Author: Thorsten Czub
Date: 05:30:40 02/28/01
Hi !
there was a correction in the header of the game
comet-shredder, they both played on duron950 and not
k6-400 level.
also the game socrates-gandalf has ended.
now we only wait for fritz to play against rebel-tiger13
to finish round 2.
the standing looks interesting so far:
<pre>
Tournament: Odyssey-Tournament
Place Name Sco MBch Buch Ws
-------------------------------------------------------------
1-2 SHREDDER5, (1) 2.0 2 2 2
JUNIOR6A, (9) 2.0 1 1 2
3-10 CRAFTY 18.3, (19) 1.5 2½ 2½ 1
YACE 0.23, (24) 1.5 2½ 2½ 1
REBEL-CENTURY3, (10) 1.5 2 2 1
PATZER311B, (17) 1.5 2 2 1
GAMBIT-TIGER1.0, (2) 1.5 1½ 1½ 1
ZCHESS 2.2, (12) 1.5 1½ 1½ 1
LITTLE-GOLIATH2000V3, (16) 1.5 1½ 1½ 1
GROMIT 3.7.14, (26) 1.5 1½ 1½ 1
11-16 WCHESS2000, (15) 1.0 3 3 0
COMET B27, (18) 1.0 2½ 2½ 1
CHESS SYSTEM TAL2.03, (14) 1.0 2 2 1
NIMZO8, (20) 1.0 2 2 1
CHESSMASTER8000 1.0.1., (6) 1.0 1½ 1½ 1
GANDALF432G, (11) 1.0 1½ 1½ 1
17-22 HIARCS7.01, (4) 0.5 2 2 0
ZARKOV4.5R, (13) 0.5 2 2 0
GENIUS6.5 CZUB-STYLE, (21) 0.5 2 2 0
MCHESS8, (23) 0.5 2 2 0
SHREDDER4 CHESSBITS, (5) 0.5 1½ 1½ 0
FRITZ6B, (8) 0.5(1) ½ ½ 0
23-26 SOCRATES X, (22) 0.0 3 3 0
EUGEN7.92, (25) 0.0 2½ 2½ 0
REBEL-TIGER13, (3) 0.0(1) 2 2 0
VIRTUAL-CHESS2, (7) 0.0 2 2 0
</pre>
Shredder and junior have taken leadership.
2 very strong programs. will the others strike back in round 3 ? they are close
to the 2 leaders.
Rebel-Tiger13 has 0 so far, and fritz6b has 0.5.
So only fritz6b could make it to jump into the 2nd group, if it wins in the
second round.
i will drink some tea, and wait.
any programmer who wants to upgrade or bugfix his program before round 3 should
do so now please.
thank you.
Thorsten Czub
For all who don't know:
I am doing computer-chess tournaments for a long time.
It started in 1978. My tournament where private, for fun. We were children
and all had dedicated chess-computers. we took our machines into the chess club,
and also had meetings where we let them play in a tournament against each
others.
we tried to get the strongest machines, i remember those days with
senator-chess, mk1 and novags constellation3.6 and mark5 and mephisto1
etc. very good. Or this super-system3. some of them had karpov on the box.
some spoke (boris dimplomat) and some american machines really looked strange
and were expensive: sandy encore or fidelity champion.
it was a very nice time. i heard about a computerchess magazine in german. and
read it. it's name was Computer-Schach and Spiele. Dieter Steinwender and
Frederic Friedel were publishers. I wrote horrible long reader letters and we
had many telephone calls. i thought: these people are near to the sources, they
know everything. It was naive of course. they hadn't the time to test anything
themselves. but in opposite to us customers they were in contact to the
programmers. I liked frederics articles, i remember especially the article when
he visited Dave Kittinger and wrote about the super-constellation and its
implemented intelligence, he called PSH-strategie. as we all maybe remember,
superconstellation was able to sacrifice a piece or give pawns for a good
position and an attack. this seemed to be hardcoded, as if the machine followed
somehow primitive if-clauses.
