Reports by Eric van Reem
Prof. Jaap van den Herik opens match Zappa-L´Ami
The seventh Match in Maastricht was opened by Prof. Dr. Jaap van den Herik, the editor-in-chief of the ICGA Journal and tournament director of many Computer Chess World Championships. He is working at the University of Maastricht and one of its departments, IKAT (Institute for Knowledge and Agent Technology), is organising this match together with the Chess Events Maastricht Foundation. In his opening speech, Van den Herik talked about the sensational tournament Zappa played in Reykjavik in 2005. Zappa, developed by Anthony Cozzie, won the world championship with 10.5/11 games. After a slightly disappointing result during the Computer Chess World Championship in Turin last year, Cozzie retired from computer chess as an active programmer in order to concentrate on his PhD work. Much to the surprise of the computer chess fans, his new engine, Zappa Zanzibar was released early this year and proves to be about 100 ELO points stronger than his older engines, Zappa Reykjavik and Zappa Paderborn.
10 more matches in Maastricht!
Van den Herik announced some good news during his speech: IKAT and the Chess Events Foundation Maastricht will continue organising matches until 2016! Maastricht has become the centre of innovative chess ideas and the organisers still have many ideas for the future. We have witnessed exciting man-machine matches, but also Complete Chess Matches and Shuffle Chess Matches with very strong players. It is nice for the Chess Events Foundation to see that other organisers jump on the chess variants bandwagon: the super strong chess engine Rybka is currently playing a match against GM Jaan Ehlvest in which Rybka has white in all 8 games and will have a different pawn missing in every game. Certainly an interesting concept, but the “think tank” in Maastricht (van Reek, Gijssen, van den Herik, Van Reem, Brorens and Uiterwijk) , thought that the idea of being a pawn up would be a bit annoying for the human player. Therefore they chose a formula in which the incredibly fast thinking chess machine has less thinking time than the human player. In Maastricht, Zappa has only 30 minutes for the whole game, with the permanent brain modus switched off, GM Erwin L `Ami (ELO 2594) has 2 hours for the first 30 moves, another 2 hours for the next 30 moves and after that 15 minutes + 15 seconds per move for the rest of the game.
L´Ami misses chances to win the first game
At 13.30 referee Geurt Gijssen (who checked the toilets carefully before the game started) started the clock and Zappa opened 1.e4. The Dutch GM selected a quiet opening and although Zappa showed a slight plus after about 20 moves, L´Ami never had problems equalising the position and even had a better position in the rook ending. An interesting position arose after 36…d6. What would have happened after 37.exd6? Start your engines! On move 40 Zappa made a mistake by playing 40. f5? Suddenly the engines in the press and analysis room showed a plus for black. But L´Ami did not manage to bring home the point, and his 53rd move obviously was a mistake. After the game the human player said: “I was pleased with the opening, and good easily reach an equal position. The 12th and 15th move of the computer were not very good, I think that 15.f4 would have been better for white. I thought that the game would soon end in a draw, but Zappa made a few inaccurate moves. Unfortunately I made some mistakes in the endgame as well and could not win the game. I am not completely sure where I made the wrong decision, I will take a look at the game in my hotel. I think that I had good chances to win the game somewhere".
Second game ends in a draw. Final score: 1-1
Let´s take a quick look back at game 1, in which the young GM obviously missed a win. Erwin L´Ami, Jaap van den Herik and Jan van Reek analysed the game and came to the conclusion that Zappa played some inaccurate moves in the middle game, like 12. Rd2?! and in particular the passive move 15. Rd3 was criticised by the GM.15. f4 would have been logical and better for white. Because Zappa missed a way to put pressure on the black position, Erwin was happy after the opening. He showed the way to win the rook ending. “I should have played 53…h3, instead of 53…Kh3. After 54. Rxf7 the move 57…Ra6! would have been winning for black. I was a bit sloppy, I guess.”
Well, let´s go to the second game, played behind bars! The playing venue, which is located in the historical heart of the city of Maastricht, used to be a women´s prison until the mid-seventies…. Erwin played pretty fast, and showed a typical plan in the Queens Gambit Declined Exchange Variation: he decided to open the game on the Queens side by playing 14. b4 and 15. a4. Zappa´s move 18….cxb5 seems to be new (18…axb5 was played before in the game van Wely-Hjartason, 1995) and now black can create a passed pawn by playing 19…a5. After that move Erwin, who did not like his position, invested a lot of time. Zappa won a pawn (Qd7-Qc6-Qxb6), and played the very active move 25…Ne4! However, white could solve his problems, won back the pawn (with a little luck, Erwin said) and swapped some heavy pieces. The position that arose was equal, but both Zappa and L´Ami had to play carefully to keep the balance. After 42 moves Erwin offered a draw, which was immediately accepted by Zappa operator Jos Uiterwijk.
Reaction from Erwin L´Ami:
“I did not play very well in the second game. The opening went the wrong way, because I had prepared something completely different. My goal was to get a set-up with c4-d3-e4-g3-Bg2 etc. and than slowly improve the position, but Zappa played unexpectedly 2…e6. In my test games Zappa often played 2…e5. And my plan with a4-b4 and b5 was bad, because I opened the position, which is not a good idea against the computer. I think 18. b5 was wrong, maybe 18. a5 is an option, followed by Na4-c5. Zappa could have tried 24…Ne4, instead of 24….Qxb6, I have to check that at home. I was not satisfied with my position at all and even in the endgame I had to play very accurate moves to get a draw, e.g. I completely missed 32…g5 and had to be careful not to get in a mating net! In the end I was happy with the draw and the final result. Yesterday I missed a win, today I was not happy with my play, but the result was OK.”