On Holiday

It's the weekend, so it doesn't really feel like it yet, but thus begins my vacation. Holiday, some might say. I had decided that I would take a walk every morning when I got out of bed during my vacation, and so far I'm 1 for 1. It wasn't a long walk this morning, maybe 30-35 minutes, but it's a start. I slept a little late and had a busy morning, so it was the best I could do. I left my house at around 8:15, and I had a chess game scheduled at 9.

Speaking of that chess game. Wow. I hate to accuse people of such things, but I think my opponent was cheating. It's part of the reason why Sean stopped playing in the "teamchess" league. I had stopped as well, but was asked this season to play on a team, so I agreed. Why do I think that my opponent cheated? I think that because we were both playing a little quicker than we should have. When that happens, there are bound to be some mistakes. We're just not that good. So after the game I had Fritz 9 analyse it as I left to go bowling. When I got back a few hours to check out the analysis, I was a bit surprised. It had plenty of advice for me... and for the first 3/4 of the game, none for my opponent. He was playing solid until he had a winning position. Hmm... What are the odds?

Here is the game with the fritz analysis:

[Event "ICC 45 45"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2006.03.25"]
[Round "?"]
[White "EdBorowski"]
[Black "rjml"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "A46"]
[WhiteElo "2027"]
[BlackElo "1988"]
[Annotator "Fritz 9 (60s)"]
[PlyCount "70"]
[EventDate "2006.??.??"]

{A46: 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nf3 e6: Torre, London and Colle Systems} 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 e6
3. Bf4 c5 4. c3 b6 5. e3 Bb7 6. Nbd2 Be7 7. Bd3 d6 8. Qe2 Nh5 9. Bg3 Nd7 {
last book move} 10. e4 a6 {Consolidates b5} 11. Nc4 Nxg3 12. hxg3 {
Black has the pair of bishops} b5 {Black threatens to win material: b5xc4} 13.
Ncd2 Qc7 14. a4 bxa4 15. Rxa4 cxd4 16. Nxd4 {White has new hanging pawns: b2äc3
} Nc5 {Black threatens to win material: Nc5xa4} 17. Ra2 (17. Ra1 $5 $15 {
is worth consideration}) 17... Nxd3+ $17 18. Qxd3 d5 19. O-O dxe4 20. Nxe4 O-O
21. Rfa1 Rfd8 22. Qe2 Qe5 23. Re1 $2 (23. f3 $142 $5 $17) 23... Qd5 $19 24.
Raa1 (24. b4 f5 25. Ra5 Qxe4 $19) 24... f5 25. f3 (25. Nxe6 Qxe6 26. Nf6+ Qxf6
27. Qxe7 $19) 25... fxe4 26. fxe4 Qc5 (26... Qe5 {might be the shorter path}
27. Kh2 Rf8 28. b4 Bxb4 29. Qc4 $19) 27. Kh2 (27. e5 {does not improve anything
} a5 $19) 27... Rd6 (27... Qg5 {keeps an even firmer grip} 28. Qe3 Qg6 29. Ra5
$19) 28. Qg4 (28. e5 {does not help much} Rb6 $19) 28... Rb6 29. Nxe6 (29. Re2
$19 {no good, but what else?}) 29... Qe5 30. Nd4 (30. Nf4 {is the last straw}
Rf8 31. Qe2 $19) 30... Rg6 31. Qf3 (31. Qh3 {what else?} Rh6 32. Qxh6 gxh6 33.
Nf5 $19) 31... Rf8 32. Qe3 Bd6 33. Nf5 Rxf5 34. exf5 (34. Qf3 {
cannot undo what has already been done} Rxf3 35. Kh1 Rh6+ 36. Kg1 Bc5+ 37. Re3
Bxe3#) 34... Rh6+ 35. Qxh6 (35. Kg1 {doesn't get the bull off the ice} Bc5 36.
Qd4 Bxd4+ 37. cxd4 Qxd4+ 38. Kf1 Rh1+ 39. Ke2 Rh2 40. Rg1 Bxg2 41. Raf1 Bxf1+
42. Ke1 Qe3+ 43. Kxf1 Rf2#) 35... Qxg3+ (35... Qxg3+ 36. Kh1 Qxg2#) (35... gxh6
{is not possible} 36. Rxe5 Bxe5 37. Re1 $14) 0-1

So I sent a message to speedtrap on the ICC to report it. It could be nothing, but it made me feel better about myself ;).