But the effect was great. 3 or 4 pieces of superconny hung, but you were not
allowed to take any , otherwise you would be mated or other evil things
happened. great playing style.
I thought: this machine is strong ! I took it to my chess club where some
strong players (from my point of view in those times !! :-)) played.
Our coach Wolfgang Prueske did us kids a favour and played against
super-constellation.
To my surprise, he wanted to play blind. While talking with us about soccer and
chess, he killed super-constellation as if the machine has no idea about chess.
When the machines grow stronger, i always brought one of them, from time to
time, into the chess club to see how strong chess players cope with it.
one of them was my friend Bernd Kohlweyer, today an IM.
but - it was a disaster. for the machines. there was NONE that was able to
win against bernds petrosian-like playing style. even later when the pc's made
their way, bernd is too succesful.
it seems some players kill the machines much better than their elo-rating would
suggest.
First i played with Software on my Atari ST. this machine was not loud (it had
no harddisc) but Psion-Chess for AtariST was really a nice program.
With the PC conquer the computer-market, i had to say good-bye to the silent
Atari and had to buy those ugly and rarely working PC's, until today you get
disturbed while doing something with blue-screens when something crashes and
many many incompatible behaviours.
but for computerchess you have no alternative. thats the silly thing about PC's.
in 1985 i wrote many reader letters to computerschach and spiele.
One of my first tournaments that was published into that magazin was, when i
remember it right in 1987 about a tournament i had outplayed.
In the title-story "A star is born" i let 5 chess-computers
Leonardo Maestro 6 Mhz
Novag Forte 6 Mhz
Rebel 5.0
Turbostar KSO
Excellence 4.2 Mhz
play 10 games against each other on tournament level 40/120,
that made 100 games and much work.
Dieter called it CSS-Computerchess-tournament, and i was a writer for
that magazine from that day.
The games were really interesting. it came to nice knight-invasions
when leonardo maestro played. I called this the SSS, german
for sci-sys-knightinvasion cause at those times saitek was named
sci-sys.
the article was 7 pages long and i was in good mood for the future.
a few years later i build my own computerchess-shop, called schachcomputerwelt,
in english chesscomputerworld, and had it at least 3 years.
a friend of me came one day and said:
don't you want to have your own computer-chess-shop ?
I said: ok - what do i have to do.
nothing special he said, you know about the programs and the dedicated chess
computers, and i have the money and the building. lets work on it.
i had a budget of 25.000 DM and was asked to write down a wish list which
dedicated chess computers or pc's i would like to buy.
can you imagine this ? somebody comes to you and asks you to work in your hobby
area and you can start with 25.000 DM budget to fullfill all your wishes?
Ha - it seems in computerchess many of my wishes have been come true !
that was really nice.
this was a great time, cause i was able to talk the whole day with fans and
freaks about my hobby, as a job.
people were able to come into the computerchess department and to play against
the computers, my day was full with telephoning and fullfilling the wishes of
other people about computerchess. this was really nice !
but i also met some business-men and their own "playing-games and rules". I had
no target to make money out of selling dedicated
chess computers or software myself. so my work can be seen as idealistic. in
meeting those business men i learned that they do not have the same targets.
they need
to make money out of it and sometimes have to behave cruel, with law-suites and
those things.
i stopped writing for computerschach and spiele in the moment i saw that those
business men do not have the same wishes and ideals about computerchess, i had.
i wanted fun, and wanted to enjoy computerchess and friendship with others, we
saw it as a hobby, and had meetings where we exchanged experience, machines and
games, ideas and wishes. it was a social event for us. it was more than a hobby.
part of our lifes. but for the business men it was making money. and they did
not behaved fair. they lied towards us. and why should you enjoy companionship
of people who only want to misuse you and your wishes ?!
so i published my own magazine, schachcomputerwelt. this was also an idealistic
effort. i did not want to make money out of it.
the whole computerchess-company i worked in, was not designed to make much
profit. it was more to enjoy computerchess.
therefore i made my "experiences" with chessbase and weiner in those days.
after 3 years i needed a job and began working for schach niggemann. a big
computerchess shop in germany. i learned to like guenter niggemann, the owner
of schach niggemann when we met each other during a game of chess at the
championship in munich 1993 that was won by hiarcs/genius.
in one round i operated mchess and had to play against the sparc-module of
the saitek machine. Guenter Niggemann operated this machine.
