GRANDMASTER VERSUS COMPUTER

Not even two pawns did the trick

[01.09.2015 00:00:00] - Komodo 9, the best chess computer program of today, heavily defeated grandmaster Martin Petr, even though he was given two pawns in each game. The final score 4.5 : 1.5 (3 victories of Komodo and 3 draws) is devastating. On Sunday the 23rd and on Monday the 24th of August, the Šachový Václavák chess café in the Juliš Hotel saw three games in a slow rapid tempo (45 min + 15 s / move) and the silicon monster was consecutively missing the pawns a+b, a+d and a+e in the opening positions.

Grandmaster Peter prepared the openings well and after the positions were settled, his was always a good one. The most difficult question for him was to decide what to play at e4 in a position in which the computer’s a+d pawns were missing. He chose a strong combination of d6, e6 and g6 and it was not clear, where the computer was planning to break through. But Komodo 9 was in no hurry; it resisted exchanges, gradually improved the positions of its pieces and made no mistakes.

With the clock ticking away, each game during its course always eventually showed that there is simply a huge rating difference of 800 ELO points between the two chess players. All the games can be downloaded in the pgn format (http://komodochess.com/games/Komodo-9.2-v-Martin-Petr.pgn) and played on your computer.

It also became clearly evident, how the positions with various pawns missing considerably differ from one another. Three weeks ago, grandmaster Petr Neumann played against Komodo 9 that was missing the c+f pawns, and the computer didn’t stand a chance: the grandmaster took it to pieces (4 : 1). When the machine could compensate with a free column for the rook and a diagonal for the bishop, it managed to defeat the grandmaster, despite its material disadvantage.

The third match of Komodo 9 in Prague will take place at the Šachový Václavák chess café on 9 and 10 September at 3 PM, when this super program running on a 24 core computer will compete with grandmaster Sergei Movsesian. The Armenian grandmaster will always play with the white pieces and Komodo will always be missing the f7 pawn. Come take a look!

| Pavel Matocha | visits(6333x)