The Complete-Chess Match Stellwagen vs. Baramidze
Centre Céramique Maastricht, The Netherlands February 10 - 13, 2004
J. van Reek and J.W.H.M. Uiterwijk
Two of Europe’s brightest young talents, 16-year-old Daniël Stellwagen (The Netherlands, Elo 2487) and 15-year-old David Baramidze (Germany, 2456) played a four-game match. The unusual element of this match was that both players were allowed to use computers, as in the Advanced Chess concept developed by Garry Kasparov. Instead of one hour per game, the players were given the time limits of classic chess. So, the available time was 40 moves in two hours followed by 20 moves in one hour. Thereafter, each player was allotted 15 minutes for the remainder of the game and 30 seconds per move. The players were free to use ChessBase software of their choice. The resultant game is called complete chess. Stellwagen defeated Baramidze by 2.5-1.5. International arbiter Geurt Gijssen acted as match director. Below we present all four games. Analyses are by Jan van Reek.
Maastricht, February 10, 2004
Maastricht, February 11, 2004
Maastricht, February 12, 2004
Maastricht, February 13, 2004
Afterthought
The match ended in a nice victory for Stellwagen, especially after his loss in the first game. A come back is not easy in such a short match. Baramidze had too much trust in his computer. Stellwagen often analysed without computer assistance. The young Dutchman used the computer more skilfully than his opponent. Clearly complete chess has prospects of yielding high-quality games, but the optimal manner to use the computer as an assistant is the human player.