Man vs Machine World Team Championship in BilbaoThe city of Bilbao is situated on the Bay of Biscay in the Basque region of Spain. It is a major seaport and an industrial centre, with a population of over 300,000 and close to a million in the larger urban area, the sixth-largest in the country. |
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The Festival also includes the VI International Open “Memorial Pedro Zabala” as well as the II Open de Problemas, in which the competition involves solving chess problems. These events go from October 6th to 12th.
The city of Bilbao – a first impression in the area close to our hotel
Fountains and warm, sunny weather await the visitor from other more weather-challenged
parts of Europe
Statues and fountains all over the city
The world-famous Guggenheim Museum, built by Frank O. Gehry. Yes, it is
finished, that's the way it was meant to be. And the giant floral puppy-dog
in the front is part of the complex.
The giant floral puppy-dog, up close
The Quantum Field X3 – a building covered with holographic
panels with a special prism coating that reflect and refract the light of the
sun (during the day) and of laser lamps (during the evening hours).
The moat around the Guggenheim museum
A disconcerting eight-legged giant which visitors tend to walk around
The venue of the event, a telephone and TV company's Internet Café location
The vaulted halls and balconies of the Euskaltel center
Chief organiser Andoni Madariaga under the pressure of preparation
Professor Enrique Irazoqui who is here as a computer chess advisor
Amir Ban (right), author of Deep Junior, getting up a connection to his remote
machine
Frans Morsch, who wrote and will be operating Fritz
Ali Nasir Muhammad, the project manager of Hydra
The Hydra hardware program will be running on a 16-processer array that is located in Abu Dhabi and connected to the playing hall via the Internet. Deep Junior, too, is being run on a remote machine, located at Intel UK (Swindon) and containing 4 x 2.8 GHz Xeon processors. Fritz will run on a notebook (Centrino 1.7 GHz) that is on the stage in Bilbao. The organisers felt that this would provide interesting comparative data, for amateurs and press, about program performances on three different platforms.
Two of the human opponents: FIDE ex world champion Ruslan Ponomariov, at Elo
2710 the world's number 13 player; and Veselin Topalov, Elo 2757, number five
in the world. On the right is Silvio Danailov, the manager and coach of both
these players.
Ruslan Ponomariov desperately needed to know the result of the Leko-Kramnik
game before dinner started. But there was no Internet easily available in the
hotel. Ruslan's solution: call Vlady in Brissago and find out.
The reception dinner for the players, teams and special guests
The computer table, with GM Christopher Lutz and Chrilly Donninger for Hydra;
Frans Morsch for Fritz and Amir Ban for Junior.
The last contestant arrives: GM Sergey Karjakin, chess
prodigy, with mom Tatjana. The two had got into a train the evening before
(at 5 p.m.), arrived in Kiev the next morning, boarded a plane to Vienna, connected
to Frankfurt, flown to Bilbao, taken a cab to the hotel and climbed a flight
of stairs to the restaurant. And tomorrow he is going to face Fritz, young Sergey
is.
The first man vs machine event in Bilbao: Ruslan Ponomariov plays a quick game
against Silvio Danailev's mobile phone.
This is the chess game on the Sony Ericson
Silvio cannot hold back: Ruslan is a pawn down against the mobile phone! We
hasten to mention that the Ex World Champion managed to equalise and win the
game. So no points yet for the machine.
Pictures and report by Frederic Friedel
