Kerangali wrote on 01/09/23 at 09:22:14:

That's just a different way of writing engine. Engines are already a type of AI.

If there is performance gain to be had by having some "external" process that manages things like pruning, contempt, choice of engine, choice of opening book, choice of time to invest etc, using "AI" or whatever -- then that will be included in engines.

If centaur vs centaur play is stalled, there remains:
- centaur vs engine, to see when human input is no longer necessary
- cylons (aka toasters) would be AI + engine, the AI emulating the human decision-making part. Maybe there's more in this area than pruning and contempt. There's enough time in CC to make AI time irrelevant, and they could be made gracious enough not to play dead. It would be interesting if some day cylons were better than engines.

Hi.
Confused_by_Theory wrote on 01/08/23 at 19:53:37:

brabo wrote on 01/08/23 at 20:06:30:

For an otb player I can certainly see how the increased level of correspondence games these days makes for good study. That still doesn't really make the underlying situation of a competitive discipline dying not sad though.

To expand a bit on my inital post. The 100% draws seems an indication that a traditional and well liked form of competition is effectively dead. On some lower level, due to player inability and delay in adopting best methods, it will still be viable for some time of course. Seeing 100% draws at the top somewhat indicates that level is going to be a long way down though. There is also very little to say lower rated players won't start to draw more as well, as they get more and more information from players drawing at the top. The total point splitting at the top also indicates no one there is in any way managing to break the draw trend at all currently. I'm still hoping for this kind of thing to happen, even if only on a limited scale, but obviously not. Plus it's seems somewhat depressing that the players who have the most time and experience in adding human input to the creative process in chess are A) either not able to make their human input impactful at all or B) have all found a level of human input to be at that is enough to draw the game every single time. Neither case sort of incentivises reaching new heights in this regard or even trying to get better at it.

Have a nice day.

Hi.

Sad news

Regards.
/CbT

Seems the highest, purest form of chess has been reduced to reinventing sitzfleisch; what a depressing spectacle.

About Triple block in one such games one opponent used about 200 bank days on a draw offer before accepting it. I will not name the player. Many players, no matter rating, often delays drawish endgames no matter of time control. But that behavior is more common the higher rated the player are and sometimes the delay is only to next rating period and they offer a draw.

@trw: Sorry, i played corr chess maybe 25yr ago by snail mail, and the time sytem was awful. Something like base 10 days/move + 1 week mail allowance/move + byes + holidays + travel etc, games could easily last 2 years or more. I thought this system survived in modern days despite everyone using computers.

Now that snail mail is gone, what is the current time standard for ICCF norm events ? 

In my ancient time, it was common for corr players to run 30 or 40 games in parallel. Now there could be a tendancy to run say 80 games and let computer handle the more drawish ones, leading to slow draws played by computer vs computer.