Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 08:22:26 08/14/98
Thursday night Ivan came to my home to give me more detailed explanations of his failure to meet the due date for the match against Ferret. According to his history, he was not moving from one home to another, in itself something very bothering and heavy, but, even worst, he was looking for a flat where to move, so he used all evenings going from one building to another in search of his new home. Surely all of you have an idea about how much tiresome and endless that endeavor sometime is. Then I told him that many of you, guys, thought he has got cold feet to fight Ferret because maybe he was afraid to be the first GM to lose a match in tournament conditions against a computer, but he smiled and said “No, because Kasparov already was the first guy to lose in that conditions”. Who am I to explain him the difference between DB and a commercial program and IBM hardware and a PC computer? Then he insisted that he is willing to do the match against Ferret in mid September, after a tournament in Europe and, besides, as a way to be forgiven by you he said me “I will play now a 40 moves in an hour game against any top program you choose”. And so was born this game you are going to see. I chose Tiger 11,5 because is strong, because is a new version and because is of my friend Christophe. The game was played in 40 moves an hour in the most strict tournament conditions, not talk allowed, silence, Ivan sited five meters from the computer and only two onlookers, me and a friend of a near master strength. The comments you will see here and there in the game are sometimes from the “spectators” and sometimes from Ivan, these last ones given in the post mortem. Both kind are clearly specified. Tiger 11,5 played in a DOS Window, with 32 Mb hash tables, permanent brain “on”, of course, and also his modality anti-human “on”. Besides, Windows was stripped of all the resident programs. And now the game. White: Ivan Morovic (2600+) Tiger 11,5 (running in a MMX 200 Mhz) 40 moves/one hour Ruy Lopez, Old Steinitz defense 1.- e2-e4 e7-e5 2. Ng1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. Bf1-b5 d7-d6 4. d2-d4 Bc8-d7 5. Nb1-c3 Ng8-f6 6. O-O Bf8-e7 7. Rf1-e1 e5xd4 8. Nf3xd4 O-O 9. Nd4xc6 b7xc6 10. Bb5-a4 Nf6-g4 11. Nc3-e2 Be7-h4 At this stage of the game my friend and I thought Ivan was not getting the best from the opening. The Night in g4 is a pain in the ass and now the arrival of the bishop coerce Ivan to unpleasant moves of his pawns 12. g2-g3 Bh4-f6 13. Ne2-f4 ... In the post mortem Ivan explained us that he was worried by the hole in f3 if the black night arrived sooner or later to e5 13 .......Rf8-e8 14. c2-c3 Probably the only one in this ugly position. 14...... Ng4-e5 15. f2-f3 Ra8-b8 Spectators were amazed to see how bad Ivan position seemed to be. The dangerous holes in the king side, the probable arrival of the queen bishop at h3, etc. We begun to expect a catastrophe. 16. Nf4-d3 d6-d5 17. Nd3xe5 Bf6xe5 18. Ba4-c2 h7-h6 ?! My friend and I -the “spectators”- took a full minute to understand that Tiger was not just doing an unnecesacry move. It was a trap!! Suddenly we saw that if White played pxp, pxp and then Qxp, it followed Bd4+!! and the white house fall in pieces. If Kf1, Bh3++; if QxB, RxR+, etc. Nevertheless, the most amazing thing of all was to lesson the analysis of Ivan in the post mortem. He not only saw that threat, he told us, in a split of a second where we, spectators of expert o near master force, took half a minute, but, what is more, he saw the “others” traps Tiger was putting if White played the natural Rb1 for playing in the next the also natural Be3. Flashing his fingers over the board Ivan showed us no less that five variation with all kind of tactical tricks after pxp and then Bxcp !!, after whose completion Tiger would win a full pawn. I have never seen before a more clear demonstration of the huge abysm between even strong amateur players -as my friend is- and a real GM. No matter how much you see, they always see ten times more than you... 19. Kg1-g2 Bd7-e6 The first great mistake of Tiger, said Ivan 20. f3-f4 Be5-d6 21. e4-e5 Bd6-c5 The second great mistake. Both moves of the bishops gave Ivan free tempi for launching his pawn storm. 22. f4-f5 Be6-c8 23. Qd1-g4 ... At this stage Tiger was given a sad score of 1, xx, according the line. 23...........Kg8-h8 24. Qg4-h5 Kh8-g8 25. b2-b4 Bc5-f8 So, winning a time, Ivan closed the B column to any rook-dancing that could happens, as he showed with another number of incredible variations. 26. e5-e6 Qd8-f6 If Black played Qe7, “spectators” saw the following pretty variation: Bxph, pxB; f6!!. 27. Bc1-e3 g7-g6 28. e6xf7+ Qf6xf7 29. f5xg6 Qf7-d7 At this point, on behalf of Tiger, that showed an horrible 2,97- score, I conceded the game to Ivan. A pretty demonstration of how a temporal weakness -king pawns- can become a tool of utterly destruction. The ending was so good as the previous proceedings: Ivan was very pleased , he got a lot of fun and said that Tiger had played like a real strong master, at least 2500 in some moves, but then lost the compass and, averaging all, he thinks Tiger 11,5 is a 2350 player. He told me next Thursday we can repeat the experiment with the program I choose and this time I am going to pit him against Junior 4,6. I hope that flat he is looking for will appear after all... fernando
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