Chess Database Exploration

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Chess Database Exploration

• Dan Alcantara

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Motivation

• Want way to easily browse through a
  hierarchically ordered database of chess games
• Find all games played by a particular person
• Compare two different players and their opening
  strategies

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Data set

• Database of chess game records from 2002 2007
• Each record contains
• Exact sequence of moves played
• Player names
• Player rankings
• Chess opening designation

• Event "Sparkassen Gp 1"
• Site "Dortmund GER"
• Date "2002.07.06"
• Round "1"
• White "Topalov,V"
• Black "Lutz,C"
• Result "1-0"
• WhiteElo "2745"
• BlackElo "2650"
• EventDate "2002.07.06"
• ECO "B48"
• e4 c5
• Nf3 e6
• d4 cxd4
• Nxd4 Nc6
• Nc3 Qc7
• Be3 a6
• Qd2 Nf6

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Data set

• Looking at all games forms a big tree

e4

c5
e5
Nf3

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Navigating the data set

• Current approaches either step through the data
  set or present all of the games in a simple
  listing
• Hard to get an overview of what each step causes

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Navigating the data set

• Each node of the hyperbolic tree represents one
  particular configuration of the board
• Each player action is represented by a connection
  between two nodes
• Gives rough idea of popularity and success rate
  of particular action

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Navigating the data set

• Mousing over the nodes converts the chess
  notation into an actual board
• Navigating the tree darkens areas which have been
  previously visited

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Comparing players
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Comparing players

• Hyperbolic tree not really suitable for
  comparisons
• Can focus on one or two players to see which
  pathways were taken
• Colors blend where the pathways overlap

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Comparing players

• The chess games form two trees
• Branch for every different player action
• Branch for different chess openings
  (strategies)

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Comparing players
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Comparing players
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Comparing players
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Framework

• Tree structures were separated from the
  visualization, so multiple types of
  visualizations can be used on the same data.
• Problem was that I couldnt come up with anything
  interesting with the given timeframe.