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Eric Hallsworth
It has become a very welcome annual highlight... the latest Rebel program playing a match against a strong G.M.! Programmer Ed Schroder can certainly never be criticised for avoiding the big challenges... quite the reverse, he seeks them out! In the past 4 years new versions of his Rebel Century program have met, in turn, GMs Arthur Yusupov, Vishy Anand, John van der Wiel, and now 2714 ELO-rated top Dutch GM Loek van Wely!
The match was scheduled to take place in Maastricht, Holland from 19-22 February, with 4 games being played at the (Classical) Tournament time control of 40/2, 20/1 and thereafter the Fischer time control of 30secs added per move to conclude the game. Rebel Century4 would play on an Athlon 1900MHz machine, using its anti-GM mode setting.
As always the Rebel web site invited users to send in their forecasts. I thought hard about Rebel's excellent record in these matches and the super-fast processor it would play on. Then I considered that all games would be played at 40/2, and van Wely's 2714 Elo rating. Do I really believe that programs such as Rebel Century4 (and, for that matter) Fritz, Tiger, and maybe Junior and Shredder, are really in the 2700 stratosphere at Classical time controls when on really fast hardware? I do! But I couldn't make my mind up between a 2-2 draw and 2½-1½ for Rebel, so in the end I didn't vote for either, but sent Ed a 'good luck' message and told him I thought Rebel 'mightjust do it!'
Then I read the following comment from van Wely on Rebel's site: "You cannot play in your own style against the computer, that's about close to suicide. You must play an anti-computer strategy and be well prepared. I played about 100 games against Rebel as part of my preparation!" I was immediately glad 1 hadn't sent my forecast in - van Wely was Rebel-ready!
Eric van Reem has added some more-than-useful background information... and is responsible for the photographs, so we owe him our grateful thanks!
The first match organised by the Chess Events Maastricht Foundation in 2001 was the Man-Machine Match between Rebel Century 3.0 and Dutch Grandmaster John van der Wiel. Although van der Wiel is a moderate (!?) grandmaster, he is famous for his excellent results against computers. He never lost a game in the well known Aegon tournaments in the nineties. However, he did lose the 6-game match against Rebel last year 3½-2½, in which he lost two games.
"John is still quite angry ilbout that result", Loek van Wely grinned, when I asked him, if he had called van der Wiel before the match to get some hints.
Van Wely, Rebel's opponent in this year's match, won the Dutch Championship in 2000 and 2001 and does not have much experience in games against computers. However, he won a marvellous anti-computer game against Fritz SSS in the Dutch Championship in 2000, but lost a rapidmatch against the same opponent only I few months later 3-1. It was hard to predict how 'King Loek' would play against Rebel in this match. He played a disastrous Corus tournament in Wijk aan Zee in January, and in Moscow during the Aeroflot Open early February he only scored 50%.
Moreover, Ed Schröder had been able to make Rebel Century4 a lot better and faster. His fine result in the Dutch Open in Leiden last October and his sixth place on the SSDF list showed, that he made a lot of progress last year.
Maastricht councillor Veronica Dirksen opened the match by playing Rebe1's chosen move 1.e4 on the board to start the game.
Game 1 is immediately of great interest! Rebel gets a strong-looking kingside attack which van Wely survives, and then a series of unusual exchanges leaves us with a very strange material set-up in which Ed Schröder offers a draw. But van Wely is after more. Another 60 moves are played with little changing, though Rebel appears to have got itself a small, non-winning, edge. We'll play through the first 38 moves to see the early and midgame excitement, then we'll jump to the end to see how it finishes!
Maastricht 2002. Game 1, 40/2
A great finish by Rebel, after a long but eventually exciting start to the match!
And so to game 2! This time it is the GM who strikes with a strong king attack, which Rebel appears to underestimate before it fights back and manages to survive. But Van Wely has the better endgame this time...
Maastricht 2002. Game 2, 40/2
Eric van Reem reports that Ed was greatly impressed by Van Wely's preparation and play in this game: "He absolutely knows what he is doing - I changed the Anti-GM setting before game 1, and he immediately noticed that this version is a bit different to the one I sent him before the match!"
So it's 1-1, and we go to game 3 where my notes are shared with comments by Ed Schröder himself. I suppose quoting here from his own introduction, "the perfect game" does rather give away the result! Nevertheless one can easily understand a programmer's pride, after 21 years at his work, in seeing such a superbly played king attack, and at a 40/2 tournament time control, and against one of the world's top-rated grandmasters! As Ed says, "It's the crown of a 21 year-long career, like running the perfect race for a Gold medal at the Olympics !"
Maastricht 2002. Game 3. 40/2
Ed Schröder: The perfect game! The mate finish is 34...Rg7 35.Bxg7+ Kg8 36.Bxf6+ Qg6 37.Rxg6+ Bg7 38.Rxg7+ Kf8 39.Rg8#.
Rebel has never lost one of these matches, and is already safe from defeat again. But as Eric van Reem acknowledged, 'Ed was quite nervous before the 3rd. game, after van Wely's great play in game 2, with some 10,000 people watching on the 'net!' Now, if it can win or draw the last game, it will have a match victory over a world top-twenty player under tournament time controls and playing conditions! But so far the player with White has won every game, and van Wely has his pride!
Maastricht 2002. Game 4, 40/2
So it ends all-square, an honourable 2-2 draw, eaming Rebel Century4 a match grade of 2714 Elo, the equivalent of 2634 for a P2-3/450MHz in the SelSearch ratings.
The chess was both entertaining and occasionally dramatic; also in the view of most commentators, of a very high standard.
