The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement

The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement
Author: Matthew Sadler
Publisher: New In Chess
Total Pages: 982
Release: 2021-11-13
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 9056919849

‘How can I learn from AlphaZero’s games, aren’t they too advanced for me?’ many club players asked Matthew Sadler after reading his and Natasha Regan’s groundbreaking Game Changer. Here is the answer: you may not be able to replicate their dazzling deep calculations, but every chess player, from club level up, can improve their game by using engines. You will probably be surprised, there is so much more your engine can do for you than just checking and calculating variations! In this thought-provoking new book, based on many years of working with the world’s best chess software, Sadler presents a unique set of methods to work out using your engine. He shows how in your opening preparation, instead of sifting through masses of computer analysis you should play matches against your engine. He also explains how to train your early middlegame play, the conversion of advantages, your positional play, and your defence. And of course: how to analyse your own games. These generic training methods Sadler supplements with concrete middlegame and opening tools. He explains how the top engines tackle crucial middlegame themes such as entrenched pieces, whole board play, ‘attacking rhythm’, exchanging pieces, the march of the Rook’s pawn, queen versus pieces, and many others. He also opens your eyes to typical scenarios that the engines found and fine-tuned in popular openings such as the King’s Indian, the Grünfeld, the Slav, the French and the Sicilian. Sadler illustrates his lessons with a collection of fantastic games, explained with his trademark enthusiasm. For the first time the superhuman powers of the chess engine have been decoded to the benefit of all players, in a rich and highly instructive book.

The Secret Horsepower Race: Western Front Fighter Engine Development - Special Edition Merlin

The Secret Horsepower Race: Western Front Fighter Engine Development - Special Edition Merlin
Author: Calum E. Douglas
Publisher: HarperTempest
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2021-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781911658870

The piston engines that powered Second World War fighters, the men who designed them, and the secret intelligence work carried out by both Britain and Germany would determine the outcome of the first global air war. Advanced jet engines may have been in development but every militarily significant air battle was fought by piston-engined fighters. Whoever designed the most powerful piston engines would win air superiority and with it the ability to dictate the course of the war as a whole. This is the never before told story of a high-tech race, hidden behind the closed doors of design offices and intelligence agencies, to create the war's best fighter engine. Using the fruits of extensive research in archives around the world together with the previously unpublished memoirs of fighter engine designers, author Calum E. Douglas tells the story of a desperate contest between the world's best engineers - the Secret Horsepower Race.

Thomas and the Great Railway Show

Thomas and the Great Railway Show
Author: Christopher Awdry
Publisher: Egmont Books (UK)
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2007
Genre: Children's stories
ISBN: 9781405231886

The Reverend Awdry created Thomas the Tank Engine for his son, Christopher Awdry, who continued his father's work by writing a further 14 books. Thomas fans will be delighted to see all of Christopher Awdry's stories beautifully reproduced and printed for the first time since 1996. Christopher Awdry's first Thomas book for 10 years is also being published by Egmont in September 2007.

Enterprising Engines

Enterprising Engines
Author: Rev. W. Awdry
Publisher: Egmont Books (UK)
Total Pages: 56
Release: 2004-10-01
Genre: Children's stories, English
ISBN: 9781405203531

Flying Scotsman visits the Fat Controller's Railway and Henry is jealous because he has two tenders. Duck makes Henry look silly, but it is Henry who rescues the passengers when the other railway and Duck's Branch line gets a new name.

The Most Powerful Idea in the World

The Most Powerful Idea in the World
Author: William Rosen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226726347

"The Most Powerful Idea in the World argues that the very notion of intellectual property drove not only the invention of the steam engine but also the entire Industrial Revolution." -- Back cover.

Blood Engines

Blood Engines
Author: T.A. Pratt
Publisher: Spectra
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2007-09-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0553904175

Meet Marla Mason—smart, saucy, slightly wicked witch of the East Coast. . . . Sorcerer Marla Mason, small-time guardian of the city of Felport, has a big problem. A rival is preparing a powerful spell that could end Marla’s life—and, even worse, wreck her city. Marla’s only chance of survival is to boost her powers with the Cornerstone, a magical artifact hidden somewhere in San Francisco. But when she arrives there, Marla finds that the quest isn’t going to be quite as cut-and-dried as she expected . . . and that some of the people she needs to talk to are dead. It seems that San Francisco’s top sorcerers are having troubles of their own—a mysterious assailant has the city’s magical community in a panic, and the local talent is being (gruesomely) picked off one by one. With her partner-in-crime, Rondeau, Marla is soon racing against time through San Francisco’s alien streets, dodging poisonous frogs, murderous hummingbirds, cannibals, and a nasty vibe from the local witchery, who suspect that Marla herself may be behind the recent murders. And if Marla doesn’t figure out who is killing the city’s finest in time, she’ll be in danger of becoming a magical statistic herself. . . .

An Engine, Not a Camera

An Engine, Not a Camera
Author: Donald MacKenzie
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 782
Release: 2008-08-29
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262250047

In An Engine, Not a Camera, Donald MacKenzie argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental ways. These new, Nobel Prize-winning theories, based on elegant mathematical models of markets, were not simply external analyses but intrinsic parts of economic processes. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, MacKenzie says that economic models are an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts. More than that, the emergence of an authoritative theory of financial markets altered those markets fundamentally. For example, in 1970, there was almost no trading in financial derivatives such as "futures." By June of 2004, derivatives contracts totaling $273 trillion were outstanding worldwide. MacKenzie suggests that this growth could never have happened without the development of theories that gave derivatives legitimacy and explained their complexities. MacKenzie examines the role played by finance theory in the two most serious crises to hit the world's financial markets in recent years: the stock market crash of 1987 and the market turmoil that engulfed the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. He also looks at finance theory that is somewhat beyond the mainstream—chaos theorist Benoit Mandelbrot's model of "wild" randomness. MacKenzie's pioneering work in the social studies of finance will interest anyone who wants to understand how America's financial markets have grown into their current form.