After the game I went bowling. I love bowling! My new bowling shoes came in yesterday so I was pretty excited about being able to wear them today. I know, lame. They have a good slide to them too. I did a few "test" slides on the approach before throwing my first ball. It took a little getting used to. A few times at the foul line when releasing my ball Adam and Dave got to see me do a little dance. The shoes felt a little loose when I first put them on, so Dave suggested that I tighten the laces. Interesting advice. It worked great!

and we bowled...

I took pictures but they aren't making it into this post. I tried. I'll have to put some up later. For now, here are the scores:

Game 1:
Dave 119
Ed 190
Adam 202

hmm... and apparently someone named Becky bowling down on Lane 2 bowled a 97. Dave was using one of his older rubber balls because he had it drilled fingertip and wanted to try it out. It's drilled dead center, so it's not going to get any natural hook. But if he likes it, maybe next time.

Game 2:
Dave 161
Ed 165
Adam 141

Game 3:
Dave 142
Ed 212
Adam 176

And that's it from Northampton Bowl.

Later on I stopped at the chess club for about an hour. When I got home I went onto the Internet Chess Club for a minute and ended up analyzing a game with "miles72" again for about an hour. Chess, Chess, Chess, Chess, Chess, Chess Chess. When does it end? It never ends.

But my post does. So until next time!

Ed.

The Morning News

So, last night I was on the Internet Chess Club when someone asked me if I'd be willing to look over a few of their games with them. I said ok. Once we got started, I had to ask them... how do you know me? They didn't. But we're on the same team in the slow chess league. I'm board 1, they're board 4. I was asked to be on an U1800 team this season, so I decided to give it a go. I think that we spent almost 2 hours going over the games... but I wasn't actually keeping track. The only mildly annoying thing, and I say mildly because I'm sure he was simply happy to be participating, was one guy who was rated about 1000 (he was actually a little better than that, but for the sake of my point) kept telling me how he didn't really like the moves I was suggesting, and suggested his own. There were 4 of us looking over the games. Oh, that and he kept quoting Jeremy Silman. Jeremy Silman is an International Master that has written many great instructional books on how to play chess. Incluing the hugely successful "How to Reassess your chess". Which I highly recommend to any chess player. If you're just starting out, a book like "The Amateur's Mind" might be more your speed. In that he goes over books from weaker players and has them talk about what they're thinking while they are making moves, and comments on it. It's an enjoyable read. But when you're suggesting a move and someone is saying... you should do something like ... according to Jeremy Silman. What can I say? My kingdom for a fish!

Alright, I've got to get moving. Al asked me to bring him to Holyoke for 6:30. He's leaving for Florida today and my guess is that's his ride to the airport. I stayed up way too late playing blitz chess on the ICC. I suck at blitz, and it stresses me out, but once I get going sometimes I find it's impossible to stop. So today will be a long tiring day. Larry is coming over tonight so that I can help him with some C programming (he was going to come last night but something came up). So there we go.

Enjoy your Friday!

Ed.

The Rook

Finally, enough motivation struck me to start working on my school project again tonight. This was, of course, after playing a 5-table, 50-person, $5, multi-table at party. How did I do? What's my magic number? Would you believe it? 3. I came in third. At the end, my AQo was taken out by A10o. So it goes.

