A Newbie's Impression - Mainz 2006
Posted: 23 Aug 2006, 22:11Hello everybody,
this is going to be my report about the Mainz tournament. For those who don't know yet: I'm the guy who wrote Kurt, the engine that finished on the last rank with 0.5/9 and was depicted as a human participant on the CCC forum.
Well, I'm just going to tell the story and hope you will enjoy reading it. Maybe this will even encourage some other newbies to enter the competition.
Please note that every piece of commentary I'm giving on the games below are my personal thoughts and are not checked with a _real_ engine.
Prologue
By the time I joined this forum (April 2006) I began to rewrite my 3 year old toy engine, which was full of bugs and totally unmaintainable because I just threw everything in in order to try it out - but with the new engine I wanted to become competetive in an engine tournament one day.
At the Frankfurt Championship in May I had a chat with Hans-Walter Schmitt and asked him if it was still possible to join the Chess960 tournament at the Chess Classic. Well, it was, but soon afterwards I changed my mind because I realised that I would never have something competetive ready in time. Then I changed my mind again when Mark Vogelgesang called me in the middle of July and encouraged me to join in. Since I live close to the location and therefore would not have any expenses, I eventually decided to spend 4 weeks of time with programming to turn what was not much more than a move generator into something that could play and would not blunder pieces away because of bugs.
So I focused on having no bugs and tried to tune a tiny evaluation function along with some basic pruning techniques, hoping to probably get a lucky shot. The hardware provided by the sponsor speeded Kurt up about 100%, so that he could search about 10 ply in an average position. This finally took my fear away that I would perform like Etabeta and afterwards be subject of hostilities because of competition distortion.
The effort was eventually rewarded with one well-deserved draw. But now let's look at the round-by-round review.
Round 1: Kurt - Deep Sjeng (0-1)
In the first round Gian-Carlo had trouble with his remote connection and when it finally was up and running Deep Sjeng crashed Gian-Carlo then decided to enroll an older version and had only 8 minutes left on the clock when the game eventually began. Deep Sjeng therefore played very quickly and uncorked some weird moves, giving Kurt a slight advantage after the opening. However, my hopes were destroyed when Kurt embarked on a pointless queen manoeuvre and finally found his trapped queen netted against a rook and a bishop - game over:
[diag]r4r1k/pp1qp1pp/3p1p2/b1pPnP2/1n2B3/1P2P1B1/PQ1P1RPP/5RKN w - - 1 15[/diag]
r4r1k/pp1qp1pp/3p1p2/b1pPnP2/1n2B3/1P2P1B1/PQ1P1RPP/5RKN w - - 1 15
The position is fine for white, who should just play 15. Qb1 to maintain a firm grip with ideas like Bxe5 or Bf4 followed by Ng3. Instead: 15. Re2? (pointless) Nbd3 16. Qa3?? (oh, bugger) Bb4 17. Qa4 b5 18. Qa6 Rfb8 and the queen goes...
Round 2: AICE - Kurt (1-0)
Round 2 demonstrated that the small king safety evaluation I got was far from sufficient. Kurt went down in a fine played mating attack by AICE.
Round 3: ANT 960 - Kurt (1-0)
This game was particularly remarkable not because of the quality of the game but because Levon Aronian swung by and gave comments on the game which was dead funny. "You know, 1.d4 is best, no matter what the position is" was surely one of the highlights. Kurt messed up because he was ignorant of pins in his evaluation. Another issue that I recognised was that bishop mobility was weighed too much so that Kurt would play Bc8-d7 just because he could get more squares for this bishop - my first chess teacher, on the other hand, emphasised that one should bring out the knights first... bugger... 
ANT 960 eventually uncorked a tablebase mate with bishop and 2 pawns against the lone king where every human would just have pushed a pawn home for mating with the queen afterwards.
Round 4: Kurt - Hermann (0-1)
This became one of Kurt's finest games. Hermann had to suffer strong positional pressure and I surely would have preferred to play with white but once again king safety became an issue and my hopes went down the drain. Pushing the pawn shield forward for a temporal dislocation of the enemy pieces - that's not the way to go!
