Author: Chessfun
Date: 06:34:51 01/21/02
Sjeng. I am not a programmer, but as I enjoy reading others thoughts on the games played by thier programs, especially Vincent's which I await. I thought I would add my own thoughts to the games played by Sjeng. Sjeng's programmer Gian-Carlo Pascutto had posted at CCC that he needed an operator for Sjeng at CCT4 as he was unavailable. I operated Sjeng on an AMD 1200 @ 1429 mhz, with all 3, 4 and 5 person tablebases. Although I don't have an ICC account, I am experienced with the commands required and run a PC account on Chessnet. I ran a couple of test games prior to CCT4 and everything seemed to run fine. Saturday Jan 19. Round 1 Sjeng v Armageddon 1-0 Sjeng has white against Armageddon and immediately has a problem being out of book at move three. On move 9 Black castles queenside and immediately Sjeng sees it is winning with 10. e4. After chasing blacks queen on the queenside, Sjeng effectively opens up black's position winning its queen. A bad opening from Armageddon's point where for some reason it didn't play it's preffered book moves. Round 2. Ban v Sjeng 1-0 Sjeng has black against Ban (Deep Junior 7). I made a new book from a 2600.pgn file found at Mogens Larsen's website. (http://home1.stofanet.dk/moq) By move 15 Sjeng is out of book and on my other PC with Junior 7 loaded I can see Junior is still in book. Sjeng manages to calculate and follows the book line till move 20. Sjeng seems to have a good game until move 29. when it plays 29.....Rxc5 instead of the probably better Bxd6. Sjeng is losing but not out until it plays 37....Qb2, I can see from Sjeng pondering the move and Junior's eval on my other PC that the move is lost. I let the game go on just to get to move 40 :-) resigning after losing queen for rook. Junior played solid building it's advantage slowly which wasn't what I had expected, which was for Junior to come charging as version 7 is apt to do. Round 3. Sjeng v Hossa 1-0 Sjeng stayed in book until move 14. At which point it played Rfc1 instead of what I saw was in Junior's book Qd3. This Rfc1 allowed black to exchange queens and with two passed queenside pawns I was a little concerned that allowing the queens to come off would allow black the chance to move them. After the queens were off Sjeng got its rook onto the seventh where I expected black to challenge it, however black chooses 18...h6 instead preferring to prevent Bg5 and allow a later g5. I was a little concerned black would find the move 29....f6 but instead played 29....Ne4 which appeared to me the losing move. From this position white's lead increased steadily resulting in mate at move 57. Sunday Jan 20. Round 4. Sherifk v Sjeng 1-0 Sjeng has black against Gandalf 5 and after a false start with Sherifk not being able to continue, the game after only two moves was aborted and re-started. I was a beta tester of Gandalf 5 so had a good idea what to expect, so on my other PC I had Gandalf 5 running so as to see it's eval. Sjeng stayed in book until move 14 and the position looked pretty balanced. From the moment out of book it seemed that Gandalf steadily increased it's lead and on move 27. Sjeng played 27...Re7 instead of the likely safer Nb8. After losing the exchange on move 36 it was only a matter of moves till Gandalf won. I resigned after 48. Bg6+ with if I recall Gandalf 5 showing mate in 18 on my other PC. Round 5. Sjeng v Chezzz 1/2 - 1/2 A strange game, which early on I thought was going to be a clear win, but which turned into a scrape for a draw. After the opening Sjeng seemed to have a clear advantage positionally, but choose to play 14. Nh5 instead of the clearly winning Bd3. Not to worry as after 14....Bc8 we can still play 15. Bd3 but this time played IMO the odd looking Qe1. After exchanging queens Sjeng played 18. fxg7 and I was concerned about my opponent playing 18....Re8 however fortunately he choose to take the pawn on g7 and by move 21. we have a position that although white holds the keys, seems drawn. On my other PC, I have Fritz 7 running, seeing my opponents evals as they were kibitzed. I was concerned, as it seemed to me, my opponent was clearly on the right track as far as understanding the position, while it seemed that Sjeng didn't see that he was in trouble. Between moves 21-58 it seemed Chezz played almost flawlessly then somehow at move 60 lost track playing 60.....Rh4+ when either c2 or Kd3 appear to win. Chezzz having tablebases would also probably have helped it, in the end a lucky draw for Sjeng. Round 6. Somnus (Amyan) v Sjeng 1/2 - 1/2 After a restart caused by pairing issues the opening seemed ok for Sjeng coming out of book at move 14 and playing 14....b4. Sjeng also looked at Ne5 which looks clearly the better of the two especially a few ply later. Somehow on move 16...Sjeng played Ng4 with the thought 17. h3 Nh7. However after 17. h3 saw that Ng7 was no good and choose to put the Knight on h6 instead of the probably stronger 17....Ne5. Meanwhile my opponet is announcing to (64) +1.2, +1.8 bugging me no end, (no idea why). Although I'm still showing a small minus score. After my opponent doubled rooks at move 20 it seemed to me immediately that it would now be possible to hold a draw. After 24. Nc4 I was more than happy as Sjeng also was. By this time my opponent has stopped posting his + score as he. I assume like me can see that it means little. My one last concern was over the move 39....Qb2 when it seemed either Kg7 or Kh7 were relatively easy draws. But Sjeng seemed to defend very well and handled the position well and after 48. Qc7 Sjeng can see an easy draw, which my opponent offered on move 51. Without having much experience of using Sjeng my thoughts are that the two losses against Deep Junior 7 and Gandalf 5 with black are not a surprise. The two wins against Armageddon and Hossa were both well played games for Sjeng where it seemed to clearly understand the positions. The two draws were both lucky. Chezzz impressed me especially it's evals of the position from around move 35. Amyan again knew clearly that it was winning and with any luck on it's part would have won. Good luck to all again next weekend. Sarah.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.