Chess Tech: clocks, engines, DGT boards

All Things Chess
1

Assortment of comments.

I recently ordered a DGT North American. Fantastic clock. On digitals I’ve owned and played with Chronos Button, Chronos Touch, Excalibur Gametime II, Saitek Competition (“Pro”), DGT XL, and a host of cheap no-delay overpriced pieces of crap. The pro’s of this clock are many. The rocker can be pressed with a piece (re: Chronos Touch), rocker is quiet (re: Saitek), rocker will last (re: Gametime II plungers). Display is bright and delay is “regular delay” rather than Bronstein – makes for a better delay experience than a DGT XL or 2000. All in all best clock for the money for USCF play.

Edit/Add: a feature I missed that is great … the White/Black king icon that indicates which side is White/Black. For players it tells them how to set the rocker before starting the clock at the beginning of the game; for TDs it starts the move counter off correctly.

Houdini 4 Pro came out. I only mention it because Chessbase intro’d the splash screen with “Simply unbeatable.” I thought it interesting marketing as Junior is the World Computer Chess Champ. Houdini isn’t allowed to play (long story all over the internet). Chessbase of course will continue their over the top pitch. They do a very good job of posting provocative articles that keep them in the link trade but always with the “author’s opinion” caveat.

Glancing at DGT Boards and for those who work with them. Give or take $1000 with “lesser” materials and pieces. What are some of the ways you’ve seen funds raised for the DGT kit?

2

For the DGT North American (and the DGT 2010), you do not need to reconfirm the manual settings every time. After you press the rightmost button to select the mode, you can bypass entering the manual settings by pressing the middle button (the one that starts the clock running and pauses the clock).

Or did I misunderstand what you wrote?

3

You understood perfectly. Click sequence worked. Small gripe removed. I was able to figure out everything but two actions (that one included) without the manual which beats the pants off the Chronos. Thanks!

4

I just had a chat yesterday with an owner of a retail Chess place, Raphael.

We were talking about things for my scholastic club this coming school year, and he mentioned the Chess clock situation that currently exists. Some of what he said, I was not aware. The following comments and information come from 2 sources and my observations:

  1. All Saitek Clocks and the Excalibur GameTime II clocks are no longer being made. So when inventories of these clocks run out, there will be no more available.

  2. For all practical purposes the Chronos clocks are no longer being produced. He said that he had no expectations of any being made and the last ones made had quality problems leading to a definite unsureness of any working in the future.

  3. The DGT clocks and the ZMF-II clocks are the only ones being made and the ZMF-II clocks are not serious contenders for serious chess clocks.

  4. There is mention of one or two people having a new Chess clock in pre-production and it will be interesting to see what those are like.

  5. The touch sensor models are easier and less expensive to make. That is most likely the reason the ZMF-II clock and at least one of the new models coming out has them, exclusively.

I have both a Chronos II and a ZMF-II with the touch sensors and I don’t like it as well as any of the button models.

  1. The Excalibur GameTime II buttons just seem to be flimsy and seem that they will wear out. We have a number of these clocks owned by our club and they have taken quite the use and abuse over the years. The plungers are still working fine on all of them with no loss of quality in play and usage.

Of course if the rumors are true that these clocks are no longer being produced, it really doesn’t matter.

  1. I own a DGT North American and a DGT 2010 Limited Edition. It’s true that you don’t have to go completely through the setting procedure every time by just pressing that center button.

I used to also own a DGT Sensory Board as well as an XL clock that would connect to the board, and thereby the computer.

The problem with the 3 DGT clocks is the buttons are a rocker arm and it’s difficult to see who is on the move from a distance. That’s alright for shorter time control games where you won’t want to get up and away from the board, but for the longer time controls it is a bit annoying.

The DGT Sensory Board is nice and all, but I ended up selling it because I just wasn’t using it. Because of the wires necessary to even give minimum power, it didn’t work well for club games or weekend tournament games where I might be at a board away from an outlet.

I did use it to play slow chess on the internet and that was fun because when I made the move on the board, it would automatically translate to the server interface and I didn’t even need to hit a clock button or anything on the computer at all. I did have to make my opponent’s moves on the board and that necessitated keeping an eye on the computer screen for those moves.

I wanted this to simulate a real chess playing experience and it just didn’t work even though the tournament board and set were right in front of me and I had to play touch move with it. With no human opponent across the board it lost the tenseness of the game.

The DGT Sensory Board setup is fine if you want to have it at a tournament as the top board where you could transmit and then display the game on a screen or something. Of course it would be best to have the board in the same position throughout the whole tournament for wiring and computer issues.

If I was in a position where I had to buy a clock for tournament use at this time, I have to agree that the DGT North American would be the best, current option.

5

Considering the number of top engines that aren’t playing in the WCCC, does anyone really care much about that title? The impression I get as that TCEC has become the unofficial but much more widely respected determiner of which engine is the strongest. TCEC has several stages, which are round robins, and finishes with a 64 game match between the top 2.The engines run on identical hardware. In stage 3 each engine plays each other 4 times, and in stage 4 each plays each other 16 times. It is a much better tournament for ranking engines at chess played at serious tournament time controls.

Junior made it to stage 2 (of 4) in the latest TCEC, where it placed 14th out of 16 (scoring 0 wins, 10 draws, and 5 losses), and was eliminated.

The 4 that made it to stage 4 were Stockfish, Komodo, Houdini 4, and Critter. The final scores of stage 4 were 30 points for Stockfish, 28 for Komodo, 24 for Houdini, and 14 for Critter, so it was Stockfish and Komodo in the final (just like it was in the previous TCEC, which Komodo won 25 to 23). Stockfish won, 35.5 to 28.5. In the final the openings are pre-selected and they play two games with each, so each engine plays each side of it.

TCEC maintains a rating list, and on their ratings the top three are Stockfish (3168), Komodo (3151), and Houdini (3145), close enough together to be pretty much essentially tied. Junior is at #15, at 2921. Other well-known engines: Rybka is #6 (3072), Hiarcs is #8 (3044), and Shredder is #19 (2889).

Personally, I like Shredder. All of the top 20 engines on the list are going to beat almost any USCF player. The top 5 will beat anyone in the world. So when it comes to using an engine to analyze our games, they all do the job fine. When it comes to playing against the engine, almost all of us will have to ask the engine to play at below full strength, and there is a big difference in how well the do that.

Ask some super-GM strength engines to play like a 1500, and they do it by playing like a super-GM for 10 moves, then blatantly hanging a piece in a way that would make a 500 blush, and then defending like a super-GM for another 20 moves, where they win back the piece and more.

Shredder, on the other hand, when asked to play like a 1500 actually seems to play like a 1500. If it hangs a piece, it then doesn’t hold on like a GM. It holds on like a 1500 who lost a piece. If you looked at a game between a 1500 and Shredder set to play like a 1500, with the names removed, there is a good chance you wouldn’t guess which was the human and which was the computer. (I’m using the iPad version of Shredder. I don’t know if the desktop version is at good at purposefully playing bad).

6

I’ve thought of taking a red sharpie and carefully making a red line that shows up when a player is on move and his/her rocker side is up (maybe just on the ends where there is more space?). Done right it would be hidden when the player presses the clock rocker down.

7

That’s a good idea.

The red would contrast nicely with the blue body of the DGT North American.

If there is enough of a gap between the rockers and the body, you might be able to put a strip of red electrical tape. This would be easily removable and would be as wide as you could make it for best visibility.