Author: Ricardo Gibert
Date: 18:32:22 01/20/03
Go up one level in this thread
On January 20, 2003 at 20:44:21, Robert Hyatt wrote: >Round 1. Crafty vs Qalat > >The game went 19 moves in book and when we dropped out, it was almost >perfectly equal. Crafty's first search was 13 plies deep and the eval was >+.06... It averaged searching 14 plies deep for the next 10 moves or so >and by move 28 the score was -.27, not a very good trend. By move 32, >a 17 ply search pegged the score back to +.13 and things were moving in >the right direction. At move 35, black let the game get away by playing >34. b5 which lets Crafty break things open and take advantage of the >openness... Score was +.5 here after an 18 ply search. At move 35, >crafty expected Bxb5 with the +.5 score, but black played axb5 and my >score went to +1.82 instantly and by the time it finished 18 plies the score >had stabilized at +1.25... Another couple of inexact moves by black turned >this into a lost ending. Altogether a bit of a worry as the win was more due >to the opponent making a couple of mistakes, rather than great play by Crafty. > >Round 2. Hossa vs Crafty > >Crafty popped out of book at move 8 with a score of -.5 (-=good for black). >The eval climbed about .1 every move for the next 10 moves, and at move 18, >crafty uncorked a king-side attack that worked out well. 18. ... f5 saw the >score climb to -3.19 after 12 plies. In the moves prior to this, it had slowly >built up a significant number of attackers and move 18 saw the beginning of >an explosion. After white's 19. Rg1 move, fxe4 led to a score of -6.0 >after 13 plies. At move 26 Crafty announced a mate in 9 and Hossa resigned >in a hopeless position. A nice king-side attack that was the start of a >trend for the next three games.. > >Round 3. Crafty vs Ruffian > >I had personally thought that Ruffian would be the program to beat in this >event, as it seems to be very tactical, although it doesn't seem to be a >"strategic" thinker. The game went 13 moves in book, and then I watched a >repeat of the previous game, where Crafty slowly built up a "crowd" on the >kingside. By move 18 the score was +.5 with the move Be3. And things went >bad for black beyond that point. By move 22 the score was +1.0, based only >on positional considerations on the king-side. At move 29, the score had >climbed to +1.5, the average search depth for the previous 10 moves was 14 >plies. At move 31, Ruffian saw trouble and thought for 5 minutes but could >not find a better move than that played in the game. After 17 plies, Crafty >was sitting at +2.08 as it played move 32. Qf6. By move 38 the score was >approaching 3 with a fail-high on Rb7. The rest was anti-climatic as the >kingside attack led to a simply won ending. It was not as easy as it looked, >from my perspective. :) > >Round 4. Crafty vs Yace > >Another primary contender. Due to a bit of botched seeding, Crafty ended up >seeded lower than it really should have been (seeding was on an old ICC >standard rating, rather than the current standard rating) crafty ended up with >white two games in a row. Who am I to complain? :) > >Same opening, but yace chose a different path after a few moves and by the >time Crafty dropped out of book at move 13, the score was -.52. By move 15 >the score was back to "even" and the kingside build-up started again. By move >21 the score was +.40. For the next 20+ moves, nothing happened. A lot of >shuffling, posturing and re-location of pieces by both sides. Suddenly, >around move 40, things started moving up for crafty and at move 44, Nh4 had a >score of > 1.23 (a fail high on that beta value). > >At move 48, the wildest event of the tournament happened. Crafty was looking >at Bc7 and after depth=14, the score was +3.34. It kibitzed this line, but as >we watched, it played Ne6+ instead. I was afraid that a bug had just turned a >win into a loss. I looked at the log file, no mention of Ne6 until it actually >played the move (ie no fail high). It turned out to be ok. After the game I >went back and sure enough, Ne6 was the best move at depth=14. After looking >at the source, the move Ne6 apparently became best right at "time out". And >while it saved the best move, after time runs out it doesn't print anything >else, which made it look strange. It turns out Ne6 is only slightly better >than Bc7, but when you don't see any analysis, ugh. > >The game was basically over at this point as crafty's score was +4 and >climbing. Yace resigned at move 55. Three good king-side attacks in a row. >Another is coming, but for the wrong side. Read on. > >Round 5 Ferret vs Crafty > >Another tough opponent. 