I always wanted to meet guenter when the sparc module played Na3-c2-a3
and moves like this. because i wanted to see Guenters face when the sparc module
did these moves. I do not remember the game exact, but i am sure it
did strange knight moves like this. and i felt very confident watching this.
the saitek machine often crashed, and guenter lost patience. when frederic
came to the board and saw that guenter set ups the board again.
it came to a discussion that was very heated, and in the end guenter destroyed
the saitek machine in front of friedel, who behaved as if he is icca-director in
charge :-))
another day i operated mchess again, we had to play against genius. this was a
classic game, genius-mchess ! and richard lang and ossi sat on the other side of
the board, so it was funny. as usual it gave a discussion about the way chess
programs should be programmed and how to play accurate and best chess in
computerchess. ossi weiner was for the accurate and non-speculative way, and
said so. richard said nothing. mainly ossi and i had an argument. one of the
kiebitzes arround the board must have been - as he once told me - stefan meyer
kahlen (the programmer of shredder, one of the strongest chess program in the
moment, and world-computer-chess-champion), who wondered what the hell we are
doing there while operating.
mchess lost. and the argument between ossi and me had to wait until 1995 in
padeborn, to be spoken out again in public :-))
But i saw that richard and ossi's "development" of genius had come to an end.
there was no development. it was a dead-end street and they needed new ideas.
as we all know today, they were not able to make any progress, and today
shredder is under ossi's contract and ossi switched horses.
munich 1993 was THE championship for mark uniacke and hiarcs. he was amateur
before, and not so many people knew about his very strong chess program.
i loved hiarcs in those days as much as mchess. but mchess had a weak peak in
its live, it was so full of knowledge that it was too slow and was outsearched.
hiarcs on the other hand killed the opponents. his father was with mark, and sat
proud next to mark. it was a sensation when mark won 2 titles. and
i remember him and ossi making some deals, to sell hiarcs. there were also
negotiations between saitek and uniacke, to bring hiarcs into the saitek sparc
module, but mr. winkler did not wanted to pay enough for a world chess champion,
so the deal did not come to real. It would have been a nice deal, since the
sparc module was compatible to the machine mark used for programming and winning
the tounament in munich, it was a sparc-machine too.
so the world-champion-module could have been in the shops direct after the
championship. i remember frans morsch 1993. he was - of course disapointed - and
frederic tried to help frans not to be too much disapointed. there were also
some fights at the tournament. and strange adjudications by the tournament
director jaap van den herik. but - this seems to be the usual thing when it is
about titles and money.
Computerchess is a part of my life. it makes fun to watch the programs play,
to discuss the games and to meet the nice people.
there are many ugly things, but ... overall... there is friendship
and social exchange and it is international. i think chess players and
computerchess people learn about each other when exchanging the experiences.
so i am very pleased that ed made it possible that normal chess players tell us
THEIR experiences while replaying the games.
it has always been nice to exchange different point of views.
we can both learn, the ones about chess, the others about the history
of computerchess and the history of the chessprograms.
even when the strongest chess player in the world is lost against a computer,
the development of chess programs will continue, as a sport. just for fun.
it is unimportant IMO if all human beeings win or do not win against programs.
there is a competition of the makers to make the strongest chess program,
no matter how and why. i do not believe this will end because no human can
win against the machines.
people want stronger chess programs, and as long they want them, they get them.
people want faster cars too, although it often makes no sense to have a fast
car, because you don't find the highway to drive that speed.
but people want those cars, so they were build. i think it is the same
with chess programs.
Best wishes
Thorsten Czub
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