Author: Wayne Lowrance
Date: 22:31:32 02/01/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 01, 2004 at 22:39:20, Robert Hyatt wrote: >The main preparation items were the hardware (supplied by AMD in Austin, TX) a >quad 848 box with 8 gigs of RAM. I sent one of my 15K U320 SCSI drives out >there with the 3-4-5 piece tables and the opening book stuff. > >The opening book prep was pretty minimal. Gower and I (and a couple of chess >players he brought with him) tested a couple of QG-type lines to be sure that we >had reasonable choices for black's responses to d4/c4 openings. As black we had >elected to play the 2. ... e6 variation of the Sicilian that we used so many >years with Cray Blitz. It gives a reasonable position with a bit of asymmetry >to produce a position that isn't "dead" right out of book. > >For round 9, since a win was critical, I chose to vary and not play 1. d4 since >Crafty has been known for that forever. I decided to go with 1. e4 and if black >allowed it, I was going to play the Evan's gambit, an opening I like for >computers as white. But Hiarcs didn't cooperate and we ended up in a Guico that >transposed to a Ruy. > >The book has two components. The base book is my old stand-by enormous.pgn >product made by "book create enormous.pgn 60 10". I then had a bookc.bin with a >few (and I do mean a few as in 6-7 lines for white, 2-3 for black) lines to >guide the thing into reasonable positions. I didn't try to win out of book, but >I did try to avoid losing out of book. :) > >Now on to the rounds. > >Round 1. White vs messchess. Normal 1. d4 opening and we dropped out of book >on move 15 with an evaluation of +.67, totally acceptable. :) The score jumped >by about .3 every move and by move 40 the opponent resigned at +17.4. Good >start. NPS was ridiculous of course. First search was to 17 plies deep. >Seemed to hit 14+ the entire game. > >Round 2. Black vs Pharaon. A QGD (Lasker's) that popped out of book looking >drawish as most Lasker's do. However starting around move 30, black used some >endgame/pawn structure knowledge to produce a significant "edge" that won a pawn >by move 35 and the usual score jump after every move resulted in a resignation >at move 47. Typical depth here was 16-17 plies but queens were off. > >Round 3. White vs Pepito. Another 1. d4 opening and another +.7 out of book, >but Crafty has always liked 1. d4 (+.7 is pure positional scores, not a pawn in >material ahead). This was pretty stable through move 40, but slowly Crafty >improved and around move 40 things starting to get significantly better. By >move 44 we were at +2.5 and while the game went on for 30 more moves, it was >over basically... > >Round 4. Black vs Zappa. First bad book line. We had accidentally left a >response to d4 for black that led to a position we didn't like. Somehow I did >not delete it when we were testing, or I deleted it locally and not on the >Opteron. In any case, we had no real winning chances in this game, and Crafty >found a forced perpetual that ended the game at move 30. > >Round 5. White vs Searcher. We had a gross network problem and I could not >connect to ICC or the opteron, fortunately the opteron and ICC were not affected >and the game started without me. Crafty simply played very well here in another >1. d4 except this time we were about 0.0 out of book as black tried something >different. The evaluation steadily climbed, but slowly, until move 20 saw the >first fail-high winning a pawn plus. Things fell apart quickly and the game >ended at move 32, at +8.20... > >End of day 1. Four wins, one draw. Some amazing search speeds. Some decent >luck with the book to avoid "book losses". Not a bad day at all. > >Round 6. White vs Yace. Expected to be one of the strongest competitors as >usual. Out of book on move 7 and Crafty was happy. So happy it offered the >b-pawn as a gift, although Yace declined. By move 12 this was +2. By move 20, >+3.5. This is the _wrong_ kind of position to play into against a machine as >fast as the quad 848 box. Yace resigned at move 35 at +10.0. An easy win >thanks to a bad book line choice by Yace, that turned what promised to be a real >struggle into a quick tactical bust. It's happened to me before, so I know how >it feels. :) > >Round 7. Black vs ChessThinker. Another QG by white but leading to a pretty >good white position this time after we chose a bad reply. By move 25 this was >+.75 with us as black not liking that very much. The score quickly reached +1 >and stuck around there until around move 40 where it had reached +1.5 and >eventually +2. But Crafty finally got a bit more consolidated and the score >slowly started coming back down. I thought we were going to lose this game when > the score hit +2 around move 45. By move 55 it was down to .75 and continued >to drop until the game ended in a hard-fought draw. > >Round 8. White vs Junior. Obviously this would be a bear of an opponent, and >the game did not disappoint. Crafty worked up an edge after leaving the book at >+.17 (nearly