Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Most popular time controls on lichess
Have you ever wondered which time controls were the most popular online? I sometimes do, because it's sometimes more difficult to get a game with certain time controls than others (looking at you, classical games!). It can be useful to know the relative frequency of time controls when planning on an online game.
TLDR: Bullet and Blitz reign supreme, longer time controls less popular
As you could expect, Bullet and Blitz games are more common than longer games (like Rapid and Classical). In fact, Rapid and Classical games represent approximately only 15% of the most popular time controls, while Bullet and Blitz represent about 79% of all games (UltraBullet accounts for 1% of the games; the remaining 5% least popular time controls contain a mix of time controls and are not shown here):
As can be seen from this graph, the most common time control is 1 minute per side with no increment (1+0; 25% of all games), followed by two Blitz time controls (in light green), 3+0 (18% of games) and 5+0 (17% of games). The only Rapid time control (in yellow) that made the list is the 10-minute game (10+0; 11% of games), while the only Classical time control (in red) that made the list is 15+15 (4% of games). UltraBullet remains largely unpopular, with the 15-second game accounting for less than 1% of all games.
Methodology
To examine the distribution of time controls in online games, I've used a subset of the games played on lichess in April 2019. There were a total of 33,565,536 games played on lichess that month, and in the interest of saving processing time, I used 2.8M of those games (about 9% of the games played that month, i.e. about 2.5 days of chess games). This means that the percentages above are estimates for April 2019 and not the exact numbers. (In fact, it would be interesting to look at whether preferences for time controls change over the course of the week.)
To parse the PGN file, I've used the library python-chess 0.28.0 in Python 3.6.7 and extracted the "TimeControl" tag for each game.
Remaining Questions
Of course, this simple analysis points to more questions than answers. Do preferences for time controls vary over the course of the week? Perhaps more interestingly, do preferences vary by websites? For example, if someone is interested in playing a longer time-control game, should they search for it on lichess or would they do well to look elsewhere? (I doubt it, but it remains to be investigated.)
Also, because Rapid and Classical games take more time to play out than Bullet and Blitz games, it's possible that the most time playing chess (as opposed to the number of games) is actually spent playing longer time-control games. But I haven't made those calculations...
TLDR: Bullet and Blitz reign supreme, longer time controls less popular
As you could expect, Bullet and Blitz games are more common than longer games (like Rapid and Classical). In fact, Rapid and Classical games represent approximately only 15% of the most popular time controls, while Bullet and Blitz represent about 79% of all games (UltraBullet accounts for 1% of the games; the remaining 5% least popular time controls contain a mix of time controls and are not shown here):
As can be seen from this graph, the most common time control is 1 minute per side with no increment (1+0; 25% of all games), followed by two Blitz time controls (in light green), 3+0 (18% of games) and 5+0 (17% of games). The only Rapid time control (in yellow) that made the list is the 10-minute game (10+0; 11% of games), while the only Classical time control (in red) that made the list is 15+15 (4% of games). UltraBullet remains largely unpopular, with the 15-second game accounting for less than 1% of all games.
Methodology
To examine the distribution of time controls in online games, I've used a subset of the games played on lichess in April 2019. There were a total of 33,565,536 games played on lichess that month, and in the interest of saving processing time, I used 2.8M of those games (about 9% of the games played that month, i.e. about 2.5 days of chess games). This means that the percentages above are estimates for April 2019 and not the exact numbers. (In fact, it would be interesting to look at whether preferences for time controls change over the course of the week.)
To parse the PGN file, I've used the library python-chess 0.28.0 in Python 3.6.7 and extracted the "TimeControl" tag for each game.
Remaining Questions
Of course, this simple analysis points to more questions than answers. Do preferences for time controls vary over the course of the week? Perhaps more interestingly, do preferences vary by websites? For example, if someone is interested in playing a longer time-control game, should they search for it on lichess or would they do well to look elsewhere? (I doubt it, but it remains to be investigated.)
