Paderborn results & comments
Tom C. Kerrigan
Haven't seen a post of this sort yet, so I figure I'll write one.
Here are the actual results, with SOP accounted for:
Place Program Points
1 Zugzwang 5
2 Comet 4.5
3 Amy 4.5
4 Schach 3 4.5
5 Isichess 4.5
6 SOS 4.5
7 Gandalf 4
8 Stobor 4
9 Patzer 3.5
10 Cheiron 3.5
11 XXXX 3.5
12 Gromit 3.5
13 Confucius 2.5
14 Diogenes 2.5
15 Neurologic 1.5
16 Ananse 0
Thanks go to Ulf Lorenz for spectacular organization. As far as I know,
everybody had a wonderful time. I certainly did.
The Confucius guys and the Neurologic guy are new to the tournament scene,
even though the programs have evidently been around for a while. I spent a
bit of time with all three of them, and they're all neat. I'm looking
forward to seeing them again, whenever that may be.
Now, to make a few quick comments on the results...
The difference between 2nd and 12th place is all of one point, so the
competition was quite close. The usual chess tournament weirdness was not
absent at this event: seemingly won positions were drawn, or even lost, in
the case of Gandalf vs. Amy. I think this happened to a lot of people, so
everything probably evened out in the end and I won't mention individual
cases.
Comet was the surprise this time 'round. I heard it was based on GNU
Chess, but it must be modified heavily because it's _much_ stronger than
when I played it in Paderborn '95.
Isichess had the bad luck of being pared with Ananse for the first round
and was deprived of valuable SOP points. If this wasn't the case, I
wouldn't be surprised if it got second...
I had the impression that Cheiron was a stronger program than its result
implies. A few people mentioned it was having a run of bad luck. Better
luck next time, I guess.
I was surprised my own program, Stobor, didn't do better because of its
recent results against Crafty, Shredder, MChess, etc. Perhaps part of this
was bad luck, but I also think my program seriously misplayed a few
positions, so now I have something to work on. :)
A side note: I missed reading this newsgroup for about a week and when I
got back a few threads I was following had literally hundreds of posts. I
quite honestly don't have the time to wade through all of these, so that's
my excuse for not answering posted questions. If you want an answer,
e-mail might work better.
Cheers,
Tom
Chris Whittington
--
http://www.demon.co.uk/oxford-soft
Tom C. Kerrigan <kerr...@merlin.pn.org> wrote in article
<5f4h6u$7...@merlin.pn.org>...
Congrats for Stobor :)
Chris Whittington
>
> Cheers,
> Tom
>
brucemo
Chris Whittington wrote:
> Tom C. Kerrigan <kerr...@merlin.pn.org> wrote in article
> <5f4h6u$7...@merlin.pn.org>...
> > Place Program Points
> > 1 Zugzwang 5
> > 2 Comet 4.5
> > 3 Amy 4.5
> > 4 Schach 3 4.5
> > 5 Isichess 4.5
> > 6 SOS 4.5
> > 7 Gandalf 4
> > 8 Stobor 4
> > 9 Patzer 3.5
> > 10 Cheiron 3.5
> > 11 XXXX 3.5
> > 12 Gromit 3.5
> > 13 Confucius 2.5
> > 14 Diogenes 2.5
> > 15 Neurologic 1.5
> > 16 Ananse 0
> Congrats for Stobor :)
>
> Chris Whittington
Echoed.
By the way, Paderborn is a great venue for a computer chess
tournament, anyone who has the opportunity to go, should
strongly consider going.
Some of these programs are getting a lot better.
bruce
Chris Whittington
--
http://www.demon.co.uk/oxford-soft
brucemo <bru...@nwlink.com> wrote in article <331A8B...@nwlink.com>...
And certainly a lot better than somewhere else I could mention.
If the WMCCC were held on a rotating basis, in relatively convenient spots
for all concerned, then Paderborn would be top of my list for one of the
sites.
Chris Whittington
mclane
"Chris Whittington" <chr...@demon.co.uk> wrote:
>If the WMCCC were held on a rotating basis, in relatively convenient spots
>for all concerned, then Paderborn would be top of my list for one of the
>sites.
>Chris Whittington
Yeah ! Remember the food in the Loetlampe !!
Chris Whittington
--
http://www.demon.co.uk/oxford-soft
mclane <mcl...@prima.ruhr.de> wrote in article
<E6Hvn...@news.prima.ruhr.de>...
