Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 18:57:38 01/20/03
Go up one level in this thread
On January 20, 2003 at 21:32:22, Ricardo Gibert wrote: >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. > > Crafty says if you play Re8 it just plays Rb7 immediately, not Kg3. Score doesn't change much... It may be overlooking something, but it isn't going to let black get the rook behind the pawn... Maybe we are at the wrong move? IE you have two move 62's above. Do you mean 61. Re8? Going back to move 61, and playing Re8 Kg3 Rb8 I get Rd4 and Rb4. White loses one of the pawns on the h file, but only one. It isn't clear to me, without a lot of study, how black makes progress. The pawn is blockaded, so the black rook is stuck on the b file unless it gives check. The black king can't abandon the kingside or white will eat the g pawn and the hpawn should be enough to force the trade of the rook and a draw... However, my comments were based on the game itself, as it was played, without any long analysis about whether either side made a fatal mistake or not... >> >>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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