equal) to +.6 by move 16 (book ended at move 7 as Junior chose to >not repeat the previously tried responses to d4 others played, and apparently >listened to a comment by IM Schroer to play something different. Junior let >things get a bit wild, and starting around move 20 we were hitting 16 plies >every time and our score was up to +1.0 with some wild tactics. We ended up >winning a piece for three pawns and then a very sharp tactical struggle followed >where either side might have won. A well-deserved by both players result of >draw was reached (perpetual by Junior) at move 64. > >Round 9. White vs Hiarcs. Another difficult opponent. Before starting this >round, I chose to do something different with the book for two reasons. First, >our 1. d4 had become pretty predictable and I didn't want to repeat the Junior >game and possibly draw again.. I was concerned that had Ruffian won, a draw by >Crafty would have given the title to Ruffian and I chose to try something a bit >more dangerous and go with 1. e4. In fact, this was the game where I had set up >for the Evan's Gambit but Hiarcs didn't play 3. Bc5 but went to the two knights. > Had I prepared a bit more, I might have gone for something wild there as well, >but I had not prepared any other 1. e4 openings. The Guico line ended at move >15 with a perfectly balanced position, both programs showing almost exactly 0.0 >for the evaluation. By move 25 the evaluation was up to +.75 as Crafty is not >prone to "sit" on a position having been brought up in the GM quagmire of ICC. > It continued to press this positional advantage into winning a pawn, but it >reached a difficult to win (if it was winnable) ending with an extra pawn, with >one rook left on the board. After a long struggle, this ended in a draw. >However, I like games where Crafty is playing for the win and the opponent is >struggling for the draw, rather than the opposite (which happened to us twice as >black as previously mentioned.) > >Final result was 5 wins, 4 draws, 7.0/9.0 for the final result. Hiarcs and >Crafty were tied, and Zappa put Ruffian down for the count to join the group >with 7.0. > >The playoff was not something I particularly like, as the main event was 45 10 >while the playoff was double RR 5 3 blitz event. I played Zappa first and Zappa >played a couple of dubious book lines and Crafty won both games (not easily, but >it had enough horsepower that you give it a pawn, you can expect problems if you >don't have some significant compensation. In the other two blitz games Crafty >played, it drew hiarcs in both. The first was a bit of a struggle as Crafty >chose a dubious book line but it was fast enough to hold on anyway. The second >was also a rather bad Sicilian line and again Crafty struggled for the draw, but >a draw was all it needed to win the playoff. > >Final impressions were many. > >1. Competition is tough. Everyone is getting stronger. You can't take a >single game for granted any longer, in general. > >2. The AMD box is simply amazing. 8M-11M nodes per second. Most games >averaged 8M or so throughout, after both sides have castled, 7M or so before >both sides castle. Search depths were typically 12-16 plies, depending on the >position. Open kings and lots of checks dropped the depth to 11-12 a very few >times, forcing lines in the Junior game let Crafty actually search as deeply >(reported ply depth) as Junior even though Junior counts plies differently. > >3. Luck still plays a part. whether it be luck that avoids a bad book line for >you, or produces a bad book line for your opponent, or just searching deep >enough in a critical position to see a win or avoid a loss, etc. > >4. Debugging is critical. No point in losing games due to bugs, screwed up >time management, etc. Lots of games on a chess server can weed those things out >nicely. > >5. A book is important, but not as important as "some" claim. My normal big >book did just fine, with about 100 moves total in my "start" book to select >particular openings and avoid others. > >6. Perhaps that "if they thought they had a chance, they would have come" >nonsense can now be put to rest for all time. I ran on a machine that might >have been about 1/4 the speed of the machine I could have used in Graz. Anybody >that thinks that would not have been "competitive" is out of their mind. > >I've been doing these competitions since 1976. They are _still_ fun. :) > > >And for Vincent, let me add the following to avoid all the discussions he will >start: > >1. My evaluation sucks. >2. My parallel search sucks. >3. My book sucks. >4. My simple q-search sucks. >5. My wife is ugly. >6. I'm too old and stubborn to have a chance. >7. My kids are stupid. >8. My mother used to wear army shoes. >9. My truck is 9 years old. >10. I don't know squat about NUMA. > >I think that about covers it. > >:) > >Now he doesn't have to add his two cents' worth, assuming he has two cents' >worth to add. :) Thank you Bob and nice goin.. Wayne
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