Rajlich wins Sixth PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament

Sixth PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament

Report by CCGM Arno Nickel

The sixth PAL/CSS Freestyle tournament was won be the team of Rajlich, led by the author of the program Rybka, IM Vas Rajlich, and assisted by his wife IM Iweta Rajlich, whose opening weapon, the French, proved most effective in this final (+1 =4 with Black and +1 with White against here own favourite defence). Normally GM Michal Krasenkov also belongs to the team, but this time he was playing another tournament, in Spain, if I’m right. Half a point behind was a trio of further "centaurs", humans assisted by computers, who dominated the event with their poisoned opening arrows and fine rapier thrusts, to which a brute force colossus like Mission Control with its 32 processors had nothing to counter. Here are the final standings:

No.	Participants	Fr.Elo	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	Pts	SoB
1.	Rajlich	2736	**	½	½	½	1	½	1	½	1	½	6.0	25.50
2.	Flyingfatman	2674	½	**	½	½	½	1	½	1	½	½	5.5	23.75
3.	Cato the Younger	2649	½	½	**	½	½	½	½	1	1	½	5.5	23.50
4.	Klosterfrau	2608	½	½	½	**	1	½	½	½	½	1	5.5	23.25
5.	Rentner2	2631	0	½	½	0	**	½	1	1	½	½	4.5	18.50
6.	Mission Control	----	½	0	½	½	½	**	0	½	½	1	4.0	17.00
7.	PvP	----	0	½	½	½	0	1	**	½	0	1	4.0	16.75
8.	New Man	----	½	0	0	½	0	½	½	**	1	1	4.0	15.75
9.	Kreuzfahrtschiff	----	0	½	0	½	½	½	1	0	**	½	3.5	15.00
10.	Ultra-d	2695	½	½	½	0	½	0	0	0	½	**	2.5	12.50

Nick Carlin's team Flyingfatman was one of the positive surprises of the 6th Freestyle Tournament. The English IT expert had already participated in the 5th Freestyle event, with help of Russian GM Aleksander Rustemov (Elo 2552), but had missed the qualification by half a point. In the 6th Main Tournament he played the first six rounds as ‘engine-only’, but switched to centaur play for the last three games on Sunday, when a series of drawn games secured him the tied second place. Apart from his own ‘Quad’ Nick received hardware support from Majd Ansari (Kuwait), while Jiri and Roman had also a four-processor machine at their disposal. Thus Nick Carlin showed excellent skills as a coach and also gave an example in which dimensions today’s semi-professional Freestyling is already happening.

After Sujay Jagannathan alias Mission Control had dominated the Main Tournament with his 32-processor machine running a Rybka engine, everybody was curious how he would do in the final. They had not wait too long for a sensation, when in the first round Mission Control played 26...Kg8 after a deep think (11 min) and then, shortly afterwards, resigned.

Flyingfatman (2682) - Mission control (2468) [B97]
6th Freestyle Final playchess.com #101760 (1.1), 22.06.2007
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6 8.Qd2 Qxb2 9.Rb1 Qa3 10.e5!? dxe5 11.fxe5 Nfd7 12.Ne4 Qxa2 13.Rd1 h6 14.Bh4 Qd5 15.Qe3 Qxe5 16.Be2 Bc5 17.Bg3 Bxd4 18.Rxd4 Qa5+ 19.Rd2 0–0 20.Bd6 Nc6 21.0–0!? Re8 22.Qg3 Qb6+ 23.Kh1 Ne7 24.Bc7! Qc6

25.Rxf7 Kxf7 26.Nd6+ Kg8 and 1–0.

What had happened? White lured his opponent into a highly topical line of the Najdorf Poisoned Pawn Variation and threw him out of book with the relatively new move 21.0-0. Not aware of the mating attacks to which his king would be exposed, Black – the Rybka engine – continued with fast play, although now it was high time for a long think. In move 24, after a short interactive analysis the centaur’s ‘killer instinct’ knocked the engine down.

So how can White continue his attack without giving Black time to consolidate his kingside? 27.Nxe8 Nf5 28.Qg6 Qc3 29.Qxe6 Kh8

Once again White has to decide, whether he can go on with direct attack or has to concede Black counterplay in view of his weakened first rank and the hanging rook on d2. Only the exchange sacrifice 30.Qxf5! justifies White’s 24th move Bc7. After 30...Qxd2 31.Qf7 Qe1+ 32.Bf1 Black has no more illusions.

No matter, if he defends g7, with 32...Qa1 or 32...Qc3, he will be unable to parry the manoeuvre Bc7-d6-f8 followed by the sequence ...Nxf8, Qxf8+, Kh7 and Bd3+. Black’s queen might capture the d3-bishop, but cannot prevent Qxg7+ mate at the same time. Shortly after 26...Kg8 Mission Control recognised that in about ten moves (20 ply) it would be without defence against White’s attack; that is to say, it got 30.Qxf5 into its ‘horizon’ (and then resigned), while about 2-3 moves earlier, in the critical position before 24.Bc7, the exchange sacrifice was still out of its view. That really is an instructive Freestyle example for a centaur profiting of an engine’s limited ‘horizon’!