Round 5: Homer - Kurt (1-0)
Again a bad beating because king safety was disobeyed - I decided to improve the king safety evaluation for the second day. The only hope for not finishing with nil points was to achieve a positional game without much hacking - I could see that, apart from the already mentioned bishop mobility thing, the few positional parameters I implemented were quite well tuned - Kurt just spoiled it all game after game because he didn't care for the king enough.
Evening programme (or programming?)
Because I didn't expect Kurt to score at all I was in a good mood after the first five rounds and stayed in the lounge for a couple of beers with Tony, Tord and Daniel, watching GM Portisch blundering the tiebreak match against GM Hort away. Because I didn't stay in the hotel like the others the small society eventually parted and I made my way home, already starting to hack away on the king safety stuff as soon as I sat down in the train heading back to Darmstadt.
Round 6: Kurt - Xinix (0-1)
This was one of the most interesting games Kurt played in Mainz, because it gave me some ideas how to approach my own Chess960 games in certain starting positions. And because it showed me that even though I improved Kurt's king safety handling it still wasn't enough to survive against an aggressive engine that "knows what it wants" (that is, the enemy king...)
[diag]rkqrbnnb/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RKQRBNNB w KQkq - 0 1[/diag]
rkqrbnnb/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RKQRBNNB w KQkq - 0 1
1. d2-d4 (as Aronian pointed out) d7-d5 2.g2-g3 a7-a5 (Where is the king??? Don't let him go!) 3.Sf1-e3 e7-e6 4.Lh1-f3 g7-g5 5.Le1-c3 f7-f5 (Kurt played too calmly, just developing the pieces without establishing a firmer grip on the centre) 6.Dc1-d2 Sg8-f6 (initiates a short m?l?e which both sides are happy with - but Xinix already has the crosshairs positioned onto the target...) 7.Lc3xa5 Sf6-e4 8.Dd2-e1 Se4xf2 9.La5xc7+ Dc8xc7 10.De1xf2 Ta8-a6 11.c2-c3 Ta6-b6
[diag]1k1rbn1b/1pq4p/1r2p3/3p1pp1/3P4/2P1NBP1/PP2PQ1P/RK1R2N1 w KQk - 1 12[/diag]
1k1rbn1b/1pq4p/1r2p3/3p1pp1/3P4/2P1NBP1/PP2PQ1P/RK1R2N1 w KQk - 1 12
There are already a lot of black pieces pointing towards the white king and when e5 or Bg6 enters the equation as well black's attack will be overwhelming.
12.Df2-e1 Td8-c8 13.Td1-d3 Here I started losing the big picture out of sight but I reckon there must have been some tactics around that both engines spotted but I didn't. This condition remained until the end of the game that Xinix finished off with fierce tactical brutality Le8-g6 Now white is done for
14.Se3-d1 f5-f4 15.e2-e4 g5-g4 16.Lf3-h1 f4-f3 17.Td3-d2 e6-e5 18.d4xe5 Dc7xe5 19.Kb1-c1 d5-d4 20.Lh1xf3 g4xf3 21.Td2-f2 d4xc3 22.b2xc3 De5-g5+ 23.Tf2-d2 Dg5-a5 24.Td2-c2 Da5-a3+ 25.Kc1-d2 Tb6-e6 26.De1-e3 Te6xe4 27.De3xe4 Lg6xe4 28.Ta1-c1 Da3-d6+ 29.Kd2-e1 Le4xc2 30.Sg1xf3 Lc2xd1 31.Tc1xd1 Tc8-e8+ 32.Ke1-f2 Dd6xd1 33.Sf3-g1 Dd1-d2+ 34.Kf2-f3 h7-h5 35.g3-g4 Te8-e3+ 36.Kf3-f4 Sf8-e6+ 37.Kf4-f5 Dd2-d3#
Round 7: Spike - Kurt (1-0)