Also, because Rapid and Classical games take more time to play out than Bullet and Blitz games, it's possible that the most time playing chess (as opposed to the number of games) is actually spent playing longer time-control games. But I haven't made those calculations...
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Chess960
Chess960 is a super fun chess variant where the starting position of the pieces on the back rank is randomized (though still symmetrical). It gets its name from the fact that there are 960 distinct starting positions that can arise from the randomization of the back rank. Chess960 is also known as Fischer Random Chess, since Bobby Fischer is the one who invented this variant. The main purpose is to steer away from the modern game, which is based a lot on memorization of opening theory, and to give way to strategic creativity.
Rules for Starting Positions
According to our good friend Wikipedia, there are two restrictions for the starting position, both of which seem rather obvious: the bishops must be on opposite-color squares, and the king must be placed between the rooks.
Castling
I find castling a bit tricky in Chess960. The confusing thing about castling in Chess960 is that even though the king and rooks are typically not in their standard position, the rules for castling remain pretty much the same as in standard chess, which can lead to weird stuff--sometimes you can even castle and have only one of the two pieces change positions, or have the king and rook move many squares at once!
The key thing to remember when castling in Chess960 is that the resulting king and rook position is exactly the same as in standard chess. This means that castling a-side (as it's called in Chess960) leads to the king sitting on c1 (or c8) and the a-side rook sitting on d1 (or d8), while castling h-side leads to the king sitting on g1 (or g8) and the h-side rook sitting on f1 (or f8). As in standard chess, you cannot castle if a square in the king's path is attacked or occupied by a piece, or if the destination square for the king or rook is occupied by a piece. Note that just like in standard chess, a-side castling is notated O-O-O, and h-side castling is notated O-O.
I suppose the mechanics for castling online depends on the specific website, but on lichess, you can castle in Chess960 by dragging the king to the rook with which it wants to trade sides. Here's an example game in which I tried to castle but it all went wrong: rather than dragging the king to the rook, I dragged the king to its intended destination square, which was interpreted as a normal king move. On move 5, I tried castling a-side, but I played 5. Kc1?:
Stockfish evaluates the position has having gone from about +0.5 (a half-pawn advantage for White) to about -1.7 (nearly a two-pawn disadvantage for White!) after 5. Kc1. In fact, following this mishap, the rook on a1 didn't get to enter the game until move 32:
Popularity
On December 16, Chess960 was the most popular of non-standard chess variants on lichess, even ahead of UltraBullet, which is standard chess with an extremely fast time control. This table shows the number of people who played each variant this week:
It's clear that non-standard chess variants are much less popular than standard chess variants (which vary only in their time controls), but Chess960 fares well relative to other non-standard variants.
Seeing Chess960 in Action
If you want to see Chess960 in action, you can take a look at the top-rated Chess960 game on lichess being played right now on LichessTV.
You can also take a look at my most recent stream on Twitch, in which I played the daily Chess960 tournament (5-minute games)... I played a total of 9 games and finished 9th (win rate = 56%, performance = 1880):
Rules for Starting Positions
According to our good friend Wikipedia, there are two restrictions for the starting position, both of which seem rather obvious: the bishops must be on opposite-color squares, and the king must be placed between the rooks.
Castling
I find castling a bit tricky in Chess960. The confusing thing about castling in Chess960 is that even though the king and rooks are typically not in their standard position, the rules for castling remain pretty much the same as in standard chess, which can lead to weird stuff--sometimes you can even castle and have only one of the two pieces change positions, or have the king and rook move many squares at once!
The key thing to remember when castling in Chess960 is that the resulting king and rook position is exactly the same as in standard chess. This means that castling a-side (as it's called in Chess960) leads to the king sitting on c1 (or c8) and the a-side rook sitting on d1 (or d8), while castling h-side leads to the king sitting on g1 (or g8) and the h-side rook sitting on f1 (or f8). As in standard chess, you cannot castle if a square in the king's path is attacked or occupied by a piece, or if the destination square for the king or rook is occupied by a piece. Note that just like in standard chess, a-side castling is notated O-O-O, and h-side castling is notated O-O.
