Topic Rybka Support & Discussion / Rybka Discussion / Flyingfatman freestyle 6 final - official report
![[gb]](/mwf/v12/flags/gb.png "United Kingdom")
FYI .. a copy of the full report we sent to Arno this week.
Best regards,
Nick
Best regards,
Nick
Attachment: Flyingfatman-fs6-report.pdf (221k)
![[hu]](/mwf/v12/flags/hu.png "Hungary")
Bump.
Vas
Vas
Someone called the flyingfatman team a gang of hooligans or something similar but they don't look like hooligans. I expected one of the flyingfatman members to be an actual fatman. :)
The name "flyingfatman" was decided upon by my 9 year old daughter last year when I signed up for Playchess again after an absence of 10 years.
It's from a 1998 episode of The Simpsons .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_You_Dish_Upon_a_Star . Apu, after Homer destroys his sand Taj Mahal whilst parasailing said; "Oh dear, you've ruined my work, you flying fat man!" The clip is in here somewhere .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkmV909EESY
And no, none of us are fat, in fact we're all in peak physical condition :)
It's from a 1998 episode of The Simpsons .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_You_Dish_Upon_a_Star . Apu, after Homer destroys his sand Taj Mahal whilst parasailing said; "Oh dear, you've ruined my work, you flying fat man!" The clip is in here somewhere .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkmV909EESY
And no, none of us are fat, in fact we're all in peak physical condition :)
BTW - I nominate this for the "Best Freestyle Report" award. It's going to take a .vmw file to beat it ..
Vas
Vas
![[us]](/mwf/v12/flags/us.png "United States")
Nah, it could be topped, but you would need graphic design flair, more position analysis, and lots of pithy insights. Also a talent for self-promotion, which nobody on the Cato team has. Instead of writing scintillating chess epistles we will continue to lurk near the top, spreading fear and confusion everywhere we go. Especially if we are allowed to play white against any centaurs ever again, which I doubt.
Actually, having black against the top guys may not be such a bad thing. (Seriously.)
Vas
Vas
I see your logic but I don't agree. You're saying it is much easier to draw than to win, therefore neutralizing the top guys with black is the best strategy while pounding on the weak with white is the path to more wins.
Speaking for myself, but I think Anson will agree, we'd much rather defeat the top centaurs, knocking them out of contention if we can, and have a shot at winning with black against the weaker opponents, against whom we feel there is little risk of defeat. Our attitude is totally aggressive in all cases except against opponents of the same caliber who are playing white. Now, the strategies we have used to achieve our aims have been unconventional up to this point. We'll see if the strategy changes; it has been pretty effective so far.
Frankly, if we always finished second that would be a pretty awesome result.
Speaking for myself, but I think Anson will agree, we'd much rather defeat the top centaurs, knocking them out of contention if we can, and have a shot at winning with black against the weaker opponents, against whom we feel there is little risk of defeat. Our attitude is totally aggressive in all cases except against opponents of the same caliber who are playing white. Now, the strategies we have used to achieve our aims have been unconventional up to this point. We'll see if the strategy changes; it has been pretty effective so far.
Frankly, if we always finished second that would be a pretty awesome result.
Actually, I'm not sure.
It does seem quite a bit harder to beat the Rybkas with black, though. In the last final, we played against 4 Rybkas & 'passive centaurs'. Twice, with white, we got massive advantages. Twice, with black, we never got anything - in both cases, we were a tiny bit worse the entire game and took a long time just to fully equalize.
It would be interesting to see some stats about it.
Vas
It does seem quite a bit harder to beat the Rybkas with black, though. In the last final, we played against 4 Rybkas & 'passive centaurs'. Twice, with white, we got massive advantages. Twice, with black, we never got anything - in both cases, we were a tiny bit worse the entire game and took a long time just to fully equalize.
It would be interesting to see some stats about it.
