Author: Jeroen van Dorp
Date: 03:39:38 05/11/01
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On May 11, 2001 at 03:23:39, Dann Corbit wrote: >Though the event tag is a hint, I think explaining the time control is very >important. Programs do funny things when they are in a horrible rush, just like >we do. Speaking about time management. I recently 'arranged' a 40/40+40/40+40 game between Hiarcs 7.32 with black and Shredder 5 under the ChessBase GUI. After playing some games I have the uncomfortable feeling Shredder loses a lot of the strenght it has under its own GUI, but that aside. I let Hiarcs use its own opening book, and Shredder the one coming with Fritz, (general.ctg) I haven't got the game at hand now, but the setup resembled something roughly like this: [D] 5r1k/4n1pp/2p1pq2/2Pp4/1P6/2QP4/3N1rPP/1R3RK1 w - - (again, please don't use this for calculation purposes, it's far from exact, but to give you a rough impression of the situation) Around move 40, Hiarcs loses a pawn, and Shredder is capable of pushing a resulting passed pawn on the b-file enough to bring Hiarcs in serious trouble. I searched for a reason why this happened. On move 31, Hiarcs decides to play 31…Qf6? (question mark by me- see rough position above) thus giving Shredder the opportunity to swap queens 32. Qxf6. Having a strong lineup of its two rooks and queen at the f-file, I think Hiarcs shouldn't spill its chances. Especially not because in the game pawn g7 is a bit of a weak spot, and the king cornered at h8. I let a few other engine crunch on the situation, and all came up with 31…h6 or 31…h5. Hiarcs also decided for h6, but after more than four minutes of analysis it switched during *ONLY 27 seconds* to Qf6 and then again to h6, not to return to that Queen move again for the minutes after that. It must have been *in that short time frame of less than 30 seconds of evaluation* that Hiarcs looked at the time and decided to play this move, and IMO lost the game. With the queen and a rook out of the way after the swap, Shredder plays quickly Ra1 followed by Ra7. Supported by its knight, it seizes the hanging black pawn and enters the black back ranks. For a moment, the engine gave that move a better evaluation score, and looking at its clock, decided it had to play now. Well, no shocking discovery at all, but I thought it to be fun to observe the importance of time management. I think, before swapping queens, I would have taken more time to find out the soundness, and maybe catching up with that extra 5 minutes later in the game. But automated chess players have their own rules….. J.
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