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Correspondence GM Arno Nickel |
The final will take place on the Playchess.com server from Friday to Sunday, March 23-25, 2007, with the first round starting at 14:00h server time each day. It will be a round robin tournament, with each participant playing one game against all other participants. Time controls are 60 minutes + 15 seconds increment per move.
Two or three tournaments back it would have been a sensation, if grandmasters like Hikaru Nakamura (FIDE Elo 2651) failed to achieve more than 50 percent in the Freestyle Main Tournament. Nowadays any experienced Freestyle player or even kibitz is no longer surprised. Players like him will always play beautiful games, with lots of ideas, but they are vulnerable when it comes to deep tactics on the board, especially in a rapid game 60m + 15s. Although they have Fritz or other advisors at their disposal, they will always try to force their own moves and only realize that something went wrong with their plan when it’s already too late. Someone asked “Star Wars” (H. Nakamura) in the chat whether he uses Rybka, which is the most popular Freestyle engine running as UCI engine under the Fritz or ChessBase. His answer: “I use my brain, because its better than Rybka on 6/7 days of the week.”
Real Freestyle experts use about four computers with different engines, and unlike GM Nakamura will never trust their own play, if it is not accepted by at least one of their engines. That does not necessarily mean they are simply playing computer moves. They try to check the full information provided by the engines, and they recognise the weaknesses and the strengths of their analysis tools. They know when a king’s attack may come into consideration and when it’s a storm in a teacup. They know when a fortress can be built, even if the engines say they are losing. And they know when a pawn or the exchange can be sacrificed to seize the initiative or to achieve counterplay. But they will never decide such things without consulting their engines. That’s the main difference between real Freestyle experts and inexperienced grandmasters.
There are Freestyle teams consisting of computer experts and grandmasters. Experience has shown that strong correspondence chess players with much practice in computer analysis form a third group of experts. Maybe the computer expert of a team is a strong player himself, as is the case with International Master Vasik Rajlich, who is the Rybka programmer. What is his role when he is playing together with a high-class grandmaster? It doesn't make much sense to waste time discussing the general plan. It is much more important that he checks and analyses the computer lines. His main task should be to conduct and translate the dialogue between the engine and the grandmaster, keeping both from going wrong. Rajlich’s team, with GM Michal Krasenkov and IM Iweta Radziewicz, was the winner of the 3rd Freestyle Final, and keeps the lead in the Freestyle Elo list we published in our last article. Unfortunately the Rajlich team dropped out of the group of leading teams in the 5th Main Tournament, when they forgot to recapture a rook in the seventh round. Their opponent, “Ultra-d”, an engine-only player, was so confused and embarrassed about the situation that he did not know what to do: take the point or offer a draw (his position was a bit worse before the incident occurred). Unable to decide it by himself he consulted the Tournament Director, who felt Ultra-d should be protected against any pressure from the chat and from his opponent (who in fact remained very polite when asking for a way of accommodation). I believe that the TD should have left the decision to Ultra-d, but instead he forbade both players from agreeing to a draw. I don’t know if he regret this decision later on, but in order to keep the reputation of the Freestyle organisation I have to state that this has been his last decision as a Freestyle TD.
Sometimes grandmasters and other strong players enter a Freestyle Main Tournament and withdraw after an unpromising start. That is what Israeli GM Ronen Har-Zvi did, leaving the tournament after a loss in the first round. Some people would like to see such withdrawals punished, but that’s more complicated in practice than they think. Fortunately the number of withdrawals has not been a real problem in the our Freestyle series. There are also positive examples, like the Russian GM Vladimir Belov (Elo 2600), who also lost his first round game but stuck to the tournament until the very end, achieving 4.5 points out of eight games.
Before we come to the Final this weekend let’s take a look at the top standings of the Main Tournament (the complete list is given by a link at the bottom):
5th Freestyle Main Event 2007 (Time: 60m + 15s, 8 rounds)| 1 |
Cato the Younger, Rybka 2.3 mp FSCD |
5.5 / 8 |
28.50 |
| 2 |
Flying Saucers |
5.5 / 8 |
27.50 |
| 3 |
ZackS |
5.5 / 8 |
27.50 |
| 4 |
Rodo,Rybka 2.2 mp |
5.5 / 8 |
27.00 |
| 5 |
Pulse_exchange, Rybka 2.3.1 mp 32-b |
5.5 / 8 |
27.00 |
| 6 |
Etaoin Shrdlu |
5.5 / 8 |
26.50 |
| 7 |
The wizard of Os |
5.5 / 8 |
26.00 |
| 8 |
Ciron |
5.5 / 8 |
26.00 |
| 9 |
Rainer Zufall |
5.5 / 8 |
25.00 |
| 10 |
Kaputtze |
5.5 / 8 |
25.00 |
| 11 |
EL-SHADDAI, Rybka 2.3.1 mp x128 |
5.5 / 8 |
24.50 |
| 12 |
Hercules01, Rybka 2.1o mp |
5.5 / 8 |
24.00 |
| 13 |
Ultra-d, Rybka 2.3.1 mp |
5.5 / 8 |
23.50 |
| 14 |
PawnStriker1978 |
5.5 / 8 |
23.50 |
| 15 |
Dummkoller |
5.5 / 8 |
22.50 |
| 16 |
Engineer |
5.5 / 8 |
22.00 |
| 17 |
Revelator |
5.5 / 7 |
19.00 |
These were the 17 teams/players, who made it up to the play-offs on March 10th. The ranking was established by “progressive score”, which means summing up each player’s points from round to round. The first three got free tickets for the Final and the following 14 had to play mini-matches.