I was expecting the Rook to be a fairly complex piece to generate the bitboards for. Mainly because it can move in 2 directions. Horizontally and Vertically. It turns out to be quite simple. The key lies in having 2 pre-built bitboards ready to go. These are a bitboard that represents the A-File, and a bitboard that represents the first rank. So what we have is the following:

ulong bbAFile = 0x0101010101010101;

which maps out to:
10000000
10000000
10000000
10000000
10000000
10000000
10000000
10000000

ulong bbFirstRank = 0x00000000000000FF;

which maps out to:
00000000
00000000
00000000
00000000
00000000
00000000
00000000
11111111

Let's start with the file. If we are on the A file, we use the bitboard above. If we are on the B file, we would simply shift the A file bitboard right 1. For the rank, if we are on the 1st rank we would use the bitboard above (in my code, the 1st rank is on top, so it's a little different). If you're on the second rank, you would simply shift right 8. To get the move for a given square, you would then XOR the two together. You need to XOR so that the square that the rook is on is not counted as a legal move. An XOR works like this:

0 0 = 0
0 1 = 1
1 0 = 1
1 1 = 0

So the result for the square A1 would look like:
10000000
10000000
10000000
10000000
10000000
10000000
10000000
01111111

I still need to work on the legal move generation for the rooks, but the pre-generated bitboards were definitely a lot of fun. Why pre-generate them? Because I keep them in an array of 64, so if I know that a Rook is on the 10th square (B2), I can simply look at bbLegalRookMoves[11] and have the bitboard of all the legal moves without having to generate it at move generation time. It speeds up the processing considerably... in theory. In C#, we'll see. since it uses managed code it's array processing may not be nearly as fast as in C.

Time to get back to work.

Ed.

You move me

This is how it seems to me
Life is only therapy
Real expensive
And no guarantee

That's one of the things I've always loved about Garth... A song for every occasion!

Welcome to Tuesday!

Enjoy the ride.

Ed.

Just another day

I've finally done it. I broke down and bought myself those bowling shoes tonight. No more rentals! Well, assuming they get here this week. Speaking of rentals, thanks to Rae I have a PC/laptop to use again! Wow! Don't get me wrong, it could use a few upgrades ;), but hey, who am I to complain. I loaded up Visual C# 2005 Express Edition on it tonight, between sleeping like a lazy you know what. But that's about the limit of my accomplishments so far. Hopefully tomorrow night I'll actually try doing some work and see how it goes. My next progress report is due on Thursday, so I'd like to have the move generator finished.

I had a turkey and cheese sandwich tonight. I bought the turkey sometime last week. It didn't taste bad, but I'm always a little scared eating cold meat like that after a couple of days. I didn't get around to calling the Holiday Inn to try to get a room for the foxwoods chess tournament. I've got to do that tomorrow night!

That's all for me. I just wanted to get a quick note out here to get rid of that Weekend Blogger reputation. I don't want to be "that guy".

I hope you all enjoyed your Monday!

Ed.

The Weekend Blogger

It is your destiny.

On Saturday Adam, Dave, and I went bowling. Our usual place, our usual time. My back was a little sore by the time we were done, but it wasn't so bad. And I've thought about my approach a little more since and I have some thoughts as to why I made it 4 games last week without any issues. I'll let you know how that goes next weekend. So, the real question, how did we do? I still don't feel like I'm back to my previous level, but I'm definitely getting there. The good news is, I broke 100 every game! I'm not going to give the frame by frame this week, too lazy, but I'll give you the basics. And at least 1 frame by frame.

So, game 1 was a little rusty as usual. It went a little like this:

Dave 123
Ed 144
Adam 236 [9/][X][9-][6/][X][X][X][X][X][X8/]

Adam put us to shame bowling an excellent game. I'm not sure their exact averages, but Adam is in the 170's this season, and Dave is at least in the 150's. As for me, since I'm not bowling in a league, I guess I can be whatever I want. Let's just say 144! :)

Game 2 brought the following:

Dave 164
Ed 188
Adam 200

Another excellent showing by Adam! If he keeps this up he'll get the coveted 600 series. Maybe even my favorite, the triple double. I don't think it's an official "bowling" term, but I like to use it to talk about bowling 3 200+ games. Definitely a reasonable showing for all of us.

Which brings us to Game 3...

