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Subject: Re: Crafty CCT6 notes

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:49:23 02/02/04

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On February 02, 2004 at 06:16:46, Drexel,Michael wrote:

>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.

It depends on what you mean by "in trouble".  Had junior picked up both the a
and f pawns as crafty expected and as junior proposed a couple of times, I think
it gets more interesting.  Black ends up with a big king-side pawn mass and
white has a bishop extra to stop them.  It looked dangerous to me as the bishop
is not the best anti-pawn medicine in such positions where both sides still hang
on to queens and rooks.

>
>>
>>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 ;)

White helps, but crafty has this inate built-in idea of not "sitting".  It isn't
always a good thing, but it prevents some of those ugly human "squeeze-plays"
where the computer sits around until it gets completely bound into a small knot.
It does it with black as well.  If there is interest, I'll put all the logs on
the ftp machine.


>
>>
>>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.

IMHO we simply had a 3-way tie for first.  End of story.  That's the way we
reported such ties at the old ACM events, until someone decided that we needed
to award a first-place title based on Buchholz.




>There are also some programs like Yace,Baron or Comet. They need longer time
>controls to be competitive.

I've always felt that Crafty plays better at longer time controls, as it helps
to wash-out the very primitive q-search I use..



>
>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
>


According to Vincent my book _always_ sucks.  And I used the same book you find
on my ftp machine.  I am going to rename it to itsucks.bin for clarity.  :)





>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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