I suppose the mechanics for castling online depends on the specific website, but on lichess, you can castle in Chess960 by dragging the king to the rook with which it wants to trade sides. Here's an example game in which I tried to castle but it all went wrong: rather than dragging the king to the rook, I dragged the king to its intended destination square, which was interpreted as a normal king move. On move 5, I tried castling a-side, but I played 5. Kc1?:
Stockfish evaluates the position has having gone from about +0.5 (a half-pawn advantage for White) to about -1.7 (nearly a two-pawn disadvantage for White!) after 5. Kc1. In fact, following this mishap, the rook on a1 didn't get to enter the game until move 32:
Popularity
On December 16, Chess960 was the most popular of non-standard chess variants on lichess, even ahead of UltraBullet, which is standard chess with an extremely fast time control. This table shows the number of people who played each variant this week:
It's clear that non-standard chess variants are much less popular than standard chess variants (which vary only in their time controls), but Chess960 fares well relative to other non-standard variants.
Seeing Chess960 in Action
If you want to see Chess960 in action, you can take a look at the top-rated Chess960 game on lichess being played right now on LichessTV.
You can also take a look at my most recent stream on Twitch, in which I played the daily Chess960 tournament (5-minute games)... I played a total of 9 games and finished 9th (win rate = 56%, performance = 1880):
Friday, October 6, 2017
Lichess Founder on Cheating
I recently wrote a post on cheating in online chess. I just found a presentation by Thibault Duplessis, the founder of lichess.org, in which he address the issue of cheating on the website (from 17:45 to 24:45 in the video):
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
Cheating in Online Chess
I was wondering: How prevalent is cheating in online chess? More specifically, it would be great to get an estimate of the percentage of games that involve cheating in the form of engine use.
I couldn't get an exact answer to this question, but I think the answer is that it's prevalent enough to be bothered by it. Chess.com even has a private forum dedicated to the discussion of online cheating in chess (you need to submit a request to be admitted into the forum, and there are some restrictions--like having been a member on the site for at least one month--but overall it's easy to gain access). Chess.com also employs two full-time employees whose only task is to research and prevent cheating on that site. Similarly, both lichess and the Internet Chess Club have systems in place to detect cheating (sometimes doing automatic checks while the game is being played).
Five Percent?
The question about cheating prevalence has been asked several times over the years on multiple forums (like here). One user estimated the prevalence at 5%; another user said that a chess.com employee told them that 70% of games involve cheating (that's just hearsay, and 70% does sound pretty implausible). Yet another user said that the prevalence is "considerably higher" than 5% if your rating is high enough (1800+). One lichess user who is a National Master mentions on reddit that looking through his history of games in the classical category (8+ minutes), “about 80% of my losses were to people that subsequently had their accounts closed for cheating”
The 5% figure is one that seems to come back in forum posts. This figure was also mentioned by one of the lichess developers on reddit, 2 years ago:
Miscellaneous Stuff about Cheating in Chess
I couldn't get an exact answer to this question, but I think the answer is that it's prevalent enough to be bothered by it. Chess.com even has a private forum dedicated to the discussion of online cheating in chess (you need to submit a request to be admitted into the forum, and there are some restrictions--like having been a member on the site for at least one month--but overall it's easy to gain access). Chess.com also employs two full-time employees whose only task is to research and prevent cheating on that site. Similarly, both lichess and the Internet Chess Club have systems in place to detect cheating (sometimes doing automatic checks while the game is being played).
Five Percent?
The question about cheating prevalence has been asked several times over the years on multiple forums (like here). One user estimated the prevalence at 5%; another user said that a chess.com employee told them that 70% of games involve cheating (that's just hearsay, and 70% does sound pretty implausible). Yet another user said that the prevalence is "considerably higher" than 5% if your rating is high enough (1800+). One lichess user who is a National Master mentions on reddit that looking through his history of games in the classical category (8+ minutes), “about 80% of my losses were to people that subsequently had their accounts closed for cheating”
The 5% figure is one that seems to come back in forum posts. This figure was also mentioned by one of the lichess developers on reddit, 2 years ago:
About 1.2k accounts are make on lichess each day, and each day some 50 or more get marked (this number is set to increase as our detection system has just become fully operational). So if we assume that all cheaters use new accounts, about 4-5% of new accounts are cheaters. This figure has remained about the same since I started on the site and there were half as many new accounts made each day.
