Author: Peter Berger
Date: 11:28:14 05/28/01
After reading all the interesting reports by various programmers I thought it might be interesting for some people to read a Joe User report :) If memory serves me well in late April Gerrit Reubold , the author of the program "Der Bringer" ( free download at http://www.reubold.onlinehome.de) and friend of mine contacted me and asked if I wanted to operate Bringer in CCT-3 . CCT-3 was the second "official" tournament for Bringer - it had already participated in CCT-1 some time ago . CCT-1 preparation had been kind of a chaos - I borrowed a fast computer ( PIII500 then ) and had everything set up about 5 minutes before the start of the first game . Opening preparation - none until the very last games . So Bringer happily agreed to play a Benoni with black against archrival PostModernist and got spanked . Another unfortunate game was a draw out of a good position against Grok . In the end everything went a little smoother until in the last round Bringer had to play LambChop - it won a pawn and got a good position - but instead of winning it drew :( . It finished with 4/8 - good for a new starter , but not too outstanding either . For CCT-3 everything was starting much more fortunate . Bringer 1.8 had just been released - so a well-tested and stable version was availlable - and : Bringer has improved quite a lot since CCT-1 times . I planned to buy a new computer anyway so very fast hardware was availlable . Planned changes for Bringer 1.9 are book tuning and book learning . Book learning is not yet availlable ( no problem for a tournament ) but book tuning has been made way easier by Gerrit . Everything could be done in a comfortable way in the Beta's GUI . So the engine that participated was in fact Bringer 1.8 - the engine is identical to the release version so far . This time there was plenty of time to set everything up , tune the book a little and test it . So I was confident that this was the meanest Bringer beast the world has seen so far - ready to take any challenge :) The aim was : to get one big scalp this time - a win against one of the big ones - (5,5/8 was declared the dream result). ( I personally hoped to get a chance to see a game of Bringer against Ferret, too ) . 1st Round : Bringer-Chezzz 1-0 A book victory in fact as Chezzz has no opening book yet and Bringer was set up for the Queen's Gambit - Chezzz happily took the pawn on c4 and tried to keep it ... . Although Chezzz showed some tough resistance it was futile . A good start ! Chezzz' programmer expressed his fears to see this game repeated a few time against others but also took it as encouragement to work on his book code . 2nd Round : Hiarcs8x - Bringer 0-1 Second round and major tournament goal already reached :)). At this time it was unknown how strong the new Hiarcs is but as it lost only this game in the tournament and finished 3rd it can't be that weak . Bringer was set up to answer 1.c4 with 1. ..e6 to head for Nimzo-Indian/Queens-Indian position types instead of the tough English ones and this tactic worked well - Bringer was equal after the opening was finished . After the opening the operator of Hiarcs informed me that Hiarcs was set up for all or nothing . Dunno to what he referred , but if it was the contempt factor it was definitely not the right position to play with IMHO. [Event "ICS Match (Partie in 45 Minuten + 10 Sekunde(n) pro Zug)"] [Site "unbekannt"] [Date "2001.05.26"] [Round "1"] [White "Hiarcs8x(C)"] [Black "Bringer1.9ß02"] [Result "0-1"] [WhiteElo "2200"] [BlackElo "2481"] 1. c4 e6 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. d4 b6 4. Nc3 Bb7 5. e3 d5 6. cxd5 exd5 7. Bb5+ c6 8. Bd3 Be7 9. O-O O-O 10. b3 Nbd7 11. Bb2 Bd6 12. Ne2 Re8 13. Ng3 g6 14. Ng5 Qe7 15. Rc1 Nh5 16. Qg4 Nxg3 17. hxg3 a5 18. Qh4 f6 19. Nf3 a4 20. Rc3 axb3 21. axb3 Ra2 22. Rc2 Rea8 23. Rfc1 Ba6 24. Bxa6 R8xa6 25. Rb1 c5 26. Rd2 Qe4 27. Qxe4 dxe4 28. Ne1 f5 29. dxc5 bxc5 30. Rbd1 Bf8 31. Bc3 Rxd2 32. Rxd2 Nf6 33. Bb2 Kf7 34. Nc2 Rb6 35. Na1 h5 36. Kf1 Ra6 37. Nc2 Ke6 38. Na1 Ra2 39. Bc3 Ra8 40. Nc2 Nd5 41. Bb2 Rb8 42. Na1 Nb4 43. Bc3 Ra8 44. Rd1 Nd5 45. Bb2 Ra2 46. Bh8 Be7 47. Rc1 Nb4 48. Re1 Nd3 49. Re2 Ra8 50. Bg7 Kf7 51. Bc3 Ra3 { 2.29/17 0:00:47.0 } 52. Kg1 Bf6 { 2.86/17 0:00:34.1 } 53. Bxf6 Kxf6 { 2.87/18 0:00:34.1 (PB: 0:00:26.7 ) } 54. Nc2 Rxb3 { 3.07/17 0:01:45.6 (PB: 0:01:45.5 ) } 55. f3 Rb1+ { 3.14/16 0:01:17.9 } 56. Kh2 Ne5 { 3.18/17 0:01:04.4 (PB: 0:00:01.5 ) } 57. Na3 exf3 { 3.19/17 0:00:49.9 (PB: 0:00:01.5 ) } 58. gxf3 Rb3 { 3.31/16 0:00:36.1 (PB: 0:00:35.9 ) } 59. Nc2 Nxf3+ { 3.33/16 0:00:31.5 (PB: 0:00:31.4 ) } 60. Kg2 Ng5 { 3.48/16 0:01:36.1 (PB: 0:00:24.0 ) } 61. Na1 Rb4 { 3.58/16 0:00:26.9 (PB: 0:00:01.6 ) } 62. Nc2 Rg4 { 3.88/16 0:01:04.7 } 63. Kh2 h4 { 3.90/16 0:00:58.8 (PB: 0:00:01.5 ) } 64. Rg2 h3 { 3.95/16 0:00:44.6 (PB: 0:00:01.5 ) } 65. Rf2 Ra4 { 4.04/15 0:00:27.9 (PB: 0:00:08.1 ) } 66. Ne1 Ra3 { 4.12/15 0:00:32.0 (PB: 0:00:31.7 ) } 67. Nf3 Ne4 { 3.98/14 0:00:28.9 (PB: 0:00:28.8 ) } {Hiarcs8x resigns}0-1 Well done, Gerrit !! 3rd Round : Bringer - Deep Fritz 1/2 An easy draw in fact ; game was about equal all the time . 4th Round : Deep Shredder - Bringer 1/2 After an equal opening Shredder slowly seemed to make major progress but couldn't get enough advantage to win . So after 4 rounds at the end of the first day Bringer had 3.0/4 after playing Hiarcs, Fritz and Shredder - quite a day :) . A funny experience was how stressing these games were for me :) ; I had to do _nothing_ but watch and chat but it felt like a day of hard work - in fact it was very similar to having to play for myself .. - but it definitely was exciting . 