iccf

anyone who plays on here ????

If they ever get a website that is like this one then I will go over there. If the USCF gets a website like this one I am gone too.

https://www.iccf.com/Default.aspx

you pay to play some matches and you cant challenge friends etc

Originally posted by @rookorbycrook
anyone who plays on here ????

I have played on there which is the "official" organisation for correspondence chess to which national organisations are affiliated. Almost all players on there are using computer assistance for their moves including those with OTB titles. People with ECF grades of around 100 can have CCIM "titles". They are effectively reciting engine moves. If you read some of the articles by top players there you can get an insight as to what is required to do well. One world champion spent about 10,000 hours on it. 5000 without a computer and 5000 with. You need good hardware with fast processors so that you can get your software to analyse accurately beyond 40 ply within the time limits. This means regular upgrades to hard and software. I imagine the financial implications could be huge - all this just to stand out amongst every other Jack or Jill running stockfish on their laptops. That's why the Condero Poderoso's of this world come to sites like this - only 2300 there, top of the tree here. If you see yourself as a chess researcher using all the tools of the trade to find the very best move in the position and have your work reviewed by the fiercest of well armed critics there might be something in it for you. If not I would, and do, stay away.

Amen.

Originally posted by @ragwort
I have played on there which is the "official" organisation for correspondence chess to which national organisations are affiliated. Almost all players on there are using computer assistance for their moves including those with OTB titles. People with ECF grades of around 100 can have CCIM "titles". They are effectively reciting engine moves. If you read so ...[text shortened]... of well armed critics there might be something in it for you. If not I would, and do, stay away.

Thank You for the information. I used to be an ICCF player in the 80's. It was a pretty good place to play (though waiting for postcards to arrive from overseas was boring) I had no idea computer engines had this much impact. Pretty sad.

I've often wondered about high powered computer hardware..how can someone even find a desktop using more than 8 cores? You dont see them for sale at your local electronics store..Can you call Dell computers and ask if they sell a multi CPU motherboard that holds 100 cpus all of them 4 cores each ? Even then, after paying 100,000 dollars for the desktop, what software can even come close to using all those cores ?

Originally posted by @pjmasks
Even then, after paying 100,000 dollars for the desktop, what software can even come close to using all those cores ?

I would imagine that the search algorithm in chess is quite well suited to parallelisation, so it should be possible to run chess search on a compute grid with any number of processors.

Whether or not anyone would bother doing that as opposed to, say, mining bitcoin, is another matter.

Originally posted by @aquatabby
[b]I would imagine that the search algorithm in chess is quite well suited to parallelisation, so it should be possible to run chess search on a compute grid with any number of processors.

Look up Titan Computers ! they sell a desktop with 96 cores !! it's for CAD which is computer assisted designing..there is no sound card..lol..it's only $3,500 , in case you have that kind of money laying around..

Originally posted by @pjmasks
I've often wondered about high powered computer hardware..how can someone even find a desktop using more than 8 cores? You dont see them for sale at your local electronics store..Can you call Dell computers and ask if they sell a multi CPU motherboard that holds 100 cpus all of them 4 cores each ? Even then, after paying 100,000 dollars for the desktop, what software can even come close to using all those cores ?

I think if you just spend a tiny amount of time browsing newegg.com, your opinion will change quickly. Finding a desktop with 8 cores was easy 5 years ago. Now you can find them by accident, without trying.