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Another title for Rybka! In the 10th edition of the International Computer Chess Tournament (ICT10) the latest Rybka version by Vasik Rajlich scored eight points out of nine games. Rybka lost only one game, against number two Deep Sjeng by Gian-Carlo Pascutto. The Belgian program played a fine tournament and scored seven points. Two programs shared the third spot on the winner’s podium: Hiarcs by Mark Uniacke and Shredder by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen. Both programs scored six points. Rybka won the “Theo van der Storm” trophy, named after the late CSVN secretary and organizer Theo van der Storm.
On the table below you can see the final results. Remarkable: only 13 of 63 games ended in a draw! Note that both Rybka and Sjeng played on 128 core clusters; Junior and Hiarcs each had 12 cores, Shredder had eight.
It was an international tournament, with participants from nine countries: Holland, Germany, UK, Hungary, Brazil, USA, Poland, Belgium and Israel.
Visitors watching the games at the 10th ICT in Leiden, Holland
Computer chess still attracts many (new) programmers. Last year only eight programs came to play the ICT, but this year there were no less than 14 (!) professionals and amateurs in Leiden. They were there not only to play the games, but also to discuss chess in general and chess programming in particular. These lively discussions often inspire programmers to improve their engines.
American computer chess and games programmer Don Dailey
It was also nice to some new faces in Leiden, like special guest Don Dailey. He is an American computer games and chess researcher and programmer. Dailey is author of various computer chess programs starting in the 80s. He played in Leiden with his latest program Komodo.
A newbie in Leiden was the Brazilian with the remarkable name Ben-Hur Carlos Vieira Langoni Junior. He debuted with his program Red Queen. He started working on his chess program just one year ago and promised to come back again! Hopefully he will score more than 0.5 point next time.
The winners: Gian-Carlo Pascutto (programmer DeepSjeng), Hans van der Zijden
(operator Rybka), Harvey Williamson (operator Hiarcs) and Ernst Walet (operator
Shredder)
The next major computer chess tournament will be the ICGA 18th world computer chess championship in Kanazawa, Japan from September 24th till October 2nd. You can find more info on www.icga.org. In November the Dutch Computer Chess Federation (CSVN) will celebrate its 30th anniversary of the Dutch Open Championship. The exact dates will be announced soon. Please check www.csvn.nl for information about the Dutch Open and the other activities of the CSVN. On the website you can also see many pictures of the ICT 10 tournament and you can download all the games.
On Saturday a side-event was played for owners of dedicated chess computers. Ruud Martin won this tournament with a Revelation Rebel 5.
We would like to take the opportunity to thank tournament director/webmaster Jan Krabbenbos and arbiter Rienk Doetjes for organizing another trouble-free tournament.
