16.08.2006 - One the the traditional ingredients during the Chess Classic: man-machine matches. Last year, we saw the world premiere in Chess960 of the man-machine match between Shredder and Almasi, Svidler played and won against the Dutch program The Baron. This year, the winner of the first Chess960 Computer Chess World championship, the German program Spike, developed by local heroes Ralf Schäfer and Volker Böhm played two games against the Chess960 World Champion Peter Svidler. The Russian star was not at all happy with his first game, because almost immediately after playing the first move, he saw some opportunities for his opponent. Svidler´s position did not look promising after the opening, but Spike could not really break through and played some inaccurate moves. Svidler said at the press conference that he wanted try something, moved his king to the other side of the board and openend the game. But playing against a computer in an open position is not a good idea. Spike grabbed an pawn, snatched another one and won the game in the end. In the second game there was less excitement, the peaceful game ended in a draw.

In his first ever official Chess960 game, Teimour Radjabov played a terrible first game against the well known German chess program Shredder, developed by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen. Radjabov, who played some games on the ICC to get used to the different Chess960 set-ups, was beaten in only 16 moves with the white pieces. “Shredder played very good in the first game, the pawn sacrifice d5 opened the game”, a happy Meyer-Khalen said after the game. Radjabov was not frustrated after the game, chatted and analysed friendly with the programmer. “Well, I wanted to start a tactical battle, but it soon turned out to bee too late”, the 19-year said. “In the second game my position was slightly better, I think, but I waited too long for an opportunity to attack the white king. So Shredder positioned the pieces nicely and won the game: eating-breaking-beating”. However, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen showed us later that his program showed a plus score during the whole game. The German obviousy was very pleased with the 2-0 result against a 2700+ GM.

A nice feature was introduced during the games: the audience could see the evaluation of the program Spike on TV-screens. Sometimes it is quite difficult to understand the position on the board for amateurs, so this feature is highly appreciated by the audience in the packed Rheingoldhalle.