A strategic battle ends in a draw
Mark Uniacke arrived at the Centre Ceramique early to get his fast Athlon 2.4
Ghz with 1GB RAM started and to play a few blitz games with Hiarcs X against
Hiarcs 8. It is obvious that the new version is stronger than its predecessor:
Hiarcs X crushed his younger brother 4,5-0,5. “I think that this new version
is about 50-60 Elo points stronger than Hiarcs 8. I have been working full-time
on it since october. I am a bit nervous before the games start, you could say
that I am the nervous part of the program!”, Mark Uniacke told us before
the game.
Hiarcs has often played in the famous Aegon Man vs. Machine tournaments in
The Hague in the nineties. The program played 30 games in Aegon and scored 18,5
points (62%). In 1997, during an exhibition before the last Aegon tournament
started, Hiarcs 5 played games against Anand and Timman: both games ended in
a draw.
Evgeny Bareev starts his game against the English program Hiarcs
The first game of the match Evgeny
Bareev vs Hiarcs X ended in a draw. It was a French Defence with the human
GM playing black. In the middlegame Hiarcs avioded the exchange of queens, but
after 25 moves it looked as though Black had a slight edge. Hiarcs defended
the position, and after an exchange of queens Bareev was sure he had a win.
But he could not find a way to capitalise on it and the game ended in a draw.
Mark Uniacke, the author of the very successful Hiarcs program
"Let's try it again tomorrow," said Mark Uniacke, who was not unhappy
with the draw. "The exchange variation we played is drawish, but the open
position is good for the machine. I don't like closed positions with Caro-Kann
Slav structures. They are much more difficult for computers to play."
Bareev and Gleck, preparing for the game with a good bottle of wine
On Wednesday GM Igor Glek (Elo 2576) came to Maastricht on Wednesday to help
his good friend Bareev. They obviously prepared an English opening (very polite,
since Hiarcs is an English program!) and after the new move 11…Be6 Hiarcs
felt quite comfortable. The English program closed the centre and Bareev took
the opportunity to take the initiative on the queenside. Glek thought that white
was slightly better after 31 moves, but “it is difficult to find the correct
plan. Black has a cramped position but maybe it is easy for computers to defend
this position. It is a good position to play with white against a human player,
but against a computer it is a different story. I can remember that I played
against Fritz 3 in a tournament in Bonn in 1995. I thought that I had a winning
position but Fritz found some incredable moves. I could not believe that the
computer could hold the position.” Back to the game: Hiarcs tried to take
over the initiative with moves like 36…e3 and 37…Nxb5. However,
that gave some tactical chances for the 36-year old Muscovite. It was not enough
to get a winning advantage though: the game ended in a draw.
On Thursday the third game will be played on 13.00 CET. The games are to be
found on the official
website. You can also follow them live on the Playchess.com
server.
Eric van Reem
Press officer Chess Events Maastricht Foundation
