TheSemiInformativeChessBlog

  Hello Chess Friends! This is my States Collegiate Chess League recap, a chess tournament where colleges compete against each other in four-player teams(online in 15 | 2 rapid games). I registered as an unrated USCF player, and played against multiple strong players online. These are some recaps of week 1 where I played in the U1800 section as an unrated player. The tournament goes like this: Four players on the team each face each and every one of the players, I (as a fourth board unrated), went against the first board, then second, then third, and then fourth, and then so on in each of the matches. And so on, it makes sense. The teams go against each other, and hopefully one of them wins due to point advantages. Week 1   The first week of the States Collegiate was an interesting one. Me and my teammates were all in the zoom meeting, and once they allowed us to challenge one another, the match started. Our roster was a 2141, 1630, 1142, UNR, and the opposing team was 1...

 Hello Chess Friends! In 2017, a chess engine shocked the world, and that was AlphaZero, developed by a British AI company called Deepmind. Its predecessor was AlphaGo (which convincingly destroyed the greatest Go program and a world-champion player (No.2 Player In The World Lee Sodol) ). For chess, it was called AlphaZero. This engine had reached superhuman strength simply by playing millions of games between itself.  Deepmind trained AlphaZero without any human knowledge (no positional ideas, chess strategy, no endgame database, no openings book). Its evaluations are from the estimated chance of winning or drawing (not centipawns).   AlphaZero calculates in terms of probability each move will be played, and uses a sort of tree data structure to calculate the best moves. Therefore improving accuracy and reducing the amount of calculation required. AlphaZero's Play 1. AlphaZero likes to target the king of the opponent 2. AlphaZero likes king safety. 3. Alph...

  Hello Chess Friends! This article is about the recent USCF-Rated Prize Tournament, the Tim Just Winter Open, with lots of galore, fantasticness, loss, and tragedy (lots of regret for not sleeping so early). I first heard of this tournament because of @charizardpikachu, so thanks to him!!! And, now my new provisional rating is 1790!!!!. That's pretty cool. I went with @Road2NationalMaster(This is roadchessmaster's new account rip old road), and @charizardpikachu. Road competed in the U1300 division, where he won with a perfect score, and got 250$, and @charizardpikachu competed in the U2100, where he got a decent score, but ok-ok, he hadn't played a lot of classical in a while, and he was playing in a difficult section, so 1.5/5 isn't all that bad as it seems.  I got a 4/5, which is a medium range between the two. If I had won my second round, I would've won at least 200 dollars. But ah well, I was close. I got fifth place!!! Better than nothing. Preparatio...

  Hello Chess Friends! Information About DVC This is my DVC tournament recap. The Dupage Valley Conference is a difficult and interesting national school wide competition between Naperville North, Naperville Central, Waubonsie, Neuqua Valley, and Matea Valley. Five extremely good schools. I can’t reveal the names of the talents, but Central has a FIDE Master, and he is extremely strong. He went undefeated throughout State last year, and absolutely crushed everybody, except for one who drew him(he was rated 2086 USCF however).  So, this ended up not being such a great tournament for me, although I absolutely obliterated everybody else who ever faced me in the regular season of team matches, tournaments aren’t my strong suit. Especially early in the morning, where I lose focus and blunder easily. The DVC tournament is split into 8-board teams, with the first board having 13 points, second board having 12 points, and etcetera and so on. If the first board wins, then we gain ...