The Poisoined Pawn with 10.e5!? (B97) could be seen in seven games of the 5th and 6th Freestyle Tournaments and earned White three wins. Will this continue in future Freestyle events or will Black be better prepared? Mission Control was tested again in this variation in round seven by IM Joerg Blauert alias Rentner2, and this time achieved an exciting draw by playing 17...Qd5 (instead of 17...Bxd4). The analysis may continue...

The winner got $8,000, and as the 2nd, 3rd and 4th placed ended up tied, each got $2,000. Cato the Younger (3rd), once again led by Anson Williams, had problems with the pairings (they had black against some of the strongest opponents and they had to play five games with the black pieces) and their quad computer. Klosterfrau (4th) alias IM Dennis Breder played only two games (vs. Rajlich and Mission Control) as a centaur, but even so ranked among the winners. One reason may be his strong opening book, the other one a surprising time loss by Rentner2 in a blocked and rather drawish position. This way Rentner2, who had shown a strong performance so far, became the tragic hero of this final.

We already spoke about favourite openings in this final, but how to explain that 86% of the 45 games started with 1.e4, with all closed opening beeing total "out"? Only once Black replied 1...e5 in those 39 games with 1.e4. As usual, Sicilian was the favourite opening (24 games with a score of 42% for Black), but after that came French with 14 games and a score of 50% for both sides! We may expect that this trend will continue for some time, at least with the centaurs, as the French Defence will be chosen for it potential for strategical play.

The draw rate was a bit lower than last time: 62%, which means 17 decided games and 28 drawn games, though one could have expected the opposite. This means that there seems to be no need for a change towards a three-point-for-a-win-rule. A CSS Online poll on this question actually saw 48.21% votes (out of 115) for a change, but most of the finalists don’t like such artificial incentives and prefer to discuss other alternatives to the specific round-robin system. Discussions will go on, but for the time beeing there will be no dramatic changes.

Another topic of the poll was related to the rate of play. 39.47 % said they like the 60min + 15sec modus, 14.91% would prefer an even faster rate of play, and 43.86% voted for longer times. That means, people are generally content with the system, as it is. When asked if they would like to participate in an additional nine-round tournament with two hours per game (and only one game per day) 58.41% said ‘yes’ and only 29.2% said they won’t. So we have a clear vote for such a tournament.

The schedule for the 7th PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament, which is not fixed yet, will most probably be like this:

9 rounds with 90min + 30sec rate of play:

I. weekend: September 7-9, 2007
1. Round: Friday 19.00 MEZ
2. Round: Saturday 14.00 MEZ
3. Round: Saturday 19.00 MEZ
4. Round: Sunday 14.00 MEZ

II. weekend: September 14-16, 2007
5. Round: Friday 19.00 MEZ
6. Round: Saturday 14.00 MEZ
7. Round: Saturday 19.00 MEZ
8. Round: Sunday 14.00 MEZ
9. Round: Sunday 19.00 MEZ

Money prizes: 1st $7000, 2nd $3500, 3rd $2000, 4th $1000, 5th $500.

So this time there will be no final, as the whole tournament would take too much time. This instance might be of interest for new and strong players to give it a try, same as the longer rate of play, which should be in favour of centaurs, though opinious are different in this point. The 8th PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament could take place – once again with 60min + 15sec – in November/December 2007, with nine instead of eight rounds in the main event, as 58.04% of the participants voted for a third round on Friday (up to now we used to play only two rounds on Friday).

For the main events (and may be even for all Freestyle tournaments) the organisers are thinking about abolishing the automatic engine play, that is to say everybody should enter the moves manually. The reason for this is that there have been too many engine crashes and disconnections in previous Freestyle tournaments, especially when both players use different client software. The tournament director is occupied by these problems (restarting games, deciding about results, chatting with the players) most of the time, when he should instead be taking care of other things, like the pairing system, proper information, tables and so on. Players who to play with more then one account will have a hard time, but may be they will find others to help them as operators. And of course everyone has to be present at his or her PC during the game.

Finally, here is the latest Freestyle Elo list. Published are players with at least 15 rated games. In case of at least 30 rated games the rating is considered as ‘fixed’ and shown in bold type. The list is now based on 2445 games and 362 players.

