WCSC 2018: the 8Th World Chess Software Championship
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WCSC 2018: the 8th world chess software championship Article Accepted Version Krabbenbos, J., van den Herik, J. and Haworth, G. (2019) WCSC 2018: the 8th world chess software championship. ICGA Journal, 40 (3). pp. 194-206. ISSN 1389-6911 doi: https://doi.org/10.3233/ICG-190079 Available at http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/78437/ It is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from the work. See Guidance on citing . To link to this article DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/ICG-190079 Publisher: IOS Press All outputs in CentAUR are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including copyright law. Copyright and IPR is retained by the creators or other copyright holders. Terms and conditions for use of this material are defined in the End User Agreement . www.reading.ac.uk/centaur CentAUR Central Archive at the University of Reading Reading’s research outputs online WCSC 2018: The 8th World Chess Software Championship Jan Krabbenbos, Jaap van den Herik and Guy Haworth1 Amersfoort, the Netherlands, Leiden, the Netherlands and Reading, UK The ICGA’s 8th World Chess Software Championship was held at the Stockholmsmässan in Stockholm, Sweden on July 14th-15th, the day after the Speed Chess ‘opener’ and before the ‘open platform’ World Computer Chess Championship (Krabbenbos et al., 2018a/b). At the same time, the venue also hosted the international conferences IJCAI, ECAI, AAMAS, ICML, ICCBR and SoCS. The main sponsor was Digital Game Technology, DGT. The common platform here was a Dell laptop with i7-8550U, 1.80 GHz processor running on MS Windows 10 x64 with 16 GByte of internal memory. Nine engines took part, see Table 1 and CPW (2018), and so there were nine rounds, this year at a tempo of 45+15/move. This tournament was played with commentary by International Grand Master Harry Schussler. We had many spectators owing to the fact that the conference hall hosted the set of conferences mentioned above. Table 1 The participants in WCSC 2018 (CPW, 2018) # id Program Author(s) Country Operator 1 B BOOOT Alex Morozov UA A M 2 H HIARCS Mark Uniacke GB Harvey 3 C CHIRON Ubaldo Andrea Farina IT U A F Kai Himstedt, 4 G GINKGO Frank Schneider DE Timo Haupt 5 J JONNY Johannes Zwanzger DE J Z 6 K KOMODO Don Dailey, Mark Lefler & Larry Kaufman US Erdogan Günes 7 P PAULINE Patrick Corey US P C 8 S SHREDDER Stefan Meyer-Kahlen DE S M-K 9 T THE BARON Richard Pijl NL R P Round 1: JONNY – BOOOT ½-½, HIARCS – KOMODO ½-½, CHIRON – THE BARON 1-0, SHREDDER – GINKGO ½-½, PAULINE bye The first round did not have any spectacular outcomes although JONNY and KOMODO may have expected a bit more from their game. For JONNY, the first twenty moves were from its opening book. Thereafter White proved to have some aggressive ideas in mind but BOOOT was able to annihilate all potential threats and reach a rook endgame in which Black had slightly the upper hand. Nevertheless, the draw was never out of sight. Indeed, ‘draw’ was JONNY’s prediction on move 63 and this result was agreed on move 66. We remark that BOOOT did play this game without access to an endgame database. 1 Corresponding author: [email protected] The game HIARCS – KOMODO was one between two giants. From the well-known Caro-Kann, the sharpest opening variation was chosen by Black. White was well prepared but could not get any advantage. During the game KOMODO collected some small benefits and hoped that the totality of these would lead to a tangible advantage. However, the trials that Black essayed did not result in real progress. This implied that the spectators for a long time saw forward and backward play. During this stage, White was prepared for a black penetration and prevented any dangerous situation. Finally, the opponents agreed to a draw. The game CHIRON – THE BARON started with the Dutch opening, the Leningrad variation. It is known as a fighting variant. The openings phase was followed by a series of subtle midgame manoeuvers in which White managed with 22. Ne4 to block the black e-pawn and gain some positional advantage. Soon thereafter, the white bishop appeared on the scene and after 25. Be6, see Fig. 1a, it was clear that White had some advantage. Black countered inventively but White managed to keep the advantage. It won the pawn on e5 and thereafter, the technical phase though difficult was not really an obstacle for CHIRON. On move 43, THE BARON resigned. The former world champion program SHREDDER had some high hopes for a good