Complete Chess Match in Maastricht (NL)
Computer assisted chess in Maastricht
Eric van Reem
Two of Europe's brightest young talents, Daniël Stellwagen (Holland, Elo 2487) and David Baramidze (Germany, 2456) played a four-game match in Holland – with a twist. Both opponents are allowed to use computer assistance during the game. 16-year-old Daniël Stellwagen defeated his 15-year-old counterpart from Germany, David Baramidze, in the computer-assisted match in Maastricht. The final score in the four-game match was 2.5-1.5. Here's a report, pictures and annotated games...
From February 10-13 2004 Daniël Stellwagen (Netherlands) and David Baramidze (Germany) are playing a complete chess match in Maastricht, The Netherlands. This event, organised by the Chess Events Maastricht foundation, is a four-game encounter between two of the brightest young talents from The Netherlands and Germany.
The unusual aspect of this match: both players are allowed to use computers, as in the Advanced Chess concept developed by Garry Kasparov. But instead of one hour per game, here the players have the time limits of classic chess. The available time is 40 moves in 2 hours and 20 moves in 1 hour. Thereafter, 15 minutes and 30 seconds per move. They are free to use ChessBase software of their choice during the game.
The Chess Events Foundation has organised high-class man against computer matches: Computer killer GM John van der Wiel lost against Rebel in 2001 (2,5-3,5), Dutch champion Loek van Wely played a draw against Rebel in 2002 (2-2) and last year the Russian GM Evgeny Bareev played four draws against Hiarcs (2-2). The match is sponsored by Duwell Financial Services, Paradigit Computers, ChessBase and Centre Ceramique.
David Baramidze
David Baramidze, 15, born on 27.09.1987 in Tblisi (Tiflis) Georgia, and learned the rules of chess from his father at the age of five. He was awarded the IM title at the age of 14, and his current rating is 2456. Last year David won the strong Deizisau Open in a field with a lot of Grandmasters and International Masters. In the same year he tried Chess 960 in the Chess Classic Mainz and he likes that chess variant very much.
The young German likes sport in general, but his favourite sports are football and swimming. He plays for the chess club SF Dortmund Brackel. David lives in Dortmund. He has played a match against Alisa Maric when he was only 13 year old in Dortmund: he won the match 4,5-3,5. He has already played against Gary Kasparov once: in a simul during the Chess Classic 2000 in Frankfurt he managed to score a draw.
Daniël Stellwagen
Daniël Stellwagen, 16, was born on 01.03.1987. He is the biggest chess talent in the Netherlands and has the title of International Master, the youngest ever in his country. His Elo rating is 2487. He scored two GM norms last year: in the Corus Chess Tournament and in The Dutch Championship. Last month he scored 6,5 out of 13 games in the strong B-group of the Corus Chess Tournament and gained 13 Elo points.
Daniël learnt the game at the age of seven from his mother, and only four years later he beat his first grandmaster, GM Rantanen from Finland. Daniël plays for HSG in Hilversum. He told us that he does not really have exciting hobbies, but he likes to play computer games a lot. Recently Daniël won the De Feijter Endgame Study Solving contest in Deventer with an unprecedented 100% score.
Game one: Stellwagen blunders in the endgame: Baramidze takes the lead.
David Baramidze won the first game in the Complete Chess Match against Daniel Stellwagen. The young talents from Germany and the Netherlands, who will be grandmasters very soon, are allowed to use a computer and chess software during the game. The organizers installed four very strong ChessBase engines: Shredder 8, the computer chess world champion from Graz 2003 and number 1 on the SSDF list; Fritz 8, the program that managed to equalize in matches against Gary Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik; Hiarcs 8, the program that played four draws against Russian GM Evgeny Bareev last year in Maastricht in a classical man-against-machine match; Junior 8, computer chess world champion in 2001 and 2002, played against Kasparov one year ago. That match ended 3-3. The players were also allowed to consult the Mega Database, an enormous chess database with more than 2,5 million games. The software was installed on fast Pentium 4 computers with 2,8 MHz and 512 MB RAM.
Both players are from a generation that grew up with computers and chess engines and often use the software during their preparation. However, the players were familiar with the well-know program Fritz, but did not really have experience with the other programs like Shredder.
