Deep Junior 7 wins
Internet Chess Club "CCT4" tournament
At regular intervals the ICC stages tournaments reserved
exclusively for computers. In the fourth event, which was staged from
January 19 to 27, a total of 46 programs participated.
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In the end it was three ChessBase engines that landed
on the top of the final list.
Deep Junior won a clear first place with nine points out
of 11 games, half a point ahead of Deep Shredder and a full point of Fritz
7 and Quark (a strong amateur program by Thomas Mayer).
Junior looked like it was faltering in round six, when
it lost to Shredder and fell behind the leading Fritz7. But in the end
it was Quark who helped the Israeli program to victory by beating Fritz
and Shredder in the last rounds. Junior beat Quark and climbed to the
top of the results list.
Fritz was unlucky to narrowly miss a start-to-finish victory
in the biggest computer chess tournament to be held on the ICC server.
In each of the 11 rounds 23 games were played, for a total of 253 for
the entire tournament. Six were byes due to connection problems or because
the players simply did not appear at the specified time.
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Junior 7 was written by the Israeli team of Shay Bushinsky, Amir Ban (standing
in the picture on the right), with GM Boris Alterman (seated) acting as chess
advisor. The program has been at the top of all international computer rating
lists for many years.
At the Brain Games qualifier (April 2001) Deep Junior had Fritz on the ropes
by going into a 5:0 lead in the 24-game match. Fritz had to work very hard,
equalised in the very last game, and won the playoff. Experts all over the world
were deeply impressed by the ruthless attacking style that the Junior displayed
in this match. IM Hannu Wegner wrote: "The latest version of Junior has
clearly made tremendous progress in tactics and especially in the execution
of brilliant kingside attacks."
Junior won the Microcomputer World Championship in 1997 as well as the mammoth
Cadaqués 2000 tournament of the world´s leading programs. Deep
Junior won the multiprocessor section of World Microcomputer Chess Championship
in 2001.
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