Freestyle Name	Elo	Games	Score	Av.Op.	Draws
1 Vvarkey	2754	15	70.0 %	2607	33.3 %
2 Rajlich	2740	62	68.5 %	2605	56.5 %
3 Etaoin Shrdlu	2727	19	63.2 %	2634	63.2 %
4 Mission control	2716	17	61.8 %	2633	52.9 %
5 Nebula	2707	24	66.7 %	2587	41.7 %
6 Flying Saucers	2698	42	63.1 %	2605	54.8 %
7 Zor_champ	2698	46	63.0 %	2605	39.1 %
8 Jazzled	2694	38	63.2 %	2600	68.4 %
9 Xakru	2692	25	64.0 %	2592	56.0 %
10 Frigderi	2692	16	59.4 %	2626	56.2 %
11 Flyingfatman	2690	24	62.5 %	2601	58.3 %
12 The wizard of Os	2676	19	60.5 %	2601	57.9 %
13 Cato the Younger	2670	37	63.5 %	2574	62.2 %
14 Rodo	2668	28	60.7 %	2593	71.4 %
15 Kreuzfahrtschiff	2667	17	55.9 %	2626	52.9 %
16 Revengeska	2666	16	62.5 %	2577	37.5 %
17 Oligarckh	2657	22	65.9 %	2542	50.0 %
18 Eve®est	2651	23	58.7 %	2590	65.2 %
19 PvP	2644	17	55.9 %	2602	41.2 %
20 EL-SHADDAI	2641	36	61.1 %	2562	44.4 %
21 Icy45	2639	25	54.0 %	2612	44.0 %
22 Hedgehog	2639	22	61.4 %	2558	68.2 %
23 Intagrand	2638	34	58.8 %	2576	41.2 %
24 Lasker#77	2634	16	59.4 %	2568	68.8 %
25 New Man	2632	17	55.9 %	2591	41.2 %
26 Rentner2	2631	66	54.5 %	2600	60.6 %
27 Ultra-d	2631	26	50.0 %	2631	53.8 %
28 King Crusher	2630	38	57.9 %	2575	63.2 %
29 Elissa	2628	20	52.5 %	2611	55.0 %
30 Ciron	2627	59	55.1 %	2592	59.3 %
31 Klosterfrau	2627	60	58.3 %	2569	60.0 %
32 Revelator	2621	22	63.6 %	2524	36.4 %
33 ZackS	2616	65	57.7 %	2562	47.7 %
34 Spaghetti Chess	2608	30	60.0 %	2538	60.0 %
35 Tatar	2608	40	57.5 %	2556	40.0 %
36 EmilV	2608	33	57.6 %	2555	60.6 %
37 WieNie	2604	16	56.2 %	2561	50.0 %
38 Relic	2602	29	56.9 %	2554	58.6 %
39 Alansacount	2598	50	57.0 %	2549	54.0 %
40 Averell	2596	17	50.0 %	2596	41.2 %
41 PAKman	2593	32	57.8 %	2538	40.6 %
42 OpenFormula	2589	23	58.7 %	2528	65.2 %
43 Bychamp_II	2589	33	59.1 %	2525	45.5 %
44 Poweronoff	2582	49	57.1 %	2532	61.2 %
45 Equidistance	2581	38	52.6 %	2563	36.8 %
46 Sebi-chess	2578	31	54.8 %	2544	45.2 %
47 Campolungo	2576	15	53.3 %	2553	40.0 %
48 Rybusia	2576	15	56.7 %	2529	60.0 %
49 Engineer	2576	45	53.3 %	2552	44.4 %
50 Hercules01	2570	20	47.5 %	2588	55.0 %
51 Abeljusto	2570	29	55.2 %	2534	48.3 %
52 PawnStriker1978	2568	17	58.8 %	2506	47.1 %
53 Pingugator	2563	15	60.0 %	2493	80.0 %
54 Tony Kosten	2560	24	52.1 %	2546	45.8 %
55 Petr Hába	2560	28	60.7 %	2484	57.1 %
56 Ibermax	2560	27	48.1 %	2572	51.9 %
57 Sergey_M	2552	23	56.5 %	2507	52.2 %
58 Rainer Zufall	2551	41	51.2 %	2542	48.8 %
59 Fredi_z	2551	40	53.8 %	2525	67.5 %
60 Dieb Fritz	2542	27	51.9 %	2529	59.3 %
61 Walden	2541	27	53.7 %	2515	55.6 %
62 Kaputtze	2532	35	50.0 %	2532	60.0 %
63 Pulse_exchange	2531	19	47.4 %	2549	52.6 %
64 Heffalump	2527	31	54.8 %	2493	58.1 %
65 Noritano	2526	31	53.2 %	2503	48.4 %
66 Auryn	2519	33	51.5 %	2509	54.5 %
67 Braincooler	2516	17	41.2 %	2578	58.8 %
68 Caligula_of_Rome	2510	15	53.3 %	2486	80.0 %
69 Goldbar	2509	35	54.3 %	2479	45.7 %
70 WindPower	2502	39	48.7 %	2511	51.3 %
71 Souk	2498	15	46.7 %	2521	80.0 %
72 Alexisco	2497	31	53.2 %	2475	54.8 %
73 Katzenmaier	2496	21	52.4 %	2479	38.1 %
74 Neverfail	2494	32	50.0 %	2494	37.5 %
75 Stabiloboss	2491	22	56.8 %	2443	31.8 %
76 VoidChessICC	2487	36	45.8 %	2516	52.8 %
77 WoDra	2486	37	51.4 %	2477	64.9 %
78 Hoshad	2486	39	48.7 %	2495	51.3 %
79 Akhtar	2475	29	56.9 %	2426	37.9 %
80 Knilch hi	2469	31	53.2 %	2447	54.8 %
81 Credit	2466	15	46.7 %	2490	26.7 %
82 Rockdoc	2466	15	43.3 %	2513	33.3 %
83 Safary	2466	16	53.1 %	2444	43.8 %
84 Footbolo	2456	16	46.9 %	2478	56.2 %
85 MASLAKKOSTIA	2456	21	50.0 %	2456	33.3 %
86 Supermichi	2451	15	43.3 %	2498	46.7 %
87 ChessChryssy	2450	25	50.0 %	2450	44.0 %
88 AlterEgo	2444	28	46.4 %	2469	64.3 %
89 Thebrokenking	2444	24	47.9 %	2458	45.8 %
90 Erdo	2437	15	40.0 %	2507	40.0 %
91 Dom_	2434	24	41.7 %	2492	25.0 %
92 Kidambi	2431	19	39.5 %	2505	36.8 %
93 Mberggren	2403	15	46.7 %	2426	40.0 %
94 Cluster Wraith	2397	23	43.5 %	2442	52.2 %
95 Gomez	2396	15	40.0 %	2467	40.0 %
96 Bogdansyg	2391	27	44.4 %	2429	51.9 %
97 Pandini	2390	33	40.9 %	2453	63.6 %
98 John Higgins	2381	23	37.0 %	2474	39.1 %
99 Jimliew	2359	16	34.4 %	2471	56.2 %
100 Brain-damage	2344	20	37.5 %	2432	35.0 %
101 Olivier-Evan	2342	25	34.0 %	2458	36.0 %
102 Croberson	2333	35	37.1 %	2425	34.3 %
103 Christian Gorals	2331	21	40.5 %	2398	42.9 %
104 Ggg	2318	22	38.6 %	2398	40.9 %
105 Mikhail Umansky	2315	26	30.8 %	2456	38.5 %
106 Simplicissimus	2308	15	30.0 %	2456	46.7 %
107 Underdrive	2288	16	31.2 %	2425	62.5 %
108 RybkaKiller	2282	15	36.7 %	2377	60.0 %
109 LuBüWy	2281	22	38.6 %	2361	40.9 %
110 Kapaun	2279	27	35.2 %	2386	48.1 %
111 Jpsingh1972	2273	19	34.2 %	2387	36.8 %
112 Pantani	2233	19	31.6 %	2367	31.6 %
113 Greyscales	2229	21	33.3 %	2349	47.6 %
114 CumnorChessClub	2215	15	30.0 %	2362	20.0 %
115 VampireBat	2198	21	21.4 %	2424	23.8 %
116 RedLotos	2193	18	27.8 %	2359	22.2 %
117 Otto der erste	2179	15	26.7 %	2355	26.7 %
118 Pepekan	2122	20	22.5 %	2337	15.0 %

