.

Out of curiosity, do you remember what the Shredder settings were? I’m not sure if Shredder on different platforms has the same kind of setting controls. I seem to recall the PC version being quite different than the Android version. In fact I think there are multiple editions of the PC version.

When I was a kid, I also had a chess computer that would make deliberate mistakes on the lower difficulty settings (which I never got past). It was a standalone Radio Shack device, so I don’t know what engine it was using under the hood. I once beat it in 8 moves, using what was basically the Fool’s Mate plus some irrelevant decorative moves.

I had one of those, too (not Radio Shack, but sounds like the same idea). This was about the same era as the PDP-10 and MacHack, and I found the latter much, much more fun to play. If I lost against the standalone machine, it would be because I had made an obvious stupid mistake. But MacHack had an almost human-like creative intelligence. To me it was like playing a chess master. As you probably know, MacHack came out of the predecessor of the MIT AI Lab.

Monty,

Chess problems are certainly artistic - the ‘poetry’ of chess, so to speak.
Usually White has a large advantage in pieces and Black would have resigned long ago. The challenge is to checkmate as quickly as possible.
I enjoy solving them, but I wouldn’t say it helped my over-the-board chess much.

As mentioned earlier, newspapers and magazines usually give the problem type ‘White to play and mate in 2 moves’. This is sensible, since readers may not be that keen on chess problems…

In specialist chess problem magazines, there are a lot of variations. For example:

  • White to play and mate in 3/4/5 or even longer
  • White and Black work together to mate Black quickly (= ‘helpmate’ - and White will usually have few pieces
  • White forces Black to give checkmate (= ‘selfmate’ - and the White King will be in a lot of danger!)
  • there are also problems with new chess pieces (exotically names like ‘Grasshopper’ and ‘Nightrider’)

Now there are many regular chess positions that have a unique and worthwhile solution. These are called studies and any player would benefit from solving them.

(If anyone wants examples of the above, do ask. :slightly_smiling_face:
I’m a bit nervous about posting such positions, since the board software just told me I was responsible for over 25% of the posts in the thread and I should ‘invite more posters in’ - whatever that means! :fearful: )

Just ignore it. It’s a software “feature” that no one here likes, but there’s apparently no way to turn it off.

I got a free version of Shredder from here:

Shredder Chess

I’m playing it on medium level.

I know that the full version of Shredder is jolly strong!

Phew! Thanks. :sunglasses:

(Oh look, board software - yet another post by me in this thread. :stuck_out_tongue: )

“Never” is a strong word - the highest I’ve seen is a “mate in 104”. But yes, it took ‘contrived’ to new heights! I see reading on that glee has already trumped this.

My chess brain wasn’t quite good enough to get there without playing it out on a board, but at move 8 I went 8…h2 - I assume in that case, White can play 9. Qh8 and then after 9…Kg2, approach the Black King with checks in a similar manner to the above. If Black tries to hide the King on h1, hoping for stalemate, White can check on a1 and then approach horizontally instead - eventually, Black will no longer be able to go to h1 due to Qf1 mate, and White gets the Queen to f1 which prevents the Black promotion forever - he can then march his King over to pick up the pawn and win. Do I have that right?

And, having written out the above, I see from Chessic Sense’s earlier post that I missed the key move of 9. Kc7, controlling the g2 and h1 squares immediately. Does my inferior alternative of Qh8 still win as I described?

You’re nearly right - and the analysis is instructive. :sunglasses:

After 8. a8=Q h2? is a simpler loss than 8. … Kg2.
White moves his King (e.g. to b6 or c7) and Black is powerless to stop 10. Qh1. The Black King cannot approach the White Queen and White simply brings his King over and wins the Black pawn.

However after 8. …h2? 9. Qh8?? is only a draw. :fearful:
Whenever White checks on the g-file, Black plays Kh1 and White must move his Queen to avoid stalemate.
If White checks from the horizontal, the Black King can ‘hang around’ g2 and g1 and the White Queen is powerless to make progress.

Thank you - this is the part I somehow missed. I would like to think that given this position in a game, I would play the first few moves, as I saw (as in Chessic Sense’s analysis) that this was the best chance to queen ahead of Black. Then once the queen is on a8 I might spot that moving my king would open the line for the queen that blocks the Black king and win (if they played 8…h2).

Ironically, I should also win with the better move of 8…Kg2, as then playing the discovered check is obvious, and after that I would naturally look for a line involving checks and moving the queen closer.

Ye, ignore it. I consider it Discourse’s answer to Microsoft’s hated Paper Clip Man. Just tell him to take a hike or you’ll straighten him out.