2010-03-23

ChessBomb upgrades analysis engine

Until now, the automatic analysis on ChessBomb.com was provided by the Rybka 2.2n2 engine. The time has come, however, to replace it with a better one. We evaluated several of the current top engines, according to the following criteria:

  • playing strength
  • compatibility with our infrastructure
  • clear legal status
Our final choice is Stockfish 1.6.3. It is currently the second strongest unambiguously legal chess engine, beaten slightly only by Rybka 3. However, Stockfish can utilize the resources of our analyzing platform better than Rybka, gaining a few more ELO points in the process.

In the end, we estimate that this change adds about 150 ELO points to the ChessBomb analysis strength. The improvement is most obvious in endgames.

2010-03-11

Melody Amber 2010


The 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid tournament takes place in Nice from March 13 (first round) to March 25 (last round). The 12 participants according to their ELO are:
  • Magnus Carlsen – Norway (2813)
  • Vladimir Kramnik - Russia (2790)
  • Levon Aronian – Armenia (2782)
  • Alexander Grischuk – Russia (2756)
  • Peter Svidler – Russia (2750)
  • Boris Gelfand – Israel (2750)
  • Vasily Ivanchuk - Ukraine (2748)
  • Vugar Gashimov – Azerbaijan (2740)
  • Ruslan Ponomariov – Ukraine (2737)
  • Sergey Karjakin - Russia (2725)
  • Leinier Dominguez – Cuba (2713)
  • Jan Smeets – The Netherlands (2651)
Every day four sessions will be played - two blindfold and two rapid, starting at 13:30 GMT. Exceptions are the rest days, which are March 17 and 22, and the last round, which starts at 11:30 GMT. The rate of play is 25/10 for the rapid and 25/20 for the blindfold.
The ChessBomb team will broadcast this attractive chess event with the expert commentary of Rybka.

2010-03-05

EICC 2010

11th European Individual Chess Championship men and women March 5 – 19 2010 is the next big chess event that is going to be broadcasted at ChessBomb. The tournament is held in Rijeka - Croatia and the playing days are March 6-12, March 14-17, games start at 14:30 GMT. The tiebreaks are scheduled for March 18 at 9:00 GMT. Over 200 GMs are expected to compete for the title, among them are: Almasi Zoltan HUN 2720, Bacrot Etienne FRA 2714, Movsesian Sergei SVK 2709, Adams Michael ENG 2704, Caruana Fabiano ITA 2680, etc. Follow the live games here.