VERY FUNNY! (3 april 2008)
You may sometimes have heard people say that computers play a boring type of chess.
Whatever may be true of this statement, the spectacle that I saw today in a game between Fritz-one-ply against Senator Chess was far from boring:
Scisys Senator chess
One interesting detail about Fritz-one-ply is that it allows us to see the part of Fritz that could be called its subconscious . When Fritz is allowed to think through several ply, it evaluates thousands of positions to find the best response. But at one ply it responds straight from the basic instincts that Frans Morsch has built into this great program.
Today I was allowed a glimpse into these instincts after Senator (with black) had played: 13... Nc6xd4 ...
Senator plays 13... Nc6xd4
Although white's position is already far from enviable, Fritz now resorts to the adage that Frans Morsch has instilled into the depths of its soul: if you are attacked, attack back as hard as you can.
However successful this policy may sometimes be, In this case it led to disaster. The game continued with 14. Nd5xf6+ Qd8xf6 15. Nd2-e4 Qf6-e5 16. Ne4-f6+ Qe5xf6 17. Bc1-b2 Ra8-e8 18. b3-b4 .., and white was hopelessly lost. From this moment on, Fritz kept repeating every few moves or so that it was prepared to resign.
after 18.b3-b4 ...
At this point, a mate-in-thirteen would have been possible starting with 18...Nd4-c2+ Ke1-d1 19.Qf6xb2 Qe2-e5 20.Re8xe5 ...
And did the Senator find this mate-in-thirteen?
Well, after eighteen moves, Fritz has been robbed of all but one of his troops:
after 38...Nd3xe5
Now white has only two legal moves left and can move his king to f1 or h1. Fritz chooses 39.Kf1 and black could have checkmated with:
39... Qg6-d3+ 40.Kf1-g1 Qd3-b1+ checkmate
It might even be argued that it is hard for black to avoid checkmating or stalemating his opponent in the moves to come. After all, he had six pawns left and the game could have ended with seven queens on the board!
And how many moves did it take the Senator to finish it off? Well ... 46 moves later the game ended ... in a draw because of threefold repetition! It looks as if the Scisys guys forgot to teach Senator how to checkmate.
If you have Java installed on your computer, you can see an animation of this comedy of errors:
White: Fritz 8 (1 ply)
Black: Scisys Senator Chess (± 10 seconds / move)
An animation of the game can be seen if you have Java installed.