5th Round : Bringer - Diep 1/2 This probably was the game to decide whether there will be a good or a sensational tournament performance for Bringer. Both engines commited several serious blunders . Bringer got the better out of the opening . In fact Diep was out of book at about move 6 . Although Vincent informed me that he used a big book and all games were checked by search and at first he was quite optimistic as he said Diep had to fill its hashtables and that needed time. To me the time management of Diep looked strange as it used about half of its time for the first dozen moves or so . Bringer went for the dubious plan to play 13. Nb5 and 14.c5 - sacrifying the bishop pair for a passer on c6 . Black probably was already better here , but Bringer had several chances to reach a clear draw which it refused as it enjoyed its position because of the passer . Diep slowly advanced until it blundered with the miserable 35. ... Rh1 so it was even again . Then Diep even sacked a pawn because now _it_ was dreaming of a strong passer - I think at this stage Bringer had some serious winning chances . But it was Bringer's time to blunder again - it went for bad pawngrabbing and came into zugzwang . Diep went on to win : Bringer was at -2.80 at move 61 and even displayed some lines where it went to -5 :( . But much to my surprise Diep played 72. ...Kh8 ? allowing an easy perpetual . In the end I was quite happy with the result . Diep is strong - but this game didn't show good play by both programs . It was much fun to talk and analyze with Diep's programmer . Vincent is a very strong chessplayer and saw several things I didn't notice - and he is very emotional watching the games :)) . 6th Round : Crafty - Bringer 1 - 0 Only game with a serious hardware disadvantage against the Quad but the game seemed to start well as it went straight into an expected line in the Sicilian which is very drawish I think - and another draw would have been a nice result ;) Suddenly Crafty sacked a pawn for great compensation which Bringer grabbed . I was very happy to see Bringer playing 15. ...Nd5 ! returning the material but after a few pieces were exchanged and the dust settled it was Crafty with the bishop pair in an open position where it slowly advanced . I had some hopes after Crafty refused to play f6 and allowed Black to play 22. ...f6 but after all it was one of those positions Crafty simply plays well and my impression was : it just played stronger than Bringer here . With hindsight a sharper opening line might have been a better idea . 7th Round : Bringer-LambChop 1-0 So it was Chop again ;) ! I didn't have great expectations for this game after the loss against Crafty and knowing how strong LambChop plays - also I thought of CCT-1 .. But much to my surprise LambChop's opening book blundered with 11. ...Nd7 ?? and the quite obvious 12. Nb5 ! saw Bringer with +1.5 up . This game was big fun to watch because PeterMcKenzie and Gerrit Reubold had interesting discussions about chess programming and it was fun to sit there and listen . On the chessboard it looked like an easy win for a long time . Although I didn't like 17. dxc5 Bringer seemed to improve its position nicely - but then it played 35. b6 ?! closing the queen side . Now it was clear that at some point it had to advance its kingsside pawns to make progress . IM Schroer commenting praised White and predicted an easy win , the chessprogrammers were more sceptical though . Problem was that Bringer thought it was +2.0 up positionally so why weaken this perfect position by "weakening" the kingside with pawn moves ? Fortunately Gerrit told us he had learned his lesson from the Grok game in CCT-1 and Bringer now recognizes the 50 moves rule in search . It got quite exciting now ; now and then Bringer made a pawn move or what looked like a promising King move but the game went on and on without any noticeable progress . I don't know if Bringer would have won this ( no deeper analysis done so far ) but by this time LambChop had started to make some tiny weakening pawn moves without being forced to . Those didn't seem to hurt too much - until : 122. ...h4 ?? throwing away the game in one move. This game definitely looked like a computer's game . Final Round : SOS - Bringer 1-0 As the LambChop game lasted that long there wasn't any time left to think about what to play against SOS so Bringer had to deal with the lines chosen against Crafty again . I don't know what to think about this game . Opening position was nearly equal, slightly worse for Bringer and then it went downhill slowly . I haven't analyzed this game so far - it felt like being smashed . So with the much better field of competitors in CCT-3 compaired to CCT-1 Bringer finally scored 4,5/8 . As it played nearly all the big ones it got a huge SOP/Buchholz and would have finished 9th . Ahead of Crafty and Shredder ;-) . Slightly ahead of GnuChess :)) . A shared 9th is still a good result . Bringer beat Hiarcs in a nice game . My private hope of getting a shot against Ferret wasn't fullfilled . I think this tournament was a nice success for Gerrit Reubold and showed Bringer isn't _that_ far away anymore . Maybe next time even better :) ?? pete
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