There you have it! Mainz was definitely not Spike's tournament - he had to play Kurt who had 0/6... of course Kurt got "out-tacticked" but I received a compliment by Spike's authors for "having an engine that plays quite well, given the short time of development" In general, the chitchat during the games was one of the very positive things I took back home with me - I never felt the faintest note of arrogance or belittlement by any of the other participants and even learned some tricks from them... ... a big compliment to all of you for your friendly attitude and the appreciation of the "olympic spirit" of my participation 
Round 8: Kurt - Tornado (draw)
Yeah! I would not finish with 0/9!!! One of the reasons certainly was the calm, almost shy, position play of Tornado that allowed Kurt to besiege a backward pawn and finally win it. Then Kurt overestimated a passed pawn and ruined his pawn structure for it. Tornado defended with perpetual check threats in a heavy piece ending and after the rooks went off perpetual check was inevitable:
[diag]nrqbbkrn/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/NRQBBKRN w KQkq - 0 1[/diag]
nrqbbkrn/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/NRQBBKRN w KQkq - 0 1
1.d2-d4 as Aronian pointed out
0-0 2.0-0 Sa8-b6 3.Sa1-b3 d7-d6 4.Sh1-g3 Sh8-g6 5.f2-f4 e7-e6 6.e2-e4 Le8-b5 7.Ld1-e2 Lb5xe2 8.Sg3xe2 Tf8-e8 9.Le1-b4 f7-f5 10.Dc1-e3 Ld8-e7 11.Se2-g3 Le7-h4 12.De3-d3 Lh4xg3 13.h2xg3 Dc8-d7 14.Tf1-e1 f5xe4 15.Te1xe4 Te8-f8 16.Tb1-e1 Tb8-e8 17.Lb4-d2 Sb6-a4 18.Ld2-c3 c7-c6 19.Te4-e3 Sa4xc3 20.b2xc3 Kg8-h8
[diag]4rr1k/pp1q2pp/2ppp1n1/8/3P1P2/1NPQR1P1/P1P3P1/4R1K1 w - - 1 21[/diag]
4rr1k/pp1q2pp/2ppp1n1/8/3P1P2/1NPQR1P1/P1P3P1/4R1K1 w - - 1 21
Of course there were some oddities in Kurt's play up until now but he has overall played well and now sends his knight to c4 or g5 to finish the shaky black centre position off.
21.Sb3-d2! Dd7-c8 22.Dd3-e2 e6-e5?! This looses a pawn immediately and after the correct white play there should have been little hope to escape into a draw. Maybe there simply was no defense at all. 23.Sd2-c4 Dc8-d7 24.d4xe5 d6xe5 25.Sc4xe5 Sg6xe5
[diag]4rr1k/pp1q2pp/2p5/4n3/5P2/2P1R1P1/P1P1Q1P1/4R1K1 w - - 0 26[/diag]
4rr1k/pp1q2pp/2p5/4n3/5P2/2P1R1P1/P1P1Q1P1/4R1K1 w - - 0 26
26.f4xe5?! Bugger, taking with the rook was almost automatic. It is quite easy for white to force some of the heavy pieces off, reaching a won endgame. Kurt did like the passed pawn too much... I'm going to spare you the rest of the game that ended with a perpetual in a queen ending at move 101...
Now I had got my draw and indulged in a well-deserved beer!
Round 9: Patzer - Kurt (1-0)
Kurt ate a poisoned pawn and got his queen trapped once more but I didn't really bother anymore...
After the ceremony I went with Tord, Tony, Daniel, Richard and his daughter for dinner, chatting about all the world and his wife (e.g I also got the thingy with the two Norwegian language standards demonstrated by Tord's 200 crown bill) In the end I ended up with Tord in a pub close to Rheingoldhalle, having 45 minutes left before my bus went for the central station. They had a happy hour, two glasses of beer for the price of one... 45 minutes? Well, off we went... of course I missed my bus but fortunately got another one that brought me to the platform just in time...