Dave 143
Ed 264 [X][X][X][X][X][X][X][63][X][XXX]
Adam 179

Let me help you out on this one... Wow! Everything felt good, and even the mistakes I made still managed to turn out ok. Until the 8th frame when I mentioned to Adam that I was getting a bit nervous. Oops. Still, 11 strikes. Reminds me of why I miss bowling so much! I love this game!

Later that day I went down to the chess club. I was planning on spending some time there working on my school project, but I ended up playing 2 games against Paul Spatarella. Paul is officially rated about 800 points lower than me, but I have to say that he certainly wasn't playing like it. He lost both games, but in the second game he lost on time. I blundered early so I decided to sacrifice and get what looked like a great attack against his king. It didn't work out so well for me, and I was dead lost when his flag fell. For your reading pleasure, even though most of you will completely ignore it, here is that game:

PVCC Skittles G/15

White Edwin Borowski
Black Paul Spatarella
Result 1-0
1 d4 Nf6
2 Nf3 g6
3 Bf4 Bg7
4 e3 d6
5 Bd3 O-O
6 Nbd2 Re8
7 c3 h6
8 Qc2 Nh5
9 Bg3 Nxg3
10 hxg3 Nd7
11 O-O-O Nf6
12 Rh2 Ng4
13 Rh4 Nxf2
14 Bxg6 Nxd1
15 Bh7+ Kh8
16 Kxd1 Rf8
17 Ne4 f5
18 Neg5 e5
19 Bg6 Qf6
20 Nh7 Qxg6
21 Nxf8 Bxf8
22 g4 e4
23 Nh2 fxg4
24 g3 Be7
25 Nf1 Bxh4
26 Qf2 Be6
27 gxh4 Rg8
28 Ng3 h5
29 b3 Kh7
30 Qf4 1-0 (Black lost on time)

I was going to post a picture of the final position, but laziness seems to be getting the best of me. Paul played a great game! While I was at the club Tom told me that the hotels were already completely booked at Foxwoods for the tournament. He gave me the number of a Holiday Inn in Mystic CT that might still have some rooms available. I guess I better get moving if I plan on having a place to stay in April.

I hope you all had a great weekend!

Ed.

Would you like fries with that?

I went bowling Saturday morning. This time, I went alone. Dave had family and Adam was sick. What could I do? The trick was to take breaks every frame or two so that I didn't go hurting my back. How did it work out for me? Wow! Not wow in the "I bowled like the king that I am" sense, but wow because I felt pretty good. I actually managed 4 games! I was going to stop at 3, but I kept improving every game and really wanted to eek out a few more points for my overall average for the day. What can I say, I'm competitive even against myself. My biggest improvement was my ability to pick up spares. It's actually shocking if you compare this week with last week. But it's also a little deceptive.

Why deceptive? Because for the 1st two games I was leaving the pins mostly on the left side, and my biggest problems have been with that nasty 10 pin way down on the back right edge. I also wasn't stringing strikes together. It finally hit me in the 3rd game. I was hitting the head pin consistently heavy. So I moved a couple boards to the right, and I was getting more strikes. I was also leaving pins on the right instead of the left.

So, here are the games:

[9/][9-][81][X][X][81][8/][9-][72][7/X] 150
[72][X][81][7/][9/][9/][X][8/][X][9/X] 175
[9/][X][9/][8/][7/][X][X][9-][X][9-] 180
[7/][X][X][X][X][X][6/][9/][81][-7] 209

Average Scratch: 178
High Scratch: 209
Series: 714
Strikes: 14
Spares: 17
Splits: 3

When I got home Jon and Stephanie were walking by my house so I went for a walk with them. I did about 3 miles. After bowling 4 games, I felt like a machine! As machines go, I must be an old one. By 4:30 I was asleep.

