UAPA 2015 Conflict

Yours Truly will NOT give any statement on the UAPA 2015 affair for lack of information. You can read on Didukh's blog, however, what he writes about it.

http://didok.moyblog.net/2016/01/28/uapa-2015/

As a disclosure, Yours Truly was contacted by Peter Krug a few days ago about this, Krug claims that the UAPA has (via Garcia from what I understood) rejected his award for reasons within the award itself, although no technical error has happened. Rather Krug decided to award too few studies to the UAPA taste.

We would like people to remain calm here. Possibly a neutral investigation, led by officials (WFCC) would be necessary.

UPDATE, 8 February 2016: The official award is now available here:
 http://www.problemistasajedrez.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Provisional-Award-UAPA-2015.pdf

AI pioneer Marvin Minsky (9.viii.1927 - 24.i.2016)

As Wikipedia tells, the AI pioneer Marvin Minsky (of whom Martin Minski once told me he wasn't aware of his almost name-doppelganger) has died at the age of 88. His theories are highly disputed, and his interesting work on AI development make him a great pioneer, albeit an unheard prophet, on the subject of the creation of true artificial intelligence.

Now I personally have not read any of his literature, but I am well aware of the great inflence he held. Indeed, AI philosophy is a very young part of philosophy that might as well have been founded by him (although Asimov's three laws presented in the science fiction books might be the most famous philosophical idea).

Of course, my personal belief is that the human brain is not producing any consciousness but rather just acting as a translator, just like a radio translates impulses into sound. The theory that was widely publicized by Pim van Lommel makes Minsky's theory of brain agents obsolete insofar, but on the other hand it might support the notion that a well developed artificial brain could indeed give host to a human consciousness. But can consciousness be artificially created? Probably not, but a good machine might serve as a vessel, just as the human body does.

Of course, the above linked Wikipedia article does more justice, listing also some of his inventions. Here is the permalink of it as I write.

WCCI judges to be supervised

After the high number of Russian and Ukrainian judges at the WCCI was mentioned in the MatPlus forum, the WFCC has made a decision to not let any rumors of any kind of unneutrality spread.

(8) Posted by Harry Fougiaxis [Monday, Jan 18, 2016 09:08]
We have recently decided that *ALL* WCCI judges should send the spreadsheets with their points not only to the director, but simultaneously also to the members of the supervising panel and to the WFCC president.

Thsi is a very good decision that strengthens the trust of the public into the WFCC procedures, especially as it had to fight with such allegations of not preventing maljudgement several years ago when in international contests judges of one country gave no points and no explanation to compositions from another country, leading to the biggest scandal in the history of the organisation (then named PCCC).


This blog entry shall also serve as a final reminder that the period for sending compositions to the WCCI ends tomorrow. See the announcement and news here.

A few Youtube videos about endgame studies

Here are a few Youtube videos with lectures of endgame studies. The V. Akobian lectures are aimed at beginners of the game, each around 55 minutes long. Those who will usually read the blog can skip them.

 The other two lectures are more about artistic endgames, where of course Timman stands out as a prolific composer himself. The Jan Timman lecture is around 1:30 hours long. Jen Shahade (pronounced Shuh-uh-dee, not Shuh-hate, as can be seen in her second video) teaches for around 35 minutes each. Enjoy!

(Thanks to Politiken Cup and the St. Louis Chess Club / Scholastic Center for putting the videos online!)

Varuzhan Akobian on Endgame Studies (03.iv.2013)

Varuzhian Akobian on Endgame Studies for Beginners (07.iii.2013)

Jan Timman on Endgame Studies by himself and Steffen Slumstrup Nielsen, lecture at Politiken Cup 2015

Jen "USCF" Shahade on Endgame Studies (27.i.2015)

Jen Shahade on artistic Endgame Studies (30.x.2013)

WCCC 2016 website is up

The Serbian Chess Problem Federation has put the website of WCCC 2016 online as a subpage of the MatPlus website:
http://wccc2016.matplus.net/index.php

This will most likely be a good opportunity to meet Yours Truly who unfortunately will not participate in the world solving championship due to lack of qualification, but is open for all kinds of fun ventures such as a private study solving. Unfortunately the overall world champion has declined the invitation for such a 1 on 1 exhibition match because of time constraints. Send any crazy ideas or an application for such a match to Yours Truly under the known e-mail address SH - Schach at GMX dot EU (letters can be small or big, remove the empty spaces but keep the minus sign).

Studies and book of Yours Truly on ARVES

On the newly designed website of ARVES the editor Peter Boll has kindly agreed to publish a selection of 23 studies and the book of Yours Truly (under Latest News, alternatively from the linked Dropbox of Y.T.). Unfortunately the photo is very outdated (it is from around 2007), but no newer one is available, possibly after the WCCC a new one can be submitted.

Chess composition news (9 January 2016 edition)

Here's a few news about recent chess composition activities:

Yehuda Hoch 70 JT
Ofer Comay sent me an e-mail that the Variantim 2016 tourney will also serve as the birthday tourney Yehuda Hoch 70 JT. Please send your originals to Ofer Comay at his gmail.com address (first name and last name together without any point in the middle at gmail.com). As I checked for this article, the official website has no announcement yet but builds up an archive of old issues of Haproblemai and Variantim.

Didukh's pseudonyms
In the comments on his always interesting blog, Sergiy Didukh has admitted to using two pseudonyms. The article is to be found here, with thanks to Martin Minski for showing it to me. Yours Truly is interested if the pseudonym himself once used will also be found out eventually.

hhdbv
The endgame study collector Harold van der Heijden has published the fifth version of his database, now containing a total of 85,619 entries, 164 of them bear the name of Yours Truly. The internet address to order the database (download only, 14 MB, PGN format) is http://hhdbv.nl/ and the price of 50 Euro that, while looking steep at first, are made up for by the huge content. For hhdbiv owners, there are over 9000 new studies - literally, as it had 76,132 entries. Most of the year 2015 is covered, seeing as the database was issued in December (the previous one was of October 2010). For those who decide to wait, the next version is scheduled for 2020, which Yours Truly expects to be around the same price, unless the Euro breaks apart. (As a full disclosure, Yours Truly received as EG editor a free database download. The EG Archive has the issues 1 to 152 for download but those were long before he became an editor.)

Study of the Year 2014 entries
The entries for the annual contest Study of the Year for the year 2014 are online. The contest does not want to show the best study, but rather the one most suitable for the general chess public. In the past, we saw easily accessible studies without deep analysis but with a memorable ending or idea as the winner, suggesting that this time again analytical endgames would be without a chance - rightfully so, as they lack appeal to newcomers, even if they might importantly contribute to the theory.

EDIT, 14 January 2016: I found all previous "Study of the Year" winners on Sergiy Didukh's blog, with PGN.
Article on Didukh's blog in Russian