Author: Vikrant Malvankar
Date: 20:15:50 02/27/06
Go up one level in this thread
On February 27, 2006 at 10:39:25, Mridul Muralidharan wrote: >Hi, > > Here is a short writeup of the games I observed .... > >I seem to have unfortunately lost the logs from the first day ... so 'game >comments' from memory. >The tourny started in the stupidist way possible - I overslept and missed the >first round ! > >R1 : Pmess vs Hossa >Forfiet. Sorry for not being able to make it Steffen - alarm clock went bonkers >:-( > >R2 : Tornado vs Pmess >Pmess playing without a book - and always falls for the stupid opening line >(imho) > >1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. Nf3 dxc4 5. e4 (or e3 for that matter) b5? > >It thinks it can retain the pawn (with slim margin of +0.1 or so) , keeps >playing - and keeps messing up its position ! >Luckily , tornado did not convert this advantage into a win and (as you will see >later) inspite of some bugs , pmess managed to win this one. > >R3 : Arasan vs Pmess > >Arasan has traditionally been a problem engine for most of my engines. >I had not tested the last couple of them against it , so had no idea what to >expect. >It was a similar opening as r2 , and you will see the similar b5 move ... though >I think it was not as stupid in the game as earlier on - comes sufficiently >later to be not losing too much tempi (but it is still quite bad). >By middle game , arasan 'owned' the center and I was expecting a crushing >defeat. >My suspicion about why arasan did not win this match was that it was a bit too >protective of its king side pawns and secondly (maybe more importantly) 'cos it >created holes in the center by pawn pushes - allowing the bishop in a6/b7 to get >back into the game. >According to pmess , around move 28 or so the game started slipping away from >arasan (score became +ve for itself at around that time). >[D]rr6/1bp3qk/1n2pn1p/5p2/2pP1P2/B1P2N2/4B1PP/1RQ2RK1 w - - 0 29 >As you can see here , pmess has a lousy pawn structure - a definition of why you >need good pawn structure eval code ! (I added it to my todo list to revamp that >code :-) ). >A really tense game - once again highlighting the 'need' for a opening book. > >Another interesting position is this one - >[D]rr6/2p4k/4p2p/3n1p2/2pPbPq1/B1P5/1R4PP/2Q1NRK1 b - - 0 33 >pmess failed high on Rxa3 (it was thinking of Rg8 until then). > >All in all , a tough fight against a tough opponent. > >R4 : Pmess vs Chepla > >I have been playing some sparring matches against chepla before cct and result >has been roughly equal (with chepla with its monster nps having a lead :-) ). >Chepla gets insane depths and nps ... though Riverman slowed it down with added >mobility seeing the way it was playing pre-cct (damn me for pointing this to him >:-) ). >AND , this was the first game where a severe bug finally decided to rear its >head. >The opening was , surprisingly , not too bad for pmess imo (and I am a patzer , >so dont take my word for this) ... and into the middle game , like Riverman put >it , "pmess owned the center , the king side and the queen side" :-P ofcourse he >was jesting :) >Which is when pmess decided to trade rook for a bishop ... I did fix a bug there >afterwards , but that was not severe enough a problem I guess. >But yes , this was the begining of the downfall for pmess ... from then on , the >score never really went up. >It was a tough seesaw since ... with chepla and pmess alternating in some >maneuvering for control. The e file was a monster for chepla and eventually won >the game for it. >[D]5rk1/1p2q2p/2ppr3/p4pp1/2PQ4/P1N3P1/1P5P/3R1B1K w - - 0 28 >According to chepla , this was the begining of the end for pmess ... I did find >a pretty severe bug in my queen eval - and the result was Qa7 here ... but I am >not fully convinced that this was a fatal mistake. >But the resulting moves were definitely impacted by the bug ... not sure which >move had a spike in score fall , but it was a steady decline. >A well deserved win for chepla and spanks for pmess :-) > >r5: Postmodernist vs Pmess >This game , by far , had the most severe bug in the whole tourny for pmess. >A crushing kingsafety eval bug which increased the eval by more than a pawn >(more in some others) ! >As can be expected , pmess lost ! >The relevent position where this is most clearly reflected in the static eval >would be this position (from game) : >[D]5rk1/pp1b1ppp/8/q2n2B1/2Q2p2/b1PB4/P1PK2PP/1R2R3 b - - 0 17 >pmess evaluated this as 1.5 in blacks favour ! (after fixing , about 0.4 - 0.5 >in blacks favour). >This was clearly reflected in the score's of postmoderninst and pmess in the >game - until pmess began to 'lose' it , the difference was