And next year I'm going to get some more points!
Viele Gr??e,
Oliver
this is going to be my report about the Mainz tournament. For those who don't know yet: I'm the guy who wrote Kurt, the engine that finished on the last rank with 0.5/9 and was depicted as a human participant on the CCC forum.
Well, I'm just going to tell the story and hope you will enjoy reading it. Maybe this will even encourage some other newbies to enter the competition.
Please note that every piece of commentary I'm giving on the games below are my personal thoughts and are not checked with a _real_ engine.
Prologue
By the time I joined this forum (April 2006) I began to rewrite my 3 year old toy engine, which was full of bugs and totally unmaintainable because I just threw everything in in order to try it out - but with the new engine I wanted to become competetive in an engine tournament one day.
At the Frankfurt Championship in May I had a chat with Hans-Walter Schmitt and asked him if it was still possible to join the Chess960 tournament at the Chess Classic. Well, it was, but soon afterwards I changed my mind because I realised that I would never have something competetive ready in time. Then I changed my mind again when Mark Vogelgesang called me in the middle of July and encouraged me to join in. Since I live close to the location and therefore would not have any expenses, I eventually decided to spend 4 weeks of time with programming to turn what was not much more than a move generator into something that could play and would not blunder pieces away because of bugs.
So I focused on having no bugs and tried to tune a tiny evaluation function along with some basic pruning techniques, hoping to probably get a lucky shot. The hardware provided by the sponsor speeded Kurt up about 100%, so that he could search about 10 ply in an average position. This finally took my fear away that I would perform like Etabeta and afterwards be subject of hostilities because of competition distortion.
The effort was eventually rewarded with one well-deserved draw. But now let's look at the round-by-round review.
Round 1: Kurt - Deep Sjeng (0-1)
In the first round Gian-Carlo had trouble with his remote connection and when it finally was up and running Deep Sjeng crashed
Gian-Carlo then decided to enroll an older version and had only 8 minutes left on the clock when the game eventually began. Deep Sjeng therefore played very quickly and uncorked some weird moves, giving Kurt a slight advantage after the opening. However, my hopes were destroyed when Kurt embarked on a pointless queen manoeuvre and finally found his trapped queen netted against a rook and a bishop - game over:
[diag]r4r1k/pp1qp1pp/3p1p2/b1pPnP2/1n2B3/1P2P1B1/PQ1P1RPP/5RKN w - - 1 15[/diag]
r4r1k/pp1qp1pp/3p1p2/b1pPnP2/1n2B3/1P2P1B1/PQ1P1RPP/5RKN w - - 1 15
The position is fine for white, who should just play 15. Qb1 to maintain a firm grip with ideas like Bxe5 or Bf4 followed by Ng3. Instead: 15. Re2? (pointless) Nbd3 16. Qa3?? (oh, bugger) Bb4 17. Qa4 b5 18. Qa6 Rfb8 and the queen goes...
Round 2: AICE - Kurt (1-0)
Round 2 demonstrated that the small king safety evaluation I got was far from sufficient. Kurt went down in a fine played mating attack by AICE.
Round 3: ANT 960 - Kurt (1-0)
This game was particularly remarkable not because of the quality of the game but because Levon Aronian swung by and gave comments on the game which was dead funny.
"You know, 1.d4 is best, no matter what the position is" was surely one of the highlights. Kurt messed up because he was ignorant of pins in his evaluation. Another issue that I recognised was that bishop mobility was weighed too much so that Kurt would play Bc8-d7 just because he could get more squares for this bishop - my first chess teacher, on the other hand, emphasised that one should bring out the knights first... bugger...
ANT 960 eventually uncorked a tablebase mate with bishop and 2 pawns against the lone king where every human would just have pushed a pawn home for mating with the queen afterwards.
Round 4: Kurt - Hermann (0-1)
This became one of Kurt's finest games. Hermann had to suffer strong positional pressure and I surely would have preferred to play with white but once again king safety became an issue and my hopes went down the drain. Pushing the pawn shield forward for a temporal dislocation of the enemy pieces - that's not the way to go!
