There are two tournaments this weekend. If you’re interested in a longer time control and a 2-day tournament, please contact Bill Savoie. He is interested in cost-sharing the room and transportation costs.

If you’re interested in a tournament that is slightly closer and shorter time controls, you may want to consider the Murfreesboro Open. Please contact the Huntsville Chess Club with your interest and we’ll see what we can do to arrange a carpool to the event.

Details for both events is listed below:

Atlanta Winter Congress
February 14–16 or February 15–16
15 Grand Prix Points

5SS. Interactive College of Technology, 5241 New Peachtree Rd., Chamblee, GA 30341. $3000 guaranteed. Entry fees: $74 three-day, $73 two-day if received by Feb. 13, $79 at site. GMs, IMs, WGMs, WIMs, $60 deducted from any cash prizes won. Unrateds $35, re-entries $40 (not available in Master/Expert section). In five sections. Master/Expert (FIDE-rated): Open to USCF- or FIDE-rated 2000 and above. $500-$250, under 2200 $225-$125. Class A: Open to USCF-rated 1999 through 1800. $400-$200. Class B: Open to USCF-rated 1799 through 1600. $300-$150. Class C: Open to USCF-rated 1599 through 1400. $250-$125. Class D/below: Open to USCF-rated below 1400 and unrated. $200-$100, Under 1200 $100-$75. Class A through D rated players may elect to enter the next higher section. Three-day schedule: Registration ends Friday, Feb. 14 at 7 p.m., rounds 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m., 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Two-day schedule: Registration ends 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, rounds 10:30 a.m., then merged with three-day schedule. Time controls: Championship 40/90, SD/30, d10. Other sections G/120, d10. Two-day schedule’s round 1 G/90, d5 for all sections. (Sat 10:30 a.m. round is not FIDE rated). Byes available all rounds (limit two), must request before round 1, no changes afterward. Bring chess equipment, none supplied. Phone calls only after Feb. 13, no emails or text messages, please!!Info: (478) 973-9389 or info@americanchesspromotions.com . 2020 Atlanta Winter Congress registration now open

2020 Murfreesboro Open

February 15, 2020

Site: First Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 907 E. Main St., Murfreesboro,
TN 37130. 5SS; Rd. 1, G/25 d5; Rd. 2, G/45 d5; Rds., 3, 4, 5, G/60 d5.
Open section: $575 in Prizes based on 30 entries, $150 1st, $75 2nd,

Class Prizes X, A, B, C, D, E/below, Unr., each $50, *Above 30 players,
additional prizes will be added and/or increased. Rounds: 9, 10, 12:30, 3:00, 5:30. Registration: 7:30am – 8:45am. EF: $25 by check if received by 02/13, $30 cash at site. Early entries sent to: Chris Prosser (TD), 733 Long Hunter Ct., Nashville, TN 37217 Bye: A one half point bye is available for any round if requested before Rd. 1.

Brahan Springs

Please don’t forget about chess this evening at the Brahan Springs Recreation Center. Come on out around 6:30pm.

Queen of Hearts

If you’re interested in carpooling to the Queen of Hearts tournament on Saturday, February 8th, please emailTomasz Nielsen.

This tournament, run by Caesar Chess is one of the biggest that our state has to offer. Try not to miss it!

Tournament details below:

Quarterly Board Meeting

If interested, please stop in during next Monday’s meeting to hear all the things we’ve had and will have going on. The agenda is included below.

Tonight’s Meeting

Chess is back at the library tonight (Monday 1/27). We hope you’ll stop by and see us! We’ll probably run some type of rated or unrated tournament, depending upon everyone’s interests.

HCC Tactics Puzzle Challenge

For those of you who were able to participate in the last tactics puzzle challenge, you know it was a lot of fun. For those who missed out, you’ll have another opportunity to prove your tactical mastery on Monday, February 10th at 6pm, when David Hayes will host another round of tactics challenges. Come on out and earn bragging rights as HCC’s best chess tactician! It will be free to enter.

HCC Quarterly Board Meeting

If able and interested, please join us for our quarterly board meeting next Monday, 2/3 at 6pm in Meeting Room C.

