Chess on TV

Discuss anything you like about chess related matters in this forum.
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Carl Hibbard
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Carl Hibbard » Sun Jan 08, 2017 8:38 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote:
Carl Hibbard wrote:
Mick Norris wrote:Endeavour returns to ITV for a new series on Sunday at 8 pm; the story features an eminent chess player being drowned before a man v machine match (it is set in 1967)
I enjoyed the previous series not bad at all.
King and Queen on the wrong squares on the main board oh dear.
Corrected at points.
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Carl Hibbard

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Carl Hibbard
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Carl Hibbard » Sun Jan 08, 2017 8:40 pm

Carl Hibbard wrote:
Carl Hibbard wrote:
Carl Hibbard wrote: I enjoyed the previous series not bad at all.
King and Queen on the wrong squares on the main board oh dear.
Corrected at points.
Then d4 on the board and e4 on the computer screen.
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Nick Grey
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Nick Grey » Sun Jan 08, 2017 8:47 pm

Yes - is it part of the plot?

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Carl Hibbard
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Carl Hibbard » Sun Jan 08, 2017 8:51 pm

Nick Grey wrote:Yes - is it part of the plot?
No I will go randomly for a lockers link.
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Nick Grey
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Nick Grey » Sun Jan 08, 2017 9:12 pm

What e4 e5 f4 Kings Gambit? Is the journalist the next victim?

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Carl Hibbard
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Carl Hibbard » Sun Jan 08, 2017 9:18 pm

Nick Grey wrote:What e4 e5 f4 Kings Gambit? Is the journalist the next victim?
Got to be.
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Carl Hibbard
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Carl Hibbard » Sun Jan 08, 2017 9:20 pm

Book chap has my cash.
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Nick Grey
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Nick Grey » Sun Jan 08, 2017 9:27 pm

Wow - got that one right. Thanks for posting this - has taken some convincing my better half to watch this programme tonight & we are both enjoying it.

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Carl Hibbard
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Carl Hibbard » Sun Jan 08, 2017 9:29 pm

Nick Grey wrote:Wow - got that one right. Thanks for posting this - has taken some convincing my better half to watch this programme tonight & we are both enjoying it.
You should be recording Sherlock of course.
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Stewart Reuben
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Stewart Reuben » Sun Jan 08, 2017 11:37 pm

Carl, well spotted. Also use of descriptive notation early on. That is virtually impossible with computers.
Not much chess in the programme.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Jan 09, 2017 12:04 am

Stewart Reuben wrote:That (descriptive notation) is virtually impossible with computers.
Early programmers knew little else. I can recall playing one using a teletype and descriptive notation in 1972, Internally it's not going to use descriptive, but in terms of the outside world, it's just a translation routine. The Islington Congress of 1970 (?) had a PDP-10 playing. How did that communicate?

The locker code e4 e5 f4 was obvious enough to a modern chess audience. Ray Keene wrote Flank Openings in algebraic, but otherwise its use was limited in 1967.

Did I hear a reference to the Kronsteen variation of the Queens Gambit? Kronsteen was the SMERSCH/SPECTRE GM in "From Russia with Love"?

Mike Gunn
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Mike Gunn » Mon Jan 09, 2017 12:15 pm

I played a chess program on a PDP7 computer in 1972. The output (and entry of moves) was in English Descriptive notation. The program I played was (barely) up to club player standard. I have got a few books on computer chess from the 1970s (including the David Levy one) but I don't seem to be able to locate any of them at present, but based purely on memory no chess computer program in the 1960s was strong enough to justify a match against any above average chess player.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Jan 09, 2017 12:39 pm

Mike Gunn wrote: no chess computer program in the 1960s was strong enough to justify a match against any above average chess player.
Dramatic licence, I suppose, to introduce a red herring or two into the plot. A match between an Oxford University computer and one in the Soviet Union is well within the realms of the possible for 1967.

Angus French
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Angus French » Mon Jan 09, 2017 1:17 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:A match between an Oxford University computer and one in the Soviet Union is well within the realms of the possible for 1967.
Checking Levy's 'Computer Chess Compendium' I read that there was a match in 1966 between a program running on a Stanford University IBM computer and a Soviet program. The latter won 3 - 1.

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Michael Farthing
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Re: Chess on TV

Post by Michael Farthing » Mon Jan 09, 2017 2:22 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:The locker code e4 e5 f4 was obvious enough to a modern chess audience. Ray Keene wrote Flank Openings in algebraic, but otherwise its use was limited in 1967.
While not disputing Roger's essential message here, I thought quite interesting the following contemporary comment from the introduction to an algebraic notation tutorial:
Algebraic chess notation is now in use in every country in the world except Great Britain and Spain, and even in Britain it is rapidly increasing in popularity
[Source: Chessnuts, The Nottingham High School Chess Magazine, Issue No 4, March 1967]

Some of the older boys in the school would comment to each other in algebraic above our heads, but I think us juniors thought this a bit pretentious.