Round 5: Homer - Kurt (1-0)
Again a bad beating because king safety was disobeyed - I decided to improve the king safety evaluation for the second day. The only hope for not finishing with nil points was to achieve a positional game without much hacking - I could see that, apart from the already mentioned bishop mobility thing, the few positional parameters I implemented were quite well tuned - Kurt just spoiled it all game after game because he didn't care for the king enough.
Evening programme (or programming?)
Because I didn't expect Kurt to score at all I was in a good mood after the first five rounds and stayed in the lounge for a couple of beers with Tony, Tord and Daniel, watching GM Portisch blundering the tiebreak match against GM Hort away. Because I didn't stay in the hotel like the others the small society eventually parted and I made my way home, already starting to hack away on the king safety stuff as soon as I sat down in the train heading back to Darmstadt.
Round 6: Kurt - Xinix (0-1)
This was one of the most interesting games Kurt played in Mainz, because it gave me some ideas how to approach my own Chess960 games in certain starting positions. And because it showed me that even though I improved Kurt's king safety handling it still wasn't enough to survive against an aggressive engine that "knows what it wants" (that is, the enemy king...)
[diag]rkqrbnnb/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RKQRBNNB w KQkq - 0 1[/diag]
rkqrbnnb/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RKQRBNNB w KQkq - 0 1
1. d2-d4 (as Aronian pointed out) d7-d5 2.g2-g3 a7-a5 (Where is the king??? Don't let him go!) 3.Sf1-e3 e7-e6 4.Lh1-f3 g7-g5 5.Le1-c3 f7-f5 (Kurt played too calmly, just developing the pieces without establishing a firmer grip on the centre) 6.Dc1-d2 Sg8-f6 (initiates a short m?l?e which both sides are happy with - but Xinix already has the crosshairs positioned onto the target...) 7.Lc3xa5 Sf6-e4 8.Dd2-e1 Se4xf2 9.La5xc7+ Dc8xc7 10.De1xf2 Ta8-a6 11.c2-c3 Ta6-b6
[diag]1k1rbn1b/1pq4p/1r2p3/3p1pp1/3P4/2P1NBP1/PP2PQ1P/RK1R2N1 w KQk - 1 12[/diag]
1k1rbn1b/1pq4p/1r2p3/3p1pp1/3P4/2P1NBP1/PP2PQ1P/RK1R2N1 w KQk - 1 12
There are already a lot of black pieces pointing towards the white king and when e5 or Bg6 enters the equation as well black's attack will be overwhelming.
12.Df2-e1 Td8-c8 13.Td1-d3 Here I started losing the big picture out of sight but I reckon there must have been some tactics around that both engines spotted but I didn't. This condition remained until the end of the game that Xinix finished off with fierce tactical brutality Le8-g6 Now white is done for
14.Se3-d1 f5-f4 15.e2-e4 g5-g4 16.Lf3-h1 f4-f3 17.Td3-d2 e6-e5 18.d4xe5 Dc7xe5 19.Kb1-c1 d5-d4 20.Lh1xf3 g4xf3 21.Td2-f2 d4xc3 22.b2xc3 De5-g5+ 23.Tf2-d2 Dg5-a5 24.Td2-c2 Da5-a3+ 25.Kc1-d2 Tb6-e6 26.De1-e3 Te6xe4 27.De3xe4 Lg6xe4 28.Ta1-c1 Da3-d6+ 29.Kd2-e1 Le4xc2 30.Sg1xf3 Lc2xd1 31.Tc1xd1 Tc8-e8+ 32.Ke1-f2 Dd6xd1 33.Sf3-g1 Dd1-d2+ 34.Kf2-f3 h7-h5 35.g3-g4 Te8-e3+ 36.Kf3-f4 Sf8-e6+ 37.Kf4-f5 Dd2-d3#
Round 7: Spike - Kurt (1-0)
There you have it! Mainz was definitely not Spike's tournament - he had to play Kurt who had 0/6... of course Kurt got "out-tacticked" but I received a compliment by Spike's authors for "having an engine that plays quite well, given the short time of development" In general, the chitchat during the games was one of the very positive things I took back home with me - I never felt the faintest note of arrogance or belittlement by any of the other participants and even learned some tricks from them...
