Author: Christian Söderström
Date: 11:43:50 11/07/00
OK now to be honest, point-wise Mint didn't to a terribly good job in the tournament. I mean, 0/8 doesn't sound at all impressive and I'm pretty sure thats not much better than even I could have managed personally. But still, I had a lot of fun and met a lot of interesting people, saw some cool chess, confused my parents some, confused my friends even more and found something to do over the weekend. (beside studying that is :)) This is some brief commentary on the games Mint played, not as elegantly as what was done with Tinker but still I will try. Mint vs Amateur 0-1 Mint found a nice opening, but the game soon opened up thanks to some strange moves by Mint and some nice play by Amateur. Once in tactics, Amateur could nicely claim a win. Tinker vs Mint 1-0 Tinker somehow lost a pawn in the opening. Maybe it was a sacrifice, but I don't think it led anywhere since Mint was able to nicely defend its main weakness - the h pawn. Being a pawn up, Mint found nothing much to do, and obviously made a grave error by playing 38... h6? Cutting the rook off from defending the pawn. Great move Mint. Tinker quickly captured the file, was able to infiltrate the position and annihalate Mint. Mint vs Yace 0-1 I really don't like the Gruenfeldt... Yace played a spectacular sacrifice in the opening (book I might add) and destroyed Mint in the tactics that followed. To sharp an opponent by far. Terra vs Mint 1-0 Terra played well to obtain an early positional advantage which eventually forced Mint to sacrifice a knight for two pawns. Mint gained some dangerous pawns however and it became an extremely tough game! In the end Mint had 3 pawns that were menacingly close to queening - but unfortunately a bug surfaced and Mint played the outrageous pa5 to f8 ! Forfeit and 1-0. This was my favourite game however :) Terra won the inofficial swedish championships. Sjeng vs Mint 1-0 Mint sacrificed a pawn in this game in order to get a passer, but uhm, that was pretty bad. Sjeng otherwise outplayed its opponent tactically. Shrike vs Mint 1-0 Another tactical loss. Shrike played really well and managed to find winning tactics after getting a positional advantage. The Catalan is apparently a pretty sharp opening :) Dorky vs Mint 1-0 This match wasn't even close. Dorky played really well, and got Mint into a situation that I really have to work on. It couldn't castle unless it played some positionally uncomfortable moves! Dorky prevented Mints bishop from moving. The only plan it had to be able to move was g6 - Bg7 which seemed to weaken the kingside and what with blacks queen being on the attack and everything it didn't want to do that. So it left its king in the center and the rook in the corner. Dorky opened up some tactics (actually Mint opened them up but thats another story) and won (Mint didn't do that). Nice game by Dorky. Mint vs Averno 0-1 Mint got into a very comfortable endgame that looked very drawn, but Mint played it in such a way that it was actually lost. Averno did what it had to, but still deserves critisism for not destroying Mint in the opening phase like the rest of the boys ;) OK thats it. I hope you all have a nice evening, and lets pray to whatever it is you do/don't believe in that Bush does NOT win the US presidential election tonight. - Christian Söderström (author of Mint - "the friendly chess engine")
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