It's far less likely for a cheater to be using an older account, so that figure drops dramatically once they've played a hundred or more games.
Miscellaneous Stuff about Cheating in Chess
- At least one person has proposed a hypothesis test to detect cheating in online chess, and one International Master (also an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo) used statistics on the case of Borislav Ivanov, accused of cheating at the 2012 Zadar Open.
- Wikipedia has an entry for cheating in chess. Among other events recorded there, one grandmaster was stripped of his GM title for cheating, though he was allowed to keep his IM title.
- Chessbase.com has a 5-part series on the history of cheating in chess.
- GM Vladislav Tkachiev shows on YouTube just how easy to cheat with an accomplice using an earpiece in a video called How I Became a Cheater.
- There used to be a user on lichess, who was later banned, with the nickname IMaDirtyCheater, who made it very clear that he was cheating; his profile read:
I cheat, it should be obvious!
Really obvious...
- Some users have written programs to cheat directly from the same window the game is being played on; one such example is shown in a YouTube video on a lichess bullet game (I don't provide the link to the video because the description contains a link to the program, which is freely available on github). The resulting board looks like this, with the move recommended by the engine being indicated through a dark square (starting destination) and red square (ending destination):
My Recent Encounters with Cheaters
I recently started streaming games with longer time controls on Twitch, and as luck would have it, my first 2 games were played against cheaters! (So we're 0 for 2!) Both players were later banned from lichess. I lost both games pretty quickly, and both opponents played their part very fast (adding to the misery). Here are both games, available on my YouTube channel:
Sunday, April 27, 2008
YouTube Phenomenon
The YouTube phenomenon generally refers to the huge amount of videos being posted everyday by plenty of people about plenty of things. But of course, I don't mean it that way here...
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We know what a chess lecture is. For instance, ICC offers some on http://www.chess.fm/ (some don't require your being registered on the ICC). Simply defined, a video chess lecture is a video about chess (an annotated game, the discussion of a specific theme such as the endgame, etc.), in which a player explains or describes something. They most commonly have an educational aim.
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Have you guessed what I am going to talk about yet? Oh, yes, chess lectures on youtube... this time though, it doesn't go through any selection process like there is on ICC. On ICC, the lecturers are either IMs or GMs. It would be senseless to let any random user publish their own little video... Enter youtube. Very few are decently rated -- I saw one FM, one NM and one USCF class A player, but as for the rest, they are not what I could call "rated high enough to make a video chess lecture with an educational aim". Oh, but they do anyway, they do :)
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Some of them are just painful. I will mention a few of them, so that you can bleed with me.
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1) Slattster (http://www.youtube.com/user/slattster)
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There are videos from him in which he is rated in the 800s on FICS. So, I mean, whatever he says, it's to be taken with a grain of salt :) He has now a 1200-something USCF rating... muuuuuch better.
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One nice thing to look at is his videos in which he is commenting a game while playing it, i.e. you get to see what his thought-process looks like, for one; and for two, it means that it is all spontaneous, he didn't prepare his analysis whatsoever. Oh, priceless. Mates-in-2 being missed are awkwardly common, and so are pieces being hung (he sometimes notices it afterwards and says things like "let's see if he'll take it"... of course he'll take it!, you just hung a piece for no reason).
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Not to mention, many of his games are being played on Yahoo! Chess, in the beginners' room... I mean, who plays there?
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2) JRobi (http://www.youtube.com/user/jrobichess)
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Painful too, but in another way. He doesn't do any live games, and you can tell that his analysis are prepared (I won't say "well" prepared, but that's just because he and I don't have the same quality standards for a chess lecture). That gives a much better initial impression: it has been demonstrated (Petty & Wegener, 1998) that the message is more credible when the person speaks fast. And I'll have to admit it, the content is not too bad.
