Last year, The Baron played two games against Levon Aronian and both games ended in a draw. This year two man-against-computer exhibitions were played on the big stage of the Rheingoldhalle. The best PC program in the world, Shredder, learned the Chess960 rules just a few months ago and its programmer Stefan Meyer-Kahlen from Düsseldorf, Germany obviously is a good teacher: his brainchild Shredder won the minimatch against Zoltan Almasi 2-0. Chess960 world champion Peter Svidler easily won his match against the Dutch program The Baron from Richard Pijl 1,5-0,5.

Shredder-Almasi 2-0

The first Shredder game was really exciting, but also showed some well-known typical computer chess. Shredder was a piece up, but failed to develop his pieces on the queenside. His rook on a8 never left its original square. “Typical stupid computer play”, Richard Pijl said after the game: “Why doesn´t Shredder castle? It would be an easy win for black then”. After the game Stefan Meyer-Kahlen said that his program wanted to castle, but only as the next-best move. “I was a bit afraid that my program did not know how to castle”, Meyer-Kahlen smiled. As the game developed, Shredder´s screen showed a plus 5 score, but Almasi did not resign. He was right not to do so, because something strange happened: Shredder blundered with Be5 and his nice +5 score suddenly dropped. However, Almasi did not have enough time on the clock and did not find the winning move Qxd5! A few moves later, the Hungarian had to resign and shook his head when his opponent showed the winning move.

In the second game between Shredder and Almasi a “normal” chess position arose after about 12 moves. In this game Almasi blundered with Rxa4. After Nxg7 the game was over. Meyer-Kahlen was very satisfied after the match and hopes to keep his 100% score in the Chess960 world chess championship, that will start on Thursday!

The Baron-Svidler 0,5-1,5

“I think that the match will end 1-1. Svidler does not want to take any risk and he will certainly try to keep the position closed”, Richard Pijl said before the minimatch. In the first game the computer program opened the position and seemed to have a slightly better position. However, the Chess960 world champion defended well and easily scored a draw. In the second game, a quite position arose, but The Baron made a mistake which cost him a piece. Svidler easily won the second game, winning the minimatch 1,5-0,5. “Strange, I have to check my log files to see what went wrong”, a disappointed Richard Pijl told us after the game.

On Thursday and Friday we will see both programs again in the first Chess960 Computer Chess World Championship.

Matches: Exhibitions - Man vs Maschine 1st round

Matches: Exhibitions - Man vs Maschine 2nd round