WCRCC

[Will Singleton]

Amateur's report:

It was a fun tourney. The shorter time controls allowed more games than CCT, and that's an interesting format.

Pros:
-- Roberson and the td ran it well.
-- Lots of participants.
-- Expert commentary, though sparse, was at least available.

Cons:
-- Too many "operators".
-- Inane off-topic running commentary by some of the more youthful participants
-- (some would say, a high noise-to-signal content, something about goats).

Anyway, it was nice to get together and hear from Bob, Vincent, GCP, Fendrich, Dart, Richardson, Swafford and the rest of the guys. Old man "Yace" Buerssner even showed up, and I hear he might have something cooking.

Speaking of cooking, Vince decided to go cook some noodles after Diep went +7 on Amateur, whereupon Diep crashed or something, and lost on time. I understand why the TD ruled that the game result should stand, but I think in the case where both authors agree that the result should have been reversed, that the ruling should have been different. After all, a prog is allowed three disconnects, I don't see how this is different. The net result is that I played Rybka and Hiarcs the last two rounds, which is plainly ridiculous.

Amateur had a few good games, and only one bad one (against something called HFC, which I thought initially had something to do with chicken, but I was mistaken). Lots of eval problems were exposed, as usual, but I'm too old to work on them. In fact, it's silly to compete in these things with an old dusty build from three years ago, what's the point? Maybe when my youngest goes off to college I'll get something new going, but that's it until then. Something to look forward to, anyway.

I'll just leave you with one position I kinda liked, from the game against ctd (at least I think it was ctd, sort of hard to tell with the operator being 8 years old or something). Most good progs find this really quick, but some don't (e.g. old rybka). Mine just barely got it on ply 13, and went on to win easily. (If the queen takes the offered bishop, there follows a fairly long sequence of interesting exchanges.)

[d]3r2k1/1p1rb1p1/1q2p1p1/p2np3/P1R1N1Q1/1P1n1N2/3B1PPP/1R4K1 w - - 0 28 bm Bxa5

[Event "ICC tourney 864 (25 4 u)"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2008.06.22"]
[Round "11"]
[White "Amateur"]
[Black "TheGiver"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ICCResult "Black resigns"]
[WhiteElo "2477"]
[BlackElo "2762"]
[Opening "QGD Slav: Dutch variation, main line"]
[ECO "D19"]
[NIC "SL.05"]
[Time "11:16:41"]
[TimeControl "1500+4"]

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 dxc4 5. a4 Bf5 6. e3 e6 7. Bxc4 Bb4 8.
O-O O-O 9. Qe2 Nbd7 10. e4 Bg6 11. Bd3 Bh5 12. e5 Nd5 13. Ne4 Be7 14. Ng3
Bg6 15. Bxg6 hxg6 16. Bd2 c5 17. b3 cxd4 18. Nxd4 Qb6 19. Nf3 Nc5 20. Rab1
a5 21. Rfc1 Rac8 22. Rc4 Rc7 23. Nd4 Rd7 24. Qf3 f6 25. Qg4 fxe5 26. Nf3 Nd3
27. Ne4 Rfd8 28. Bxa5 Qxa5 29. Qxe6+ Kh8 30. Qh3+ Kg8 31. Neg5 Bxg5 32. Qe6+
Kh8 33. Nxg5 N5f4 34. Qxd7 Rxd7 35. Rc8+ Rd8 36. Rxd8+ Qxd8 37. Nf7+ Kh7 38.
Nxd8 Ne2+ 39. Kf1 Nc3 40. Ra1 Nc5 41. a5 Nxb3 42. Ra3 Nb1 43. Ra4 Nc5
{Black resigns}
1-0

[CRoberson]

Thanks for the compliments on the running of it.

John sent me email earlier today. He is going to annotate several
of the games and I gave him a list of engines to pick games for.
The speed was too quick for him to keep up with all the games in
real time. We decided not to annotate games from the strongest
engines as they don't need assistance.

