Tough as Nails

After the 1,623 FICS 0/4 bullet games since July and surprising myself (but probably none of you!) by only taking a single days rest, after taking a peak at BDK’s recent ICC history and seeing his playing wimpD and knowing that Blunderprone had been playing this similar engine or (C) at ICC repeatedly, and even watched him do so now and again, I found myself thirsting for more chess blood and proceded there to see what ‘it was all about’.

I just played 237 2/8 blitz games against 'wimpB, an enhanced Crafty Engine' Designed to play at a skill level 'between 1600 and 1800' elo 'for players below 2100 elo'.

I won 71, lost 145, and drew 21 games for those 237 games, concluding with a blitz rating of 1509, or up exactly 200 elo from what I now call the Vicodin rating, when I started playing at ICC again, a year ago, on painkillers from a broken rib and the surgery on my right elbow for the ulnar neuropathy or numb right hand. That is an increase of +200 elo while ONLY winning 29.96% of the games. Anyone here want to try this?? This amounts to roughly 22 games a day for 11 days. Wew.

I am as balanced in my study as I have been ever, at chess, at once analyzing games with Fritz between fine cooking not far from this desktop or while half watching or listening to foodTV, The Discovery Channel, or of course the ceaseless CNBC Financial News Network ‘round the world’.












I focus a lot more on endgame key positions, often at great depth, and sometimes of course, openings now. What is lost in breadth is made up in depth, at this time. I can do one postition for hours this way.

My next step is to deeply study those games, and as Blunderprone and I agreed in email exchanges on this subject, wimpB at class C+ and emergent B- is an excellent tool for rounding out an at times somewhat predictable opening repertoire (that is to say, in playing aginst the program or oppositions predictable but relatively error free tabiyas or 'opening book').

Lastly, not being sure where to start, I did try wimpD and it was too silly, quickly tried wimpC and it too wasn’t strong enough, and after three games, I think it was, found my match. Thereupon it hit me that blunderprone was playing only the B form, and those three games to start were with the wrong engine. :)

I would play a wimpA if it existed but does not, nor after so many bullet games need I play JSBach despite it’s higher threshold, but it requires 3/3 and that is just too close to home. I have my eye ball on standard games, but now need a few hundred 2/12’s against more human fare, to say the least, using this for transition from 0/4 for sure. I might investigate StrongBach (C) at a latter time, but not sure if it will play 2/12 [1].

And very, very lastly, I hasten to repeat, my work now is to do a LOT of analysis with some play, in complete reversal of tons of play with some or scant analysis. I must for the next month or two see if I can make my ratio of analysis to play more like 3:1 or 5:1, not 1:30! Good day to all of you. Warmest, dk


















[1.] The rub is this: you cannot just say that StrongBach is 1600 or 1800, etc, but depends on the time frame--OBVIOUSLY. The is the charm of wimpB. It only plays 2/8, and is optimized for specific performance at the prescribed level. It surely can throw odd moves, crazy moves, but it rarely blunders except in its rare random move generator. It can also play like 2000 elo and just mow you down. Really.