Author: Drexel,Michael
Date: 03:16:46 02/02/04
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On February 01, 2004 at 22:39:20, Robert Hyatt wrote: >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. Crafty never was in trouble in that game. Avoiding the perpetual was not at all easy however. Junior was not punished adequately for that weird Kh8 move. > >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.) Therefore it is better to have the white pieces ;) > >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 agree. IMO it is better to decide such a big swiss tournament by Buchholz. Crafty would have been the winner, but you could speak of the others as co-winners. They definitely deserved it. There are also some programs like Yace,Baron or Comet. They need longer time controls to be competitive. 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. Wrong, your book didn't suck :) Congrats Michael > >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. :)
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