19 moves in book, first search score was +.24, >not bad. At move 20, crafty played h6 to drive Ferret's bishop back to e3 >it thought, but Ferret played Bh4 inviting g5 trapping and winning the bishop. >Ferret then traded a piece for the g/h pawns and started an attack. Crafty's >score here was right at zero, which was alarming, because it was a piece for >two pawns up (+1.0 advantage) and the "bad trade" code added another 1.5 to >that since trading a piece for pawns is bad. 2.5 pawns of score, yet the >kingside safety was dragging that back down to zero. > >It turned out the attack was sound, although it wasn't obvious to me that it >was, at the time. And I can certainly forsee situations where it would fail >miserably. But here it worked, Ferret played quite accurately, and by the >end of the game at move 57, it had played very well. > >End of the first day. > >four good games, plus one that was hard to fault other than the result. Even >in the loss, Crafty played very accurately and made the win very difficult to >hit. > >Round 6 Crafty vs Searcher > >A near disaster for the first game of the second day. The same d4 opening >led to a similar position, but things did not go very well here. First score >out of book was -.42, which was typical for every 1. d4 game crafty played as >white. But it was able to pull that up quickly normally. 10 moves out of book, >the score hadn't changed, showing that searcher was playing very well and with >a reasonable amount of understanding of the position. > >Finally by move 24, Crafty was back to a slightly + score, and this held until >it started dropping as it misjudged the queen/rook attacking in the center. At >move 32, the score was -.68 after 16 plies. at move 35, the score was -1.5, at >move 40 -2.0, -2.5 at move 50, -3 at move 60, and at this point Crafty dug >in its heels and pulled the score back to -2.3 where it stayed for a long >while. But it slowly traded pawns, and the score started swinting back. By >move 80, it was -2.0 again, -1.5 by move 85, -1.0 by move 95, and it finally >reported a draw score at move 102. Of all the games it played, this was a >really nice effort as it showed a lot of understanding about king rook and pawn >endings, something I have worked on a lot over the years. I find your last sentence surprising. Crafty was very lucky in this game that Searcherx did not play 62...Re8 62.Kxg3 Rb8 winning easily. > >The game ended at move 115 with a repetition. > >Round 7 quark vs Crafty > >18 book moves, score 0 on leaving book, not a bad start as black. A tactical >oversight saw the score drop to +.70 (good for white) at move 21, but this >pawn "sac" was quickly recovered positionally and by move 24 the score was -.10 >and I was breathing easier. By move 30 the score was -.7. By move 65 the >score was nearly equal, and it looked to be headed to another draw. However, >at move 65 quark sacrificed a bishop for crafty's last pawn, leaving it in a >KRB (crafty) vs KNPPP (quark). The bishop/rook quickly ganged up on the >pawns and won them one by one, leading to a krb vs kn endgame table loss for >quark. A good game by quark, and the bishop for pawn looked like a draw, but >with a lot of maneuvering, the two pieces were simply overwhelming. > >Round 8 Pepito vs Crafty (two blacks in a row to offset two whites earlier) > >I didn't know much about pepito, so I simply watched the game. Out of book at >move 7 had a score of -.37 so this seemed promising. Around move 25 the score >started dropping and pepito won a pawn. As in round 6, crafty dug in and by move >63 this was a drawscore game as well. Nothing good or bad to say here, it was >just "a game". > >Round 9 Crafty vs Tao > >A Ruy Lopez that endedthat ended after 11 moves, and after Crafty played >Bh6, Bxh6, Qxh6 and then Qg7 the game instantly turned into a K, two rooks >and two minors for each side ending, with 3 pawns on each wing.. My score >was dead zero here and it really looked like a draw. > >However, around move 24, black moved his rook off the e-file and that >gave crafty a window of opportunity to penetrate, and it did so with a >score of +.5 at move 24. By move 33, the score was solidly at +.5 and >by move 50 it was clear that white was going to infiltrate and eat the >queenside, which it did... > > >All in all an interesting experience. > >Again, as always, the book is critical, and I did _zero_ book preparation >which hurt in several games. Using an automatically produced book can >work, I am convinced, but it needs to include recent games, so that old >lines with refutations are not played. > >The next tournament will find me with a better book. :)
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