... a big compliment to all of you for your friendly attitude and the appreciation of the "olympic spirit" of my participation
Round 8: Kurt - Tornado (draw)
Yeah! I would not finish with 0/9!!! One of the reasons certainly was the calm, almost shy, position play of Tornado that allowed Kurt to besiege a backward pawn and finally win it. Then Kurt overestimated a passed pawn and ruined his pawn structure for it. Tornado defended with perpetual check threats in a heavy piece ending and after the rooks went off perpetual check was inevitable:
[diag]nrqbbkrn/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/NRQBBKRN w KQkq - 0 1[/diag]
nrqbbkrn/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/NRQBBKRN w KQkq - 0 1
1.d2-d4 as Aronian pointed out
0-0 2.0-0 Sa8-b6 3.Sa1-b3 d7-d6 4.Sh1-g3 Sh8-g6 5.f2-f4 e7-e6 6.e2-e4 Le8-b5 7.Ld1-e2 Lb5xe2 8.Sg3xe2 Tf8-e8 9.Le1-b4 f7-f5 10.Dc1-e3 Ld8-e7 11.Se2-g3 Le7-h4 12.De3-d3 Lh4xg3 13.h2xg3 Dc8-d7 14.Tf1-e1 f5xe4 15.Te1xe4 Te8-f8 16.Tb1-e1 Tb8-e8 17.Lb4-d2 Sb6-a4 18.Ld2-c3 c7-c6 19.Te4-e3 Sa4xc3 20.b2xc3 Kg8-h8
[diag]4rr1k/pp1q2pp/2ppp1n1/8/3P1P2/1NPQR1P1/P1P3P1/4R1K1 w - - 1 21[/diag]
4rr1k/pp1q2pp/2ppp1n1/8/3P1P2/1NPQR1P1/P1P3P1/4R1K1 w - - 1 21
Of course there were some oddities in Kurt's play up until now but he has overall played well and now sends his knight to c4 or g5 to finish the shaky black centre position off.
21.Sb3-d2! Dd7-c8 22.Dd3-e2 e6-e5?! This looses a pawn immediately and after the correct white play there should have been little hope to escape into a draw. Maybe there simply was no defense at all. 23.Sd2-c4 Dc8-d7 24.d4xe5 d6xe5 25.Sc4xe5 Sg6xe5
[diag]4rr1k/pp1q2pp/2p5/4n3/5P2/2P1R1P1/P1P1Q1P1/4R1K1 w - - 0 26[/diag]
4rr1k/pp1q2pp/2p5/4n3/5P2/2P1R1P1/P1P1Q1P1/4R1K1 w - - 0 26
26.f4xe5?! Bugger, taking with the rook was almost automatic. It is quite easy for white to force some of the heavy pieces off, reaching a won endgame. Kurt did like the passed pawn too much... I'm going to spare you the rest of the game that ended with a perpetual in a queen ending at move 101...
Now I had got my draw and indulged in a well-deserved beer!
Round 9: Patzer - Kurt (1-0)
Kurt ate a poisoned pawn and got his queen trapped once more but I didn't really bother anymore...
After the ceremony I went with Tord, Tony, Daniel, Richard and his daughter for dinner, chatting about all the world and his wife (e.g I also got the thingy with the two Norwegian language standards demonstrated by Tord's 200 crown bill) In the end I ended up with Tord in a pub close to Rheingoldhalle, having 45 minutes left before my bus went for the central station. They had a happy hour, two glasses of beer for the price of one... 45 minutes? Well, off we went... of course I missed my bus but fortunately got another one that brought me to the platform just in time...
And next year I'm going to get some more points!
Viele Gr??e,
Oliver
