Author: Andrew Williams
Date: 15:45:59 08/22/00
Hi,
I've just got back from my second (and last unfortunately) visit to WMCCC.
Again, some brief thoughts in no particular order:
Internet Access
===============
I talked to a guy in the "press room" and he seemed quite friendly and
suggested that James Robertson could use a spare computer to post a report
to the internet. A report from James has appeared on Frank Quisinsky's site,
but I don't know if he used the press room to post it. As far as I could
determine, there was no internet access from the playing hall itself (which
is mostly laid out for human mind sports of all kinds). The press room is
a little way off and it wouldn't be possible to provide "live" updates. The
odd thing is that the Alexandra Palace is a spectacular venue (I'd guess that
the human participants at the Mind Sports Olympiad are pretty happy).
Unfortunately, it is nowhere near as good for Computer games as (say) a good
university would be, because that would provide: (a) A large number of machines
on-site (I'd guess you could run a uniform-platform event, albeit perhaps not
with the latest equipment). AND (b) Excellent internet access for the
participants. I would stress that the organizers of WMCCC are working hard and
enthusiastically to make the event a success.
Round Four
==========
I saw some of Round 4 today (I think you can find results on Frank Quisinsky's
page). I had to leave before most games were concluded, however.
Vincent Diepeveen was very unhappy, because Diep allowed its rook to become
trapped, giving Zchess a relatively easy win. I think Franck Zibi was rather
pleased, but he was too polite to show it while Vincent was so upset.
Crafty's book was working OK. When I asked Graham Laight if it had played moves
out of the book, Alexander Kure (operating Nimzo) interjected: "yes, but just
not the right ones". Graham said that Crafty came out of book with a score of
-1.5 (or something), but for a while it looked like Nimzo was struggling to
make progress.
I had a nice chat with Frans Morsch, while Matthias Feist was operating Fritz
against Junior. He said that Fritz "thinks the world of its position", but
was concerned that it wasn't making any progress in improving it. Frans said he
didn't like blitz games, but Matthias was keen to enter Fritz in Wednesday
afternoon's blitz tournament. All the while, a young kid was using Amir Ban's
mobile phone to relay the moves to someone (Shay Bushinsky?).
When I asked how his game was going, Stefan Mayer-Kahlen commented, "badly, but
before it was terrible!". This was a little while before Shredder found its way
out of a very sticky situation against Rebel.
I think I embarassed Jonathon Schaeffer a bit by saying how much I enjoyed his
book about Chinook! ("One Jump Ahead", highly recommended).
I'm a little ashamed that I didn't mention Bruno Bras (programmer of Pacque
Expert) yesterday. Apropos of nothing at all, he kindly gave me a free copy of
his program on CD. Thanks, Bruno. Tony Werten's Xinix seems to have recovered
from its problems in Round 1 and had a nice win against Pacque Expert.
I wish I'd been able to have a quick chat with Rudolf Huber about SOS. I'd have
been interested to hear his thoughts on MTD(f).
I hope I've not mis-represented anyone in my two brief reports from WMCCC.
Cheers
Andrew
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