First,
congrats to the winners, and a big thank to the organizers and sponsors of the
event.
Team
Flying Saucers consisted of one player + computer(s). I am 29 years old (2163
FIDE), from Denmark, and a mathematician by education.
This
was the second Freestyle event I participated in.
I
have been engaged in computer assisted chess for several years. It started out
as opening analysis out of curiousity, and for about a year I have been
focusing on opening book making for engines, with my engines battling it out on
the playchess server. That I would participate in the Freestyle events as
active centaur and not as pure engine has never been in doubt, though.
My
hardware in the preliminary was a dual core Opteron. Before the final, Vasik
Rajlich had kindly agreed to let me use his quad Opteron, and helped me set it
up with a UCI (UCI = engine protocol) pipe over the net. My technical setup
then was:
Fritz
9 interface, with two instances of Rybka running. The quad on pipe running in
1-variation mode, and my own dual core running in 2/3/4-variation mode. This
way, I would be alarmed by deep resources and assessments fast, while at the
same time getting immediate information about the forcedness of the
investigated positions, in other words, how many alternatives would be worth a
check. In the previous Freestyle event and in some of the games of the
preliminary in this one, I had had the Fritz 9 engine running as well, in order
to get an aggressive second opinion. I discarded this option for the final, mainly
out of a philosophy to keep things technically simple. For the same reason, I
did not use tablebases. The games themselves, I played through the free
playchess client.
My
"strategy" for the final was simply to try to not lose any games due
to horrible play or bad time management. Additionally, I tried to predict what
openings could arise, and spent considerable time preparing for this, hoping
that this would put me in position to also play for a win in some games. I have
annotated 7 of my games from the final. The annotations are primarily intended
for giving the reader a picture on what went on "behind the scenes",
and I've tried to be as honest and open as possible. In the annotations, you
can find more specific remarks about my considerations during and before the
individual games.
In
general, I've found the Freestyle events extremely exciting, both as
participant and as observer. I like to think of Freestyle chess as "blitz
correspondence chess". For the many people interested in correspondence chess,
but who don't play due to time issues, the Freestyle events IMHO offer a
thrilling alternative. In fact, I could see why many people would rather play
Freestyle than correspondece chess, just as OTB players get addicted to online
blitz and forget to visit their local chess club One weekend of playing, and you can put the games out of your
head in good conscience. Freestyle chess can still be hard work though .
Here
are some comments of mine to a few frequently asked questions about Freestyle
chess:
"Do centaurs hold any
advantage over pure engines?"
My
take on this is that, yes, pure engines assisted by strong books and strong
hardware can reach at least an average level. However, to reach the highest
levels of play, usually a "little extra" will be necessary. I think
the results of the Freestyle events so far confirm this. For example, for this
final, only two pure engines qualified, even though they made up a good part
(30%, 50% ?) of the preliminary field.
"Is
human chess skill worth anything at all, or is all that matters skill at
operating a computer?"
My
answer would certainly be similar to the one above.
"I'm
an average club player, would I have any chance to succeed?"
Certainly
yes! Just remember the sensational win of team ZackS in the first Freestyle
event. There will no doubt arise situations where a lack of chess
knowledge/intuition/skill will take a toll, as it did also for me in this final
(see notes to FS-Jazzled). Also, perhaps one can say that weaknesses in certain
aspects of the game put a limit to your flexibility. The set of types of
positions you can sensibly afford to enter is reduced, and if it is reduced too
much, odds are that you will be caught wanting sooner or later. So, maybe
knowing your weaknesses and how to avoid them from being exposed can be said to
be an important skill.
"I'm
a strong chess player, does having strong hardware really matter that much for
me?"
I'm
happy to answer, yes, I certainly think so. Before people protest too violently
or sing too many songs of doom, please take this into consideration: If
hardware did not matter much for centaur strength, eventually the strength of
pure engines would surpass that of the centaurs and make the centaur mode
obsolete. My answers to this question and the previous ones hint that centaur
mode and human assistance will not become obsolete for a good time to come.
"I
have average hardware, do I have any chance to succeed?"
Yes I qualified for the final on average
hardware and with average chess skill. The key is to find ways to maximise your
combined centaur skill That being said,
I firmly believe that I would not have stood many changes in the final without the
additional hardware help that I got access to.
Overall,
to succeed, in my opinion what is essential is not having any weak links in the
total "chess entity setup" - no clearly inferior hardware, no
insufficient practice in active analysis with engines under time constraints,
no bad opening handling, and no largely missing chess understanding - then one
has a fair shot.
"How
high was the level of play in the final?"
Not
sure, I think overall very high What is
more important is that there were countless highly spectacular games in the
final, and I certainly hope the spectators enjoyed watching them just as much
as I think we enjoyed playing them. I also hope new readers will be inspired to
take part in the fun in coming Freestyle events.
So,
see you in the next Freestyle tournament!
Dagh Nielsen, 26/10 2006.