Kiriakov tames the monster
6/13/2004 – In his second game against the Dual Xeon 3.06 GHz Russian GM Petr Kiriakov showed the audience how to get a safe draw: close up the position, block any breakthrough chances and then simply do nothing! Opponent Shredder was reduced to shuffling its pieces around, wondering why nothing was happening in this game...
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Shredder 8 vs Petr Kiriakov
Former Russian junior champion Petr Kiriakov, Elo 2568, played a match against the program Deep Shredder on the Playchess server. The event was conducted by Martin Müller ("Smurskie" to the Playchess crowd), who is using an awe-inspiring Dual Xeon 3.06 GHz computer, with 2 GB RAM and 50 GB of Endgame Tablebases.
 Pert Kiriakov |
Martin Müller |
While his colleague Zhu Chen was having real problems with a chess program, Kiriakov was giving people on the Playchess.com server a lesson on how to keep these monsters at bay. In the first game, with the black pieces, he quickly closed the position, while retaining tight control over the one open file. Shredder was unable to launch a kingside assault because it could not see clear results within its search horizon. Kiriakov simply shuffled around with his pieces until a draw was agreed.
The second game was even more drastic. In a classical
King's Indian Kiriakov had already locked up the pawns in the middle by move
17. Shredder spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make progress,
but all constructive attempts were met by further consolidation and blockading
by the human opponent. In the end the pawn structure was the one depicted on
the right. After a trade-off of all pieces neither the king would have a way
of entering the enemy position.
While the spectators watched incredulously Shredder moved its pieces around behind the pawn chain, mainly concerned with avoiding a draw by repetition. It had to be seen to be believed.
On the left you can see the shuffling of the white and black queens (many of the arrows are in reality multiple moves to and from the squares. On the right are the moves of the kings. At one stage Kiriakov marches his king across to the queenside, possibly considering some kind of an attack of the black a-pawn (which was still on a5). When it didn't work he moved it back to the center and, after a total of 95 moves, the game ended in a draw.
Replay both games of the Kiriakov-Shredder match
These are the results Martin has achieved with his computer:
| Time controls 120 min + 10 min rest | |||
| 26.12.01 | Deep Junior 7 | GM Pablo Zarnicki (ARG) | 1-0 |
| 10.09.01 | Deep Junior 7 | GM Alexey Dreev (RUS) | draw |
| 04.07.01 | Deep Shredder 5 | GM Alexey Dreev (RUS) | draw |
| 30.05.01 | Deep Fritz | GM Pablo Zarnicki (ARG) | draw |
| 05.08.01 | Deep Fritz | GM Alexey Dreev (RUS) | 0-1 |
| 01.08.01 | Shredder 5 | GM Pablo Zarnicki (ARG) | draw |
| 16.03.01 | Shredder 5 | GM Pablo Zarnicki (ARG) | 1-0 |
| 04.03.01 | Shredder 6 | GM James Plaskett (ENG) | 0-1 |
| 17.02.02 | Shredder 5 | GM Alexey Dreev (RUS) | 0-1 |
| 21.02.02 | Shredder 5 | GM Alexey Dreev (RUS) | 0-1 |
| 21.09.02 | Shredder 6 | GM Petr Kiriakov (RUS) | 1-0 |
| 27.09.02 | Shredder 6 | GM Petr Kiriakov (RUS) | 0-1 |
| 14.01.03 | Shredder 7 | GM Sergey Volkov (RUS) | 1-0 |
| 15.01.03 | Shredder 7 | GM Sergey Volkov (RUS) | 1-0 |
| 29.12.2003 | Deep Fritz 8 | GM Sergey Volkov (RUS) | |
| 30.12.2003 | Deep Fritz 8 | GM Sergey Volkov (RUS) | |
| 13.06.04 | Shredder 8 | GM Petr Kiriakov (RUS) | |
| 13.06.04 | Shredder 8 | GM Petr Kiriakov (RUS) | |
Time controls 60 min + 30 min rest
16.08.01 DF -GM Sergej Volkov (RUS) draw
Time controls 60 min + 0 min rest
26.05.01 Deep Fritz-GM Pablo Zarnicki(ARG) 1-0
26.05.01 Deep Fritz-GM Pablo Zarnicki(ARG) draw
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