There were several engines that had operators and the author
was online as well (YACE for one). That gave us more operators while
still having a large number of authors. An unusual example is the
Rybka operator (Nick Carlin). Nick is very knowledgable in Chess and
does very well in the Freestyle events. He 100% made the book
Rybka used for WCRCC. So, the noise wasn't that bad except from
a few.

Despite Telepath's lose to Amateur, I enjoyed you being in the
tournament. It was fun.

On the game with DIEP, I am considering an adjustment to the
fully automated rule which will allow a courtesy resign to deal with
the situation you were in. I think that would handle the problem.
My only concern is abuse of it by people working as teams.
Not an issue we've had but if you leave a whole like that in the rules .....

Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

[Zach Wegner]

On the game with DIEP, I am considering an adjustment to the
fully automated rule which will allow a courtesy resign to deal with
the situation you were in. I think that would handle the problem.
My only concern is abuse of it by people working as teams.
Not an issue we've had but if you leave a whole like that in the rules .....

But they could just set the program to play badly or resign, having a manual resignation doesn't really change anything. Maybe it should be something like if both engine authors and the TD agree then the result can be overturned.

And please, tell John to annotate ZCT's games.

[Tony Thomas]

by some of the more youthful participants
-- (some would say, a high noise-to-signal content, something about goats).

Guilty as charged, no wonder why my goat alarm has been going off for few days. Every time someone says goat on the internet an alarm goes off on my computer. Will, you could have told me to just shut my trap, and I would have listened. Most of the time I talked random stuff just so that I can stay awake. By the way the operator of CTD claimed he was 13 and apparently he used to run a reprogrammed (he claims he did it himself) susetter in ICC for some variants.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

by some of the more youthful participants
-- (some would say, a high noise-to-signal content, something about goats).

Guilty as charged, no wonder why my goat alarm has been going off for few days. Every time someone says goat on the internet an alarm goes off on my computer. Will, you could have told me to just shut my trap, and I would have listened. Most of the time I talked random stuff just so that I can stay awake. By the way the operator of CTD claimed he was 13 and apparently he used to run a reprogrammed (he claims he did it himself) susetter in ICC for some variants.

The CTD operator is the 13 years old daughter of the author,so she didn't lie on you....

[Tony Thomas]

by some of the more youthful participants
-- (some would say, a high noise-to-signal content, something about goats).

Guilty as charged, no wonder why my goat alarm has been going off for few days. Every time someone says goat on the internet an alarm goes off on my computer. Will, you could have told me to just shut my trap, and I would have listened. Most of the time I talked random stuff just so that I can stay awake. By the way the operator of CTD claimed he was 13 and apparently he used to run a reprogrammed (he claims he did it himself) susetter in ICC for some variants.

The CTD operator is the 13 years old daughter of the author,so she didn't lie on you....

No, not Tessa Pijl, I am talking about a 13 yr old boy who operates under the handle THE GIVER(Only thing he gave me was an asswhopping in the form of defeat). Richard couldnt operate CTD on his own, so Charles contacted GIVER I believe.. By the way, Romi used your books on day two, and we only won one game..

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

by some of the more youthful participants
-- (some would say, a high noise-to-signal content, something about goats).

Guilty as charged, no wonder why my goat alarm has been going off for few days. Every time someone says goat on the internet an alarm goes off on my computer. Will, you could have told me to just shut my trap, and I would have listened. Most of the time I talked random stuff just so that I can stay awake. By the way the operator of CTD claimed he was 13 and apparently he used to run a reprogrammed (he claims he did it himself) susetter in ICC for some variants.

The CTD operator is the 13 years old daughter of the author,so she didn't lie on you....

No, not Tessa Pijl, I am talking about a 13 yr old boy who operates under the handle THE GIVER(Only thing he gave me was an asswhopping in the form of defeat). Richard couldnt operate CTD on his own, so Charles contacted GIVER I believe.. By the way, Romi used your books on day two, and we only won one game..