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Subject: Junior thoughts

Author: Amir Ban

Date: 16:58:20 07/12/04



Let me first thank those who sent their support during the tournament or posted
their greetings after it. It is well appreciated.

Time to say some random things about Junior, the event, and computer chess.

Having the Championship at home was different, in some expected and some
unexpected ways. I'm pretty used to these events by now, and I found that when
away from home, isolated from family, work and current tasks, they are an
about-right balance between the hectic and the relaxed. This time, with the
tournament hall a half-hour drive from home, it was almost more than I could
handle. I need a rest.

The organization was a pleasant surprise. Playing conditions were superb. There
were far more plugs and connections than necessary. Technical support was very
competent. Commentary by Boris Alterman was first class.

Nevertheless, there were some disappointments: PR work was not evident. The
media were simply not there. Some media coverage would have attracted the
crowds. As it was, the nearby auditorium they reserved for spill-over crowds (my
daughter counted the seats: 320!) remained unoccupied.

The traditional closing banquet was waived this time, in favour of speeches and
glasses of wine. A pity. The opening promise by David Levy for social events did
not materialize.

The starting point for Junior in this tournament was Graz, from which I returned
 with a sense of failure, realizing that I have failed to progress beyond J8
levels. Still, that was almost good enough to win, so there was hope.

I had quite a few major things mapped out to be tried. Most of them were
abandoned after a week or two of work showed they were not productive.

In the midst of this open brain surgery we decided to pull out something to play
in CCT6. It proved to be quite entertaining, but hardly ready for big time.

Meanwhile Shay adopted a testing strategy that proved particularly unflattering
to the new Junior, indicating it had slipped by a 100 or so rating points. I was
skeptical about that, but decided to continue on the current path, trusting good
results to follow. That proved exceptionally difficult. As a matter of fact,
until weeks before the championship it was not clear that we were not heading
for a rude embarrassment. What changed this was that at some point Boris started
telling us that he liked what he saw.

Going into the first round, against Jonny, it seemed we have after all achieved
nothing. Deep Junior was in imminent danger of losing for several moves, grossly
misevaluating and apparently blind to tactics. However, it did manage to pull
together the position and successfully negotiated a draw.

After that game I threw away a feature I always knew was dubious to get the
DeepJuniorEY version, which played the bulk of the tournament, and performed
very well. In the last day we threw in the EM version, which was apparently
superior, based on inadequate testing. That was a gamble, but the idea was to
try it out in the last two rounds before the expected playoff. EM did not fail,
but there was no playoff for it to play ...

Book work is tremendously important in these tournaments. It sometimes seems as
if Boris is in charge, while I and Shay are delegated to the role of
technicians. The symbiosis between Boris and Junior has grown and matured since
the early days, when they hardly understood each other. That was the state of
things at Paderborn '99, when Boris brilliantly planned a Sicilian line into
which Fritz blindly followed. He "forgot" to tell Junior about it, who failed to
understand what was expected of him, started playing elsewhere, and lost.

The games between Junior, Fritz and Shredder were all sharp tactical draws. In
Shredder-Fritz there were even some vaguely ridiculous fireworks just to force
the obvious draw. Falcon-Shredder was similar, and probably the most spectacular
game of the tournament, with some even more spectacular unplayed variations. The
top programs now make you feel that going out of the opening they can see
virtually till the end. Frightening thought.

Junior and Shredder were obviously in top form for this championship. Shredder
always gives the impression of near perfection, so it's very hard for me to
judge whether it has made progress. Fritz, on the other hand, has clearly not
gone in the right direction. After Graz, where it played in superb consistent
style, it seemed to have lost its footing to the wobbly performance that ruined
some of its previous tournaments.

Among the newcomers, the performance is mixed. Quite clearly, Jonny is the one
who made the most progress. The promise of Sjeng, on the other hand, will have
to wait for next year. Falcon has made progress, but lacks the consistency and
solidity to convert it to results.

Among the rest, Diep deserves mention. It had a good result, and there is
obvious talent invested there, but the inconsistency that always characterized
it was apparent in this tournament too. There is a FAQ in computer chess of
whether it helps if the programmer is a good chess player. My answer (strictly
IMO) is probably unexpected: It hurts. When you are a good player, you tend to
think about the problem in all the wrong ways. Anyway one thing that is clear to
me is that you have to be a very good programmer. No shortcuts there.

Amir




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