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The main problem is that it comes from a 1400 player. That's for the recent videos; in the oldest, I believe he is rated around 900-1000. He has a great variety of harmful videos: opening analysis, annotated games, endgame studies (for example, the Philidor Position), etc. One particularly irritating series of videos is his "Grandmaster Chess Tactics: Can you spot the line?". I just have one thing to tell him: it's not because it was found in a game between two grandmasters that it is a grandmaster level tactics (pins exist at all levels).
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The guy himself is somewhat irritating. The most frustrating thing is that he calls a game a "match", systematically. A match is a set of games between the same players -- it is not a synonym. His pronunciation of "bishop" and "position" gets on your nerves very quickly too, but what are you gonna do...
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Unfortunately, reinforcement comes from everywhere, since many, many, MANY beginners appreciate his videos. His videos attract an enormous amount of comments, most of them being extremely positive.
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It makes me cry at night.
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3) Chessplayerdan (http://www.youtube.com/user/Chessplayerdan)
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I thank Mother Earth everyday that he only made 4 videos. He is rated 1000 on FICS. Just like Slattster, he made a live game analysis too. Since he was on FICS he had to wait a lot before a game popped up, and it's nice to see him try to fill in the silence during that time.
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Note that if you try to listen to his videos (you shouldn't), you will have to turn your speakers really loud, because that guy doesn't seem to quite get how a microphone works. Oh well.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
PGNMentor.com PGN Library
PGN Mentor is a program "for working with PGN files", but that's not what I am going to talk about here. I didn't try that program, and after a trial you need to order it.
But on their website, they have a huge database of PGN files of various Players, Openings and Events.
- The PGN files with specific players' games are classified in alphabetical order (the first one being Michael Adams and the last one, Vadim Zvjaginsev).
- The PGN files classified by openings are tremendously useful, and they seem to cover virtually all possible openings. They are classified based on the first moves, thus the 5 categories: Modern Queen Pawn (1. d4), Classical Queen Pawn (1. d4 d5), Modern King Pawn (a.k.a. semi-open games; 1. e4), Classical King Pawn (1. e4 e5), and Flank and Unorthodox.
- The PGN files classified by the type of events offer three choices: Tournaments (from 1851 to 2007 (!)), Candidates and Interzonals (from 1948 to 2007), and World Championships (1886-2007).
What's incredibly impressive is the large amout of games in each PGN. For instance, Kasparov.pgn has 1968 games, while SicilianGrandPrix.pgn contains 6616 games!
So here's the address to the page with all the PGN files: http://www.pgnmentor.com/files.html; and this is the address of the PGN Mentor website, where you can download their software: http://www.pgnmentor.com/.
Have fun!
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Chesslive.de
Chesslive.de (http://www.chesslive.de/) is an online database of chess games (Java Applet), provided by Chessbase.com (the creators of the program ChessBase – for more info, just visit their website). What is wonderful with Chesslive, is that it’s immensely large : 4.2+ million games. Moreover, that database is updated weekly, but also includes old, old games (e.g., from the 19th century).
The search is easy : you can search with position, and/or with either one of the players’ names, or both names. In Advanced mode, you can search by year and/or site where the game was held.
You can go through the moves of the game, but also explore variations of your own. You can always go back to the main line when you are done. There is also the great possibility of selecting games from the list of results your research has brought, and seeing them in a PGN notation, just by right-clicking the game in the list and clicking on the button View * as PGN.
But the most amazing thing about Chesslive… oh, the most amazing thing – besides that it’s always easily available on Internet -- … it’s completely free!
You can go through the moves of the game, but also explore variations of your own. You can always go back to the main line when you are done. There is also the great possibility of selecting games from the list of results your research has brought, and seeing them in a PGN notation, just by right-clicking the game in the list and clicking on the button View * as PGN.
But the most amazing thing about Chesslive… oh, the most amazing thing – besides that it’s always easily available on Internet -- … it’s completely free!
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