Download all Games of the 6th Freestyle Final

Articles on Freestyle Chess

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The $20,000 free-for-all chess tournament 24.05.2005 Like to play in a grandmaster tournament? From your home and for a substantial prize fund? With a guarantee that you will not disgrace yourself? Then think about joining the first PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Tournament, where anything goes. Where computer assistance is not forbidden, it is positively encouraged. Here are all the details.
Freestyle tournament for $20,000 09.05.2005 It's a new kind of chess tournament, with a substantial prize fund. $20,000 in all, $10,000 for the winner. Top grandmaster conditions. But with a difference. In the PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Tournament on the Playchess.com server anyone can play. Even you. And anything goes. Anything! (In fact computer assistance is encouraged). Here are the details.
Anyone – or anything – can play! 07.08.2004 Anything goes in our freestyle tournament on the Playchess.com server this Saturday, August 7th. Participants can use computers, visiting grandmasters, slime beings from other planets – whatever they want. The games start at 15:00h server time (GMT +2), time controls are 7 min + 2 sec/move. Watch the fun...
Freestyle Blitz Tournament August 7 25.07.2004 Winning Internet chess games with the assistance of computers is quite despicable. People who are caught get stripped of rights and privileges. Not so in the August 7th "Freestyle Tournament" on Playchess.com. There you can use anything you want to win your games. Details...

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