During the first game, however, the young German analysed the game with Shredder and Hiarcs and especially Shredder is famous for its endgame knowledge endgame. The game seemed to end in a draw, but Stellwagen made a few mistakes in the rook ending. The young Dutchman probably used different engines or did not check the variations deep enough, but we could not ask him because he left the building immediately after the game. Baramidze showed us a few variations after the game and it became clear that the young Dutchman missed a few opportunities to draw the game. Here it is, annotated by Jan van Reek:
Game 2: Stellwagen strikes back : 1-1
Take two young players from Germany and The Netherlands, give them a computer and four extremely strong chess engines and let them play four games against each other. A lot of people expected four draws because the players can check every line with one or more chess engines. But it turns out that it is not possible to check everything with the computer. In the second game David Baramidze had a lot of difficulties finding the right move after 25.Ree1. “There were so many opportunities for black, although I did not really like my position”, Baramidze said after the game.
Daniël admitted that the very strong move 27. Re4! was a computer move. “I never thought about a move like that, but the computer showed a plus score and therefore I played the move”, the young Dutchman smiled after the game. Stellwagen had a slight advantage during the whole game and could win the resulting knight against bishop endgame, although Black seemed to have missed a chance to save the game.
Quick but exciting draw in game three
The youngsters seemed to be in a hurry in game three: the first 20 moves in the third game of their Complete Chess Match were thrown on the board with enormous speed. However, after 24.Rg3 Daniel Stellwagen checked the difficult position with the engines Shredder 8 and Fritz 8. Both players were following the rapid game Lutz-Ye Jiangchuan, Europe-Asia 2001, but Stellwagen played 24...Qc7! after 45 minutes instead of the bad move 24...Rxc4? Baramidze could not find a way to keep an advantage and with an elegant combination he forced a draw by repetition. After 35 moves and two hours of play the game was over.
Daniël Stellwagen winner of the first Complete Chess Match
The fourth game in the match seemed to end in a short draw, because Baramidze chose a quiet opening. He surprised his opponent by playing the rock-solid Petroff defence and the young Dutchman looked surprised. He played an unusual line with 5.Nc3 instead of 5.d4.
In the early middlegame the “Dutch incarnation of Boris Spasski” (Jan van Reek), started an attack with 14.h4 and pushed another pawn on the kingside with 17.g4. Baramidze, who is an excellent defender, played an inaccurate move, 22...Qd6 after which Daniel could start a ferocious attack with f4 and f5. (Maybe he has got his inspiration from the movie “The last Samurai”. He visited that movie on Thursday together with match manager Hans Adriaanse and press officer Eric van Reem).
The engines in the analyses room showed a big plus score for white, but Daniël had not sufficient time to check the variations with his computer. After the game he told us that Shredder showed +2 on his computer, but that evaluation was completely wrong, according to Stellwagen. He played a few inaccurate moves between move 30 and 40 and suddenly Baramidze had a defendable position. He missed an opportunity to draw the game but he or the engines missed the line with 36...Qf3! The queen endgame was clearly better for white and after 49 moves David Baramidze had to resign. The match ended with a 2.5-1.5 victory for the Dutch player Daniël Stellwagen.
A trip to the old city: Daniel Brorens with the two players and David Baramidze's father
Next week two talented players will meet again: they will play a Category 11 Grandmaster Tournament in Germany, Pulvermühle, with grandmasters like Jonny Hector, Stuart Conquest and Arkadi Naiditsch. An ideal opportunity for them to score a GM-norm!
Some information about Complete/Advanced Chess
Advanced chess was conceived and introduced in the international tournament circuit by Gary Kasparov, who played the first public match in June 1998 against Veselin Topalov. The match was organised in the city of Léon, Spain. Since then, Léon has hosted more Advanced Chess matches, in 1999 Anand won against Karpov and in 2000 and 2001 the Indian grandmaster won again. Shirov was his opponent in those matches. In 2002 Vladimir Kramnik won a match against Anand.
But not only in Léon Advanced Chess has been played. During the Chess Classic Mainz in August 2002 Peter Svidler played two Advanced Chess handicap games against Professor Eckhardt Freise. The Russian champion was allowed to use Fritz on a slow laptop and the strong amateur Freise played with the same program on a very fast Pentium PC. At the same time Vishy Anand played a handicap match against the Mayor of Mainz, Jens Beutel. The amateurs, however, had no chance against the pros, even with fast computers.
In Maastricht we play Advanced Chess with the time limits from classical chess and the result is Complete Chess. As we could see in the third game today, we can see that certain positions need more analyses and time.