some notes re Arasan games in ACCA

[jdart]

A few notes about Arasan's play the tourney so far:

Arasan is playing on a quad Intel machine, overclocked. So this is a
big hardware leap from the dual has it been on in the past. But it is
not completely stable on the quad yet. I have had it crash on ICC from
time to time (you can see some losses on time in its history). So I
had to watch it pretty carefully. Actually it only crashed once today
in the first round and after a restart it was ok. It is a weird problem.
It does not crash running test suites, only on ICC.

First round was against Timea and was a pretty easy win.

Second round I had TerraPi (Alaric), which is a strong program. Arasan
got out of book in a Marshall Gambit on move 18 and was soon on the
wrong path. I think this line should be a draw with correct play, as is so
often the case in the Marshall. (I've fixed the book since then).

3rd round, Arasan had an easy win against Deuterium.

Fourth round I got Hiarcs and was in book until move 18 (Petroff
defense, C43). Logs show an even score up until about move 29 when
Hiarcs got an advantage. But it could have been ahead even earlier.
I didn't really expect to win this one.

Fifth round was against Tinker. Arasan never had a minus score and won
this pretty easily - but Tinker has certainly won against Arasan in the
past. It was unlucky here.

Next round was with Diep. This was an interesting game. At this point:

[d] r4rk1/ppqb1p1p/3b2p1/8/3PB3/2P2Q2/P4PP1/R1B2R1K b - - 0 16

Diep played Kg7 and Arasan took the offered pawn on b7. I don't know
if this is a book novelty from Diep or not - could be. Anyway Arasan
was soon in trouble. After 22. .. Rf7, which Arasan did not expect, it
had a negative score. Diep won a Rook for a Bishop, and Arasan's score
got down below -2.00. At one point around moves 40-45 Vincent claimed
Diep missed a win - I wasn't convinced at the time. But maybe he is
right. In any case, Arasan managed to draw in the end, which I was
quite happy about considering how badly it was standing at one point.

Next round was a fairly uneventful draw against ChessThinker - a good
result because it is a strong program.

Finally Arasan won the last game against Yace, leaving it with 5/8.

Note I am also operating Bugchess2 and Neurosis in the tourney. The author
of Bugchess recently sent me a new version that enabled kibitzing, but
this also caused occasional crashes, which caused it to lose on time
in round 1 (I restarted it but it could not resume). It nearly lost in
round 3 too, when it was about to mate, but that time I restarted it
twice and the second time it was able to resume and win. I have a yet
newer version now that should be more stable. Bugchess2 is not bad at
all and I hope to see it do well in the rest of the tourney.

Neurosis is a weaker program but it is at least stable and it won two
games, against roce and ProphetX, and got two draws. So not bad IMO.

Some test positions from Arasan games today:

3qrr2/pB4k1/2Qb1pp1/7p/3P2b1/2P5/P4PP1/R1B2R1K b - - bm Rf7; id "Arasan-Diep, 2nd ACCA Rapid Computer Chess Chmp. 2008";
2rr2k1/p1p2ppp/1pB5/2b5/3N4/2P1B3/5PPP/1R4K1 w - - bm Bb7; id "Hiarcs-Arasan, 2nd ACCA Rapid Computer Chess Chmp. 2008";

[Ovyron]

Thanks for the report.