Then last night I decided to go down to the chess club. It was around 8pm and usually someone is there until 9-10. When I got there all the lights were off. So I decided to grab something to eat on the way home and go watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. So I stopped at D'Angelos. One of the girls there took my order and put the burgers on the grill. While this was happening I was listening to the exchange between the woman in front of me and one of the guys there. She was being a bit, ummm, let's just say that she must have had a Category B itch. I'm sure that was the problem. Aside from the fact that he started messing up one of her orders, which she corrected him on in her itchy way, she was making comments like, "It's OK to be generous with the mayonaisse". Maybe it was just me, but I really didn't like her. When she left he complained to some of the other employees about her, then proceeded to take over my order. Nice. He flipped them over, put the cheese on them, piled them on top of each other, cut them in half, put them on the bun, and wrapped it up. I was thinking that he was missing a critical piece in that sequence, but I didn't want to be that guy. The woman pissed me off too much, I just couldn't do it to him again. Any guess what the critical piece he missed was? Yeah.. letting it cook after flipping. I would have preferred it. Letting the cheese melt a little might have been ok too. So after I left D'angelos, I went down the street to McDonalds, picked up a few burgers, and went home. What can I say. I suck!

When I got home I threw out the grinder, put in Harry Potter, and watched it while eating my "backup" food. I've been going to D'Angelos for at least 15 years now, always getting the same thing. This has NEVER happened to me before, and now twice in the past few weeks. What's this world coming to?

My chess has been terrible this weekend. I think it's time to slow back down. I've been playing too much blitz the past week, something I haven't done to this great an extent for a long time.

Welcome to Sunday!

Ed.

More project news

I actually completed the move generation for 2 pieces today. That's huge, considering the weeks it took me to get a handle on the pawns only! Then again, a lot of that was about focus, and after being sick it was very hard to focus. So, as I was saying, this evening I have the Knight and King move generators working, which leaves me with Rook, Bishop, and Queen. That's not as bad as it sounds, because they all move the same... once one is figured out, the other's should be quick. The Queen, for instance, is just a combination of both the rook and the bishop. The bishop is just the rook rotated 90 degrees. Having said that, I don't expect the next one to be easy. I have some ideas, but it's a complicated concept because these are sliding pieces, and can only capture the 1st opponent piece it comes to on a given rank/file or diagonal. Still, I'm looking forward to it because as soon as these 3 pieces are done I can really start putting some of the ancillary pieces together and should soon be having an engine that plays... poorly. I'd really like to get there this weekend. That would be most excellent! The odds are slim though, I think it's going to take at least another week. I've got to look over my timeline again and see where I'm at... how far behind I am.

I have a 10 minute oral presentation due Thursday night, and tomorrow night is my guitar lesson. So I'm sure that I won't have any more time to actually work on the project until Friday. Tomorrow I'll be focusing on the presentation for Thursday. I'm just thrilled the past couple of days to have some motivation. It's about time!

I played some terrible chess tonight. One 15 minute game and I played like I was still playing blitz. I dropped a pawn without even thinking out of the opening, and that was pretty much it. My mind just wasn't in it. So I played a bunch of blitz games too. I started out good, but soon got on a losing streak. One of these days I need to find some time to study. I should start taking notes after a game of the openings that I'm having trouble with so that I can do some review.

That's all for tonight. I'd like to get to bed a little early given my lack of sleep last night. 8 hours, that's all I need!

Take care, Ed.

Stupid is as stupid does

Last night I worked on my project until around 8:30. It went really well. It's about time! I got home, had something to eat, and played a game of poker. At 10 I got on the computer for a few minutes and ended up playing chess on the ICC until about 1:30am. Today's going to suck really, really bad!

Here we go...

Ed.

For You

Another misguided attempt at originality, all for you ;)

He looked up with a start
As she tore away his heart
And thought he'd never love that way again
But you've got to know when to turn away
There's a time to go and a time to stay
And today he knows it's time to go again

So he headed down to the corner bar
To have a drink or two
With the good 'ol boys all drinking there
He knew they'd been there too
As he was drinking one too many
This one thought crossed his mind
What did you think
You were really gonna find
Man that girl just wasn't worth your time

You deserve that fairy tale girl, with a touch of Guns'N'Roses
With a flower in her hair and a tatoo
She will lay you down in a bed of roses
And there won't be any doubt what you're gonna do
Cause man you'll finally know that girl's for you
And the best part is you'll know she knows it too