Bulletin Day 6 WCCC
Round 9Shredder had an easy game against MicroMax. With White, Shredder outplayed the opponent quickly, announcing mate-in-17 (moves, not plies!) at move 43, sacrificing a Queen for a Knight. Not necessary, but probably the quickest way to mate. After a difficult start, GridChess (with Black against The King) found a way to create a passed pawn, after which Johan de Koning for The King resigned. The game Rybka vs. Diep was not really a game. After a mere 29 moves Diep was completely outplayed, and Vincent Diepeveen resigned with despair.
The other three games (Zappa vs. Deep Sjeng, Loop vs. The Baron, and Jonny vs. IsiChess) all ended in draws. The latter games was relatively short, but the other two were hard, long-fight struggles, in which all four programs desperately tried to find a win, but didn't succeed. For the top ranks it means that Zappa gave away a precious half point.
For the title there are only 4 candidates in theory, after round 9: 1. Rybka (8 out of 9); 2/3. Zappa and GridChess (7 out of 9); 4. Shredder (6 out of 9). With the games GridChess - Rybka in round 10, and the games Rybka - Shredder and Zappa - GridChess in round 11 to go, nothing is decided yet.
Round 10
The first game to finish was Deep Sjeng - Loop. In a nice game Loop slowly got the better hand and then finished it nicely. Then in the most important game of this round, GridChess - Rybka, Rybka quickly won material. However, GridChess played on and on and on ... and refused to resign, but let itself be checkmated at move 93.
Zappa (Black against Diep) and Shredder (White against The King) had easy wins. The Baron surprisingly won from Jonny. The last game was MicroMax against IsiChess. MicroMax withheld defeat for a long time, but finally had to succumb.
By the win of Rybka there are only two candidates for the title left. The favourite is of course Rybka, with 9 out of 10. The other is Zappa, with 8 out of 10. Both have hard games to go tomorrow (Rybka - Shredder and Zappa - GridChess). So maybe an exciting last round.
Computer Olympiad
Some more games were finished today. We again give the medallists.
Go (19*19)
- MoGo (7 out of 7)
- Crazy Stone (6 out of 7)
- GNU Go (5 out of 7)
In the last round the 5-dan professional Go player Guo Juan commented the top-game MoGo against Crazy Stone. By winning MoGo not only won the gold medal, but also the right to play against her. In two fast games (10 minutes per player per game) she easily won two times in the standard (19*19) game, showing that the level of the top programs still is considerably behind that of professional players. She then also tried her luck on the 9*9 board, but lost the first game. Of course computers are relatively much stronger on smaller Go boards. However, she then proved also to be able to beat the computer on the 9*9 board by winning then two games in a row.
Phantom Go
- GoLois (6 out of 6)
- InTheDark (0 out of 6)
2007-06-17 13:56:48, Amsterdam