[BrianWall-ChessList] Any books on mathematical analysis of chess?

[Brian Wall]

----- Forwarded message from Frank Jersawitz <webmasterfrank at verizon.net> -----
    Date: 26 Mar 2007 23:00:46 -0700
    From: Frank Jersawitz <webmasterfrank at verizon.net>
Reply-To: Chess_Library at yahoogroups.com
 Subject: Re: »Ø¸´£º [Chess_Library] Re: Any books on mathematical analysis of
chess?
      To: Chess_Library at yahoogroups.com

Hi!

I would like to clarify some points. You mention Dan Heisman's "truly excellent
website." Where is it? I clicked the URL and came up with an error message!

The discussion is of how a computer program and a grandmaster both  think about
chess. "They   both look at a position and make the needed moves." So it comes
down to the fact that this is not so different after all. And this is the way 
my website tells you how to play. On my website I have placed more than 100
middle game positions that come up regularly in chess games and explain how to
play them. These are the "themes" I have been talking about. The easiest and
quickest way to learn to play chess is to start with studying these themes. You
can go to my site and see for yourslf at http://www.webmasterfrank.com

Also it was my suggestion you learn a computer language and then study how chess
programs are built from the language. There is an open source chess program
called Gnuchess which is available free online--both the source code and the
exe files are available.  There is also a chess computer program available call
Chess Query Language or CQL which you might find interesting. It too is
available free on the internet.

If one were to thinnk about it, chess is a true language. The purpose of a
language is to communicate, i tell you my ideas and you tell me yours making it
possible for us to hunt together or build machines together. When we alternate
moves we are in fact exchanging ideas. By converting our chess ideas to
computer language we are telling our computesr our ideas about chess. Since
computers think mathematically, in terms of binary symbolic logic, it is
ultimalely performing all of its operations inclulding logical operations by
adding and subtracting binary numbers.

As for birds and airplanes, they both have the same method of flying. Airplane's
wings and bird's wings and insect wings as well are airfoils. They do look quite
a bit different but more and more engineers are looking to birds and insects to
improve airplanes and make them more organic in the way they perform and look.
Perhaps someday we all will be sitting in the rumble seat of a bumble bee.

Frank




----- Original Message -----
  From: John Woodbury
  To: Chess_Library at yahoogroups.com
  Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 4:41 PM
  Subject: »Ø¸´£º [Chess_Library] Re: Any books on mathematical analysis of
chess?


  I agree with you upto the last point. The way a advanced program thinks and
evaluates moves and positions are somewhat the same as a grandmaster. A
grandmaster does not remember all possible moves just looks at a position,
makes his moves based on what the position needs. The computer, likewise looks
at the position and fills in the blanks with what is needed. They arrive at the
same moves in a like manner, and it just so happens the book will tell us less
gifted humans to make that move. John in China

  ptrschilling <schillip at optonline.net> дµÀ£º --- In
Chess_Library at yahoogroups.com, "cbbs70b" <cbbs70b at ...> wrote:
  >
  > Hello;
  > I am somewhat new to the game and I am looking for any books,
  > articles, etc that do a mathematical analysis of chess. The only
  books
  > I see are books that use chess to discuss mathematical puzzles like
  > "how many rooks can you put on an NxN chessboard such that one rook
  > cannot capture another in only 1 move". I am looking for something
  > useful that I can use to improve my game.
  > Thanks
  > Frank
  >
  I am not sure that a mathematical analysis of Chess would be useful
  in improving your game. Chess is essentially a language, in the same
  sense as a computer language (e.g. Java). Mr. Jersawitz is right on
  the money when he talks about how to improve (not an endorsement, I
  have never seen his web site).

  On Dan Heisman's truly excellent website (go to the articles page)
  http://mywebpages.comcast.net/danheisman/Main_Chess/chess.htm, there
  are 2 articles by IM Larry Kaufman that deal with mathematical
  evaluations of the pieces (Evaluation of Material Imbalances and All
  About Doubled Pawns).

  If you are interested in a mathematical analysis of Chess for its own
  sake, get the source code to publicly available chess programs such
  as CRAFTY (there should be others) and look at the evaluation
  functions. This is where a person who understands Chess, Programming,
  and basic Mathematics is attempting to analyze a position. Some
  insight might be gained, but the amount of work involved would be
  vastly disproportionate to the amount of improvement in your game.

  The way people think about Chess and the way computers calculate
  variations and evaluate positions are very different. Think of birds
  flying and airplanes flying.

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