result in this very strong tournament. It is remarkable to see how strong the programs are and without any doubt, we may state that seven to eight programs here play above human world championship level. This implies that they are able to envisage the plans of the opponent. In many games, we therefore see anticipating moves intended to prevent any danger for the program’s position. Opponent GINKGO is no exception to this rule. Here it is noted that GINKGO is different from GRIDGINKGO since GINKGO was forced to use the uniform platform. If the players were human then the game might have been exciting but here, the opponents understood each other’s movements, exchanged the pieces in time, took strategic positions and reached a natural draw in the end. Standings after R1: 1 CHIRON 1/1; 2-7 BOOOT, HIARCS, GINKGO, JONNY, KOMODO, SHREDDER ½/1; 8 PAULINE 0/0; THE BARON 0/1 a b c Fig. 1. (a) R1, CHIRON – THE BARON 25b; R2, BOOOT – HIARCS (b) 21b and (c) 39b. Round 2: THE BARON – SHREDDER ½-½, KOMODO – CHIRON ½-½, BOOOT – HIARCS 1-0, PAULINE – JONNY 0-1, GINKGO bye In this round, we saw the first appearance of the program PAULINE, a newcomer in our community. The programmer is Patrick Corey. He named his program after his mother who is 86 and is in bad health. The name giving showed the touching courtesy of a son towards his mother. As we all know it is very difficult for newcomers to find their way in the strong community we have today with our top programmers. Although PAULINE managed to get opponent JONNY out of book as soon as the first move, it did not show much resistance towards the former world champion program. The game was a walkover for JONNY. In the game BOOOT – HIARCS the good old Ruy Lopez was played. Both sides followed well-known variations and well-known manoeuvers. On move 21, Black made a decision, which was wrong although the move looks logical, see Fig. 1b. Black played 21. … c4 but should have played 21. … cxd4: the majority on the queenside was not a real asset. The white attack on the kingside was more dangerous. The attack was not directly against the black king but was meant to obtain spatial advantage and free play for White’s pieces. In fact, these are more modern concepts than the tactical concepts which we used in previous games. White emphasized its possibilities by playing 27. h5 anticipating 27. … gxh5 28. Bf5 Nf8 29. Bxc8 Rxc8 30. gxh5. Although Black attempted to solve the problems on the queenside by playing 30. … c3 it was too late. White neutralized the dangers on that side and built up an advantage in the center and the kingside. In particular the move 39. f4 as in Fig. 1c established the fact that White was in the lead. Some moves later, Black resigned. In the game THE BARON – SHREDDER, White used the advantage of the first move by playing solidly and without taking any risk. The game went from opening play to midgame play in an equal situation. Anybody who expected that the formal world champion would outplay THE BARON in that phase was wrong. THE BARON played well and was ever alert. It did not give SHREDDER any chance for a counter-attack. In the end, they arrived at an equal position and agreed the draw. KOMODO – CHIRON was a game between two equally strong opponents. KOMODO started with a Queen Pawn opening whereas Black developed in a natural way. However, in the position which resulted from this special opening play, there was no direct point to focus on. This implied that both sides were looking for possibilities to strengthen their position. That was easier said than done. As the game continued, Black tried to increase its power in the center by playing 24. … Bc5 as in Fig. 2a but White quietly responded with 27. Nb3 forcing Black to retract the bishop. Thereafter White did not see any better opportunity than withdrawing its knight and Black started to repeat moves. After another repetition, a draw was agreed. a b c Fig. 2. (a) R2, KOMODO – CHIRON 25w; R3 (b) GINKGO – THE BARON 31w and (c) SHREDDER – KOMODO 30w. Standings after R2: 1-3 BOOOT, CHIRON, JONNY 1½/2; 4-5 KOMODO, SHREDDER 1/2; 6 GINKGO ½/1; 7-8 HIARCS, THE BARON ½/2; 9 PAULINE 0/1 Round 3: HIARCS – PAULINE 1-0, CHIRON – BOOOT ½-½, SHREDDER – KOMODO ½-½, GINKGO – THE BARON 1-0, JONNY bye The game HIARCS – PAULINE looked like a game between a giant and a dwarf. The opening read as follows 1. b3 g6 2. Bb2 e5 3. Bxe5 f6 and White was already a pawn up. The remainder of the game was played without much inspiration and White won, mating on move 26. The game GINKGO – THE BARON started as an irregular opening which transformed into a Philidor variation.