> "Chris Whittington" <chr...@demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >If the WMCCC were held on a rotating basis, in relatively convenient
spots
> >for all concerned, then Paderborn would be top of my list for one of the
> >sites.
>
> >Chris Whittington
>
>
> Yeah ! Remember the food in the Loetlampe !!
the food was terrible. this is germany we're talking about :)
it was the company and atmosphere :)
Chris Whittington
Tom C. Kerrigan
Chris Whittington (chr...@demon.co.uk) wrote:
> If the WMCCC were held on a rotating basis, in relatively convenient spots
> for all concerned, then Paderborn would be top of my list for one of the
> sites.
This would be quite interesting... Paderborn would certainly be on my
list, too, seeing as it's a nice little town with a well known computer
science school that's within easy access of most German programmers (and
there are a lot of those, as we know). Somewhere else that would be on my
list is in the US, or maybe Canada, so I could actually attend sometimes.
I think there are a lot of programmers over there that would become active
again if the location worked out logistically... When was the last time
Zarkov was in a tourney, for example? I'm almost positive John would go to
a WMCCC if it was in the US/Canada...
Cheers,
Tom
Tom King
In article <5fhf85$7...@merlin.pn.org>, "Tom C. Kerrigan"
<kerr...@merlin.pn.org> writes
Hmm..Most chess programmers are European, so a site in Europe makes
sense. And I thought Paderborn was a delightful town, and would love to
visit it again.
Regards to all,
--
Tom King
mclane
kerr...@merlin.pn.org (Tom C. Kerrigan) wrote:
>Chris Whittington (chr...@demon.co.uk) wrote:
>> If the WMCCC were held on a rotating basis, in relatively convenient spots
>> for all concerned, then Paderborn would be top of my list for one of the
>> sites.
>This would be quite interesting... Paderborn would certainly be on my
>list, too, seeing as it's a nice little town with a well known computer
>science school that's within easy access of most German programmers (and
>there are a lot of those, as we know). Somewhere else that would be on my
>list is in the US, or maybe Canada, so I could actually attend sometimes.
>I think there are a lot of programmers over there that would become active
>again if the location worked out logistically... When was the last time
>Zarkov was in a tourney, for example? I'm almost positive John would go to
>a WMCCC if it was in the US/Canada...
>Cheers,
>Tom
Brilliant. Paderborn and US-town in frequently change.
Nice. We show you germany, you show us US and I could change my
prejudices.
Also it would be a lpleasure to meet Dave Kittinger, John Stanback and
Julio Kaplan, I have never met them here in europe.
brucemo
Tom King wrote:
> Hmm..Most chess programmers are European, so a site in Europe makes
> sense. And I thought Paderborn was a delightful town, and would love to
> visit it again.
Maybe most programmers are European because they keep holding the events
in Europe.
I don't believe this is the case, but there's a point to it.
bruce
Robert Hyatt
mclane (mcl...@prima.ruhr.de) wrote:
: >Chris Whittington (chr...@demon.co.uk) wrote:
I know them all pretty well, and all are well worth knowing. There are many
others too... Slate... Thompson... Valvo... not to mention quite a few
interesting GM's besides Julio...
Julio and Harry (1/3 of Cray Blitz "team") were good friends and live close to
each other in the SanFrancisco/Livermore area of California. He has played
several sparring matches against CB over the years with Harry operating in his
office...
The "chess programs" are not nearly so interesting as the people that these
programs often bring together... Were it not for that, I and many others would
not have done this for so long, for so little... :)
Tom C. Kerrigan
Well, I was talking about this with somebody at Paderborn, and said "Well,
there just aren't that many chess programmers in the US. There's blah blah
blah." Before I realized it, I had named at least 10 really famous guys
off the top of my head, and I'm sure I could easily think of 10 more. The
difference here is that they never attend tournaments because there aren't
any to attend over there.
Cheers,
Tom
mclane
kerr...@merlin.pn.org (Tom C. Kerrigan) wrote:
>Well, I was talking about this with somebody at Paderborn, and said "Well,
>there just aren't that many chess programmers in the US. There's blah blah
>blah." Before I realized it, I had named at least 10 really famous guys
>off the top of my head, and I'm sure I could easily think of 10 more. The
>difference here is that they never attend tournaments because there aren't
>any to attend over there.
>Cheers,
>Tom
You are totally right Tom. There are many good unknown programmers in
US.
Good that we have Internet now.