[Other] Game 7 Mediocre - MicroMax 1-0

Mediocre played a very aggressive game where MicroMax never really stood a chance. MicroMax neglected development and payed the price. Considering the old version of MicroMax was one of the opponents I tested Mediocre against in the early stages of development I feel quite happy about the progress Mediocre has done.

MicroMax might only have 2000 characters of code, but atleast Mediocre can beat those characters without problem now. :)

(chesspublisher has problem with the 14. bxc8=Q+ again, just ignore the lingering queen)

[Other] Game 6 ParrotC - Mediocre 0-1

Nice game by Mediocre. Calm opening with a decent handling of the caro-kann for once. I guess the win was due to some easy tactical shot, and the king safety was more due to luck than good strategy. But not too bad overall.

[Other] Game 5 Mediocre - HfC 0-1

Erm... that was sad. Pawn up the whole game, then failed to convert by just moving back and forth. And finally a very weird end game bug I have not seen before.

Well at least a bug detected that should not be too hard to fix. Something positive out of it. :)

(there seems to be a bug with the chesspublisher, it does not remove the rook after 23. ... exd1=Q+, just ignore it :)

[Other] Game 4 Petir - Mediocre 1-0

Very bad game by Mediocre. A complete failure in the opening, underestimated passed pawns and general bad play.

Petir is a much stronger engine than Mediocre, but I had hoped for a bit better play. 16. ... b6 is about as bad as it can get when it comes to greediness and failing to understand the threats of the opponent.

Yuck. :)

One thing I could learn from this is perhaps try to work a bit with the development section. 3. ... c5 looks very fishy and should be easily avoided with some code discouraging moving the same piece (pawn) multiple times before the other pieces are out.

[Other] Game 3 Mediocre - Quark 0-1

Interesting game. Mediocre failed to castle and tried to attack. In the end the own king safety was too much to handle. I might have to do something about that. I want the evaluation of king safety to encourage castling instead of hard coding it (like for example Crafty does, i.e. penalizing loss of castling rights), but perhaps it has to be done.

Quark kibitzed its pondering moves and got it right mostly. Mediocre does not have pondering yet and of course it is a major flaw. It is on my todo-list. Also Mediocre does not move instantly when it only has one legal move. Against opponents that does not ponder this does not matter, however it is a severe weakness against those who does, since it basically allows them a free instant move.

Well, an exciting and educational game. Off to the next round.

[Other] Game 2 Bird - Mediocre 0-1

A bit more normal opening this time with quite some strategic play. Mediocre seems to handle these games quite well.

Mediocre probably got a bit too overenthusiastic on the kingside with a few pawn pushes but Bird could not pounce on it. And in the end it actually won the game.

[Other] Game 1 Mediocre - Frenzee 0-1

Mediocre opted for the King's Gambit and quickly got in trouble. I blame it on the new opening book. :) Trying to walk the king over to the queenside had little hopes of succeeding and Mediocre is not smart enough to go on an all out attack on the king side.

Better luck in the next game.

(Mediocre is playing under the handle "Independence")

[Other] Ready to roll

There was some trouble with the .ini file, that is why the book was not being used. I have no idea if this is a general problem or if it only occurs when using Winboard to play on ICS servers. Anyway I disabled the feature so the opening book can be used. I also switched to a larger book, compiled from a number of pgn-files. I have not tested it that much but hopefully it should help a bit.

The crashing upon game completion was of course the all existent memory overflow problem with Java, I had simply forgotten the -Xmx1024M flag in the Winboard batch file.

And finally I added kibitzes at the last ply of the search, and a note if the move is a book move or not.

So one hour to go and I am ready to see Mediocre getting lucky! :)

[Other] WCRCC 2007 Last minute fixes

So it is now two hours before the 2007 World Computer Rapid Chess Championships starts and Mediocre crashes upon game completion, does not kibitz its search and can not find the opening book.

Looking good. :)

Hopefully I can panic together a few fixes.

Chesswar XI

Mediocre is playing in Oliver Deville's Chesswar XI in section F. Looks to be a fairly easy group, but you never know. :) Will be fun to see how Mediocre does in games with a bit longer time control.