as high as 1 pawn ! >As Andrew put it , "Postmodernist is getting bored of pmess's attack" :-) > >After an exhausting first day of cct (ya , I stayed up the whole 5 rounds, and I >am in India !) , no sleep for the 'bugged' , I was sitting and fixing my bugs >for the next 3 hours. >I ifdef'ed all my changes (#ifdef CCT_DAY1_CHANGES) so that in case I break >something , I can always recompile with this flag removed :-) >Luckily , it seems that I can code for 36 hours straight ... so nothing broke >:-D >Revamped kingsafety totally , changed some passer eval code (I suspect this was >not that well tested :-( ... see the chessthinkerx game for more comments) and >the center control code - that arasan game was scary ! > >Considering that I had work deliverables also to complete , cct was really >stretching my time, but made it to day 2 without too much problems ... and no r6 >forfiet from me :-) > >R6 Tinker vs Pmess >I cobbled up a book from some pgn's lying around to not lose too much time in >the opening ... and what a blunder that was :-( >Came off almost a pawn down from the opening itself ... rest of the match was >one looong struggle to overcome this severe handicap. >I think tinker might have some bugs with draw detection ... since quite a few >times in the game , it was allowing repetition for pmess inspite of showing +ve >eval for itself. >This match ended in a draw. > >R7 Pmess vs Thinker >I promptly kicked out the book before this match :-) >I prefer loss due to my messup's than some random pgn book move issues ! >This was a surprising game in many ways since I expected to be crushed. >As soon as I saw the pairings , I remember asking Peter whether it was for real >- chessthinker was way too strong to face pmess after it has lost like 3 matches >! >I am still analyzing this game , but my impression while watching this game was >that thinker won due to superior endgame knowledge (this is pathetically low in >pmess) ... pmess was a pawn up till the late-middlegame before I left for >dinner. Came back to find a loss - ah well , better a 'fixable' endgame loss >than a more tougher middle game crush :-) > >R8 Pmess vs K9 >I really cant do justice to this game - I slept off after starting the game. >Woke up around 1.5 hours later to find a win ... >When going through the game later , I found a very strong king side attack by >pmess that lead to a won rooks vs queen endgame. > >R9 Prophet vs Pmess > >Same as R8 for this game too ... 6 hours of sleep in 3 days was begining to show >and I slept off after starting this game too (more on that below). >Pmess seemed to have let its queen get 'trapped' in the wrong side of the board >for quite sometime until this position >[D]5r2/p2b2pk/1pn1p2p/3pP1p1/P1pP4/2P1NrP1/1qPBQP1P/R4RK1 b - - 0 33 >where it play Nxd4 >It was not a staight win after this move though. >Pmess tried to force a draw by 3rep at around move 50 or so, but prophet will >not play ball ! >[D]8/R1B3pk/1p4bp/3pp1p1/8/2P1r1Pq/2QNrP1P/5RK1 w - - 0 53 >It played Qc1 and pmess eval kept rising since them. >I think prophet might have played some bad moves since that (time pressure ?) , >the game was over in about 3 moves hence (pmess announced mate score). > > >I continued to sleep , unaware of what happened in R9 ... and since that was the >last game of the tourny , I did not keep an alarm - but an IM from a friend woke >me up later, and I find that there is a new tourny about to begin : I dont think >this 'cct blitz' was announced earlier on. >Note - it was about to begin : lot of games were not yet started. >Asked peter if I could join and he flat out refused saying it was 'too late'. >Oh well , pmess usually sucks at blitz and might have got crushed anyway :-) > >Said goodbye and dragged myself to the bed to get some much needed sleep ! >Thanks to all at CCT , was great fun - as always :-) The discussions on 64 were >enlightening , and I think we taught erdo how to use the cli quite well ;-) > >What I learned from it ? >* Keep alarms properly , and use two alarm clocks for reduncency ! >* Parallel search worked beautifully , my tests on the pgn later on showed a >consistent speedup of >= 1.87 (worst was 1.87) >* My eval approach is not too bad , just buggy like hell :-) >* Move ordering stats were pretty good. >* Sleep better the day before the tourny - similar to how you prepare for an >exam I guess. > > >Thanks, >Mridul > >PS : A bit too long post , should have posted in some site I guess .... Mridul All the Best for great future. Finally there is someone from India who has taken Chess Programming Seriously.(Considering that such a big IT Nation that India is)
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