[Other] Mediocre in CCT 10

I have entered Mediocre in the CCT 10 tournament which starts January 26.

"Hopefully" I will have had some time to work on Mediocre until then. Ponder, some endgame knowledge and a recap of the evaluation is on top of the list.

[Other] Chesswar XI Over

Mediocre held its position somewhere in the low middle of the crosstable during the whole tournament. The final score of 32/71 gave 43rd place. I had hoped for a 50% score but this result is quite decent considering the competition. The notable games were the wins against Baron and Alfil and draw against Hamsters.

It was an exciting and interesting tournament, thanks Olivier.

[Other] All is well in WBEC

Mediocre has qualified for the next phase in WBEC Ridderkerk with a score of 19/22, there are still 3 more rounds to go but Mediocre will be in the top 6.

Qualifying for division 4 will be harder though, with engines like Neurosis, BBChess, Alf, Brutus and Lime all of which Mediocre very well could lose against. But as I said before with a bit of luck it should be possible.

[Other] OpenWar 3rd edition and WBEC Ridderkerk

It has been a while and I still have not had the time to work on Mediocre. Quite sad really, but I am following the tournaments Mediocre is participating in.

As you might have noticed WBEC Ridderkerk edition 15 has started and a couple of days ago the B group in division 5 where Mediocre plays started. Two rounds have been played so far and Mediocre has won both against Atak 5.03 and Rogue 1.1. I am hoping the for the top 6, and maybe later, with a bit of luck, a promotion to division 4.

OpenWar 3rd edition is still playing and is currently at round 41 of 71. Mediocre has a mediocre (!) 16/41 points. But the win against Baron 2.22 almost makes up for the poor results. :) Here it is:


Looked dangerous for a bit, but Baron found no way through to the white king.

Well that is it for now, hopefully I will get around to a new version of Mediocre shortly, I will keep you posted.

[Other] Poor/decent performance

Mediocre had 3.5 points after 7 rounds in ChessWar XI but after 3 straight losses and only a win in the last game Mediocre finished at 50th place in the in the D division. I had hoped for slightly more but I guess this is about what was to be expected.

OpenWar 3rd edition (also held by Olivier Deville) has started and after 8 rounds Mediocre has a decent 4.5 points considering it has already played Erendal and Frenzee against which it should not really have a chance. The mix of engines here is quite large, ranging from pretty poor to very good so there are some quite interesting matchups. Somewhere in the middle is what I am hoping for here.

[Other] C and Sagan

I have never thought too high about programming in C, however I often find myself blaming Mediocre for being slow due to being programmed in Java.

Anyone programming in C will tell you that it is lightyears faster than Java. And anyone programming in Java will tell you that the difference is negligible.

I tend to end up somewhere in the middle. Not being a superstar programmer I think that whatever speed advantage I might potentially get with C will be lost in sloppy coding.

However, just to see if there really is a difference I have started sketching on a C chess engine I call Sagan.

I am mainly doing this to not have any excuses for the engine playing badly. :) I hate the "well it's not strong, but you can only expect that from Java".

This is just in the planning stages for now. Studying at 150% speed does not give much room for anything but planning. :)

[Other] Section D of ChessWar XI

Mediocre is doing better than I expected in section D of Oliver Deville's ChessWarXI. 2.5/4 so far. I am guessing 5 points should be enough to stay in the division so we are halfway there. :)

As for updates and Jonatan vs. Mediocre match I will have to postpone them yet a little while. I am currently taking three courses at the same time and have very little time for just about anything. Hopefully it will calm down in a while... hopefully. :)

[Other] Draw in last round

Mediocre managed to get a draw in the last round of ChessWar XI against Warrior. Mediocre fumbled away an outside pawn and the king safety looked fragile, but in the end Warrior's king got open and a draw by repetition was unavoidable.

This should be enough to finish in the top 20, if I counted right, and secure a promotion to section D.

That section will be a lot tougher and I can really only hope for a decent placement somewhere in the middle.

[Other] Last round of ChessWar XI

Last round of group E in Oliver Deville's ChessWar XI. Before the round Mediocre is on 13th place with 6.5/10 after a nice win over Joker in round 10 (game below).

With a bad S-B score it will take at least a draw in the last round to make it in the top 20 and advance to the D group. Last opponent is Warrior and with a bit of luck I think Mediocre can pull it off.

In the game against Joker, Mediocre got at nice space advantage which it patiently used to win. It looked like it got a bit too close in the middle game, but I do not think there ever was a risk of losing the advantage.

[Other] Status update

Mediocre is doing fairly well in the E section of Oliver Deville's ChessWar XI. I had hoped for a little bit more but I guess I should be satisfied with the results so far. 4.5/8 points after round 8.

Leo Dijskman's Edition 15 of WBEC Ridderkerk has been postponed again, this time to 1 October. It suites me quite well since this is really the tournament I am aiming to do well in and I simply have not had the time to make the changes I want to get Mediocre ready.

The Jonatan vs. Mediocre match is about to take place shortly. Though I have some exams to take care of before that. I want to feel ready before starting to play since I am expecting the match to take quite some time over at least two weeks. Mid september is probably a good assumption of when I get the time.

Updates of Mediocre itself is also upcoming, I have quite a few things I want to do and I hope to be able to spend some time on it now that summer is coming to an end.