No Chess This Week

The Library will be closed on Monday 1/20, in observance of Martin Luther King Day. Our next meeting will take place on 1/27.

San Francisco Chess Club Visit

Over some military travel to the SF area, I was fortunate to be able to visit the San Francisco Chess Club at the Mechanics Institute. WIM Rochelle Wu and her brother NM Derek (Sijing) Wu were there playing against each other in a tournament! It was kind of funny to think about seeing them all the time at UAH for Caesar tournaments and then again out on the West Coast. The chess world is a small one.

The tournament playing area was really nice. The lady showing me around even let me check out how they had connected their DGT boards for live streaming events, which was very informative. The club is open throughout the week and offers instruction to the membership that would satisfy even the most determined chess student!

I’d love to visit the club again if I am ever in the area with a bit more time, and I’d highly recommend that you visit if you have the chance.

The Huntsville Chess Club will prepare to ring in the new year on Monday (12/30) with either casual chess or a tournament of some kind, depending upon how many players are present. If you’re in town, we hope to see you there!

We’ll plan to conduct casual chess this week. If you’re the first to arrive, please pick up the equipment from the info desk and if you’re the last to leave, please make sure that it gets back to them.

World’s Oldest Surviving Chess Piece Unearthed in Jordan

“The strange figurine isn’t a tiny altar, it’s a rook and demonstrates a stage in the evolution of the chess castle from a Persian chariot, archaeologist says…” Click here to read the rest of the article.

Knockout Tournament – Starts at 6pm

As a reminder, we’ll be conducting our unrated knockout tournament tomorrow, 11/25 at 6pm. Please plan to arrive as close to 5:30pm as possible to allow for us to get everyone registered, etc. The tournament is free and open to all, regardless of membership status.

Developments in Chess AI – by David Hayes

For those of you who are following the advanced artificial intelligence AlphaZero by DeepMind.  AZ was a topic of the presentation by David Hayes a few months back.  AZ beat the best chess computer engines in 2018, but was told the rules of chess (legal piece moves) before it learned to dominate the best computers.

DeepMind’s has developed a new AI called MuZero.  MuZero learned the rules of chess by simply watching it being played, and then exceeded AZ’s skill in the game.  MuZero was not given any information about its environment.

When humans are born, we have little or no information about our environment.  Despite our ignorance, our brains learn the ‘rules’ of our environment, and survive and often thrive.  We have gone into very hostile environments (the moon, deep sea, arctic, etc.), and survived, and learned with our general purpose intelligence.
Similarly, MZ has taken a step closer to a general purpose artificial intelligence like human intelligence.  MZ dominated chess faster and better than AZ, with less effort (energy).  Likewise, it did the same with shogi, go, and 75 Atari games (pacman, asteroids, etc.).  The Atari games are visually complex domains that require intelligent development of a model to decipher the blinking lights and pixels, before the intelligent development of a planning model.

MZ did this by predicting the qualities most relevant to each game’s planning.  Intuitively, MuZero internally invents game rules or dynamics that lead to accurate planning.  Not so long ago, words like predicting and intuition were use to describe only human intelligence, but not anymore.

DeepMind reports that MZ managed a 731% median normalized score compared to 192%, 231%, and 431% for previous state-of-the-art approaches IMPALA, Rainbow, and LASER, respectively, while requiring substantially less training time (12 hours versus Rainbow’s 10 days).

For more information see:  https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/20/deepminds-muzero-teaches-itself-how-to-win-at-atari-chess-shogi-and-go/

Update: We’re going to postpone the Knockout tournament to next week and this week (11/18), we’ll conduct a Quick tournament instead – with both a rated and unrated section. We should be able to have 4 rounds of G10/d5 and will plan to begin as close to 6pm as possible.

Note: To participate in the rated section, you’ll need to have current HCC and USCF memberships (unrated section is open to non-members), but the entry to both sections is FREE!

Register for HCC membership here.

Register for USCF membership here.

Please pre-register for the rated section below to help the TD get things started on time.