Each pairing played a match of two games, with time controls of 60m+15s, with the lower ranked player having the white pieces in the first game. If the result was 1:1 then a third game had to be played. The lower ranked player got the white pieces and had to win in order to qualify. If this game ended in a draw, the higher ranked player was qualified for the final. (Further games with shorter time controls were considered, but ultimately discarded, as they would have favoured the engine-only players.)
Here are the results of the mini-matches, with the winners marked in bold type.
| EL-SHADDAI | Rodo | 1.5:1.5 |
| Hercules01 | Pulse_exchange | 2.0:1.0 |
| Ultra-d | Etaoin Shrdlu | 0.5:1.5 |
| PawnStriker1978 | The wizard of Os | 0.5:1.5 |
| Dummkoller | Ciron | 1.5:1.5 |
| Engineer | Rainer Zufall | 2.0:1.0 |
| Revelator | Kaputtze | 0.5:1.5 |
So the Final on March 23rd until 25th will be played by these ten players (the number of rated Freestyle games is given in brackets).
| Flying Saucers | DEN | 2687 (33) |
| ZackS | USA | 2639 (49) |
| Engineer | UKR | 2635 (28) |
| Ciron | GER | 2618 (42) |
| Kaputtze | GER | 2492 (26) |
| Cato the Younger | USA | (11) |
| Rodo [Rybka] | ITA | (11) |
| Hercules01 [Rybka] | USA | (11) |
| Etaoin Shrdlu | CZE | (10) |
| The wizard of Os | NED | (10) |
Some words about the finalists. Most of them are known to use very fast computer systems with up to eight processors (four duals).
Flying Saucers, operated by the Danish centaur Dagh Nielsen, was successful at the previous Final coming in Second.
ZackS is the legendary handle of the American Steven Zackary, who won the 1st PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament in 2005, together with his friend Steven Cramton. So this looks like a comeback after about two years.
Engineer is the only certified grandmaster in the field. He is the Ukrainian Yuri Solodovnichenko, who has an over-the-board GM title and is a very strong correspondence chess player as well. Does he play in a team or just only himself? The answer to such questions will be only known (hopefully) after the tournament. It’s his first qualification to a Final.
Ciron is me in my second qualification to a Freestyle final. I hope to do better than one year ago, when I only came seventh.
Kaputtze is the handle of Jochen Rindfleisch from Mannheim. So far his biggest success in Freestyle.
Cato the Younger was the surprise of the Main Tournament. We know that the owner of this handle, Nelson Hernandez from USA, already co-operated successfully with another player under the handle Intagrand. Cato played his first game with an automatic Rybka engine, but then switched to centaur modus.
The Italian Rodo played with an automatic Rybka engine. In his personal information he also gives the handle Auryn, which means he is co-operating with the Italian chess player Eros Riccio.
Hercules01 is the second (and last) automatic Rybka, completely unknown so far, but maybe also the second handle of a well-known Freestyler.
Etaoin Shrdlu is a Czech centaur team, probably consisting of players from the previous well-known handles Equidistance and Xakru. I wouldn’t be surprised, if a strong player like IM Roman Chytilek is in this team.
The Wizard of Os is the handle of a player named Hans van Mierlo, another Freestyle newbie, who may be wellknown in the Dutch chess computer scene.
As mentioned above the final will be held on Friday-Sunday, March 23-25, 2007, starting at 14:00h server time each day. It will be a round robin tournament, with each participant playing one game against all other participants. Time controls are 60 minutes + 15 seconds increment per move. The winner of the final receives the first prize of US $8,000 and the title of "5th PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Champion". The runner up gets $4,000, and the player coming in third $2,000.
| Round 1 |
Friday | 23/03/2007 |
14:00h CET |
| Round 2 |
Friday | 23/03/2007 |
17:00h CET |
| Round 3 |
Friday | 23/03/2007 |
20:00h CET |
| Round 4 |
Saturday | 24/03/2007 |
14:00h CET |
| Round 5 |
Saturday | 24/03/2007 |
17:00h CET |
| Round 6 |
Saturday | 24/03/2007 |
20:00h CET |
| Round 7 |
Sunday | 25/03/2007 |
14:00h CEST |
| Round 8 |
Sunday | 25/03/2007 |
17:00h CEST |
| Round 9 |
Sunday | 25/03/2007 |
20:00h CEST |
Note that there is a change to daylight saving time on Saturday night in Europe.
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