Vas
You're looking at one side of the coin; in your view passive centaurs are more apt to be crushed in the opening if you have the white pieces, while it is very hard to achieve any kind of opening advantage with black no matter who the opponent. My contra-hypothesis agrees that gaining an opening advantage with black is nearly impossible against any competent player/book combination, but you can win with black in the middle-game against a passive centaur if you are a first-rate centaur yourself. I agree winning with white against a first-rate centaur is a very difficult task, given that the latter is much more apt to happily draw. But I also believe you at least have a chance of winning in those games through guile or skill and their impact in the standings more than compensates for the degree of difficulty. Basically if you can defeat any top centaur despite the latter's best efforts to draw you ought to win the whole tournament because if you can do that you can surely throttle passive centaurs as well.
No doubt, if you beat somebody, you'll also basically knock them from the running for first place. This is for example why this game vs Zappa in Amsterdam was so damn annoying :)
In freestyle tournaments, though, there are always several guys who can win.
Anyway, it's really a statistical question. We need hard numbers. I am sure we'll find that between strong centaurs, the draw rate is really high.
Vas
In freestyle tournaments, though, there are always several guys who can win.
Anyway, it's really a statistical question. We need hard numbers. I am sure we'll find that between strong centaurs, the draw rate is really high.
Vas
I think the numbers support your thesis. But it is like so many other things--deviant thinking either crashes and burns or is a brilliant and unexpected success. Your approach is conventional and statistically sound. My approach is unconventional and statistically unsound, but in order to win it all risk-taking at the right moments has the best chance of carrying the day.
Surely, as a Redskins fan, you must intuitively understand what I am talking about.
Surely, as a Redskins fan, you must intuitively understand what I am talking about.
One of my former co-workers had a theory that in general, very successful people tended to act irrationally to get to their position. His theory was that rational behavior is always the best (by definition) but it just doesn't have enough upside.
The Redskins will disprove this by winning the Super Bowl this year :)
Vas
The Redskins will disprove this by winning the Super Bowl this year :)
Vas
http://www.tradesports.com/aav2/trading/tradingHTML.jsp?evID=66864&eventSelect=66864&updateList=true&showExpired=false
Here's a place where you can put your money where your mouth is. Redskins trading at 2. If they win the Super Bowl the contract is worth 100, if some other team wins, the Redskins contract is worth 0. Bet $2 for a chance to win $98. Any TRUE Redskins fan would be all over that trade.
Daniel
Here's a place where you can put your money where your mouth is. Redskins trading at 2. If they win the Super Bowl the contract is worth 100, if some other team wins, the Redskins contract is worth 0. Bet $2 for a chance to win $98. Any TRUE Redskins fan would be all over that trade.
Daniel
In their defense, this is quite a bit more accurate than most columnists. It's nice to see the Skins ahead of the Jets and Chiefs.
Generally, people magically get a lot smarter when they have to put their money where their mouth is :)
Vas
Generally, people magically get a lot smarter when they have to put their money where their mouth is :)
Vas
I'd hate to run into this group in a dark alley. Its a good thing they have these freestyle events to keep them off the streets. :-)
"Hey, isn't that the 1. b3 guy?"
"Yeah"
...
Vas
"Yeah"
...
Vas
Just imagine if he played 1.g3 in a key tournament game--what shock-waves would emanate throughout the computer chess world!
Actually, when you guys played 5. .. h6 against us instead of 5. .. a6, I briefly thought that it might be some sort of a really weird mouse slip :)
Vas
Vas
You have to admit, it worked. The only thing you can count on is for us to play unconventionally and strategically, particularly against the top players.
My plan was foiled, I was hoping you'd play Bg5 without thinking :-)
We got confused by the wrong rook pawn and moved the wrong bishop :)
Vas
Vas
![[de]](/mwf/v12/flags/de.png "Germany")
I always thought it has something to do with the nuclear bomb "fat man" :)
Who were these Cato the younger guys, characters from the Julius Caesar era? If they played the freestyle in those days they would have made sure everyone else is using a pentium II or weaker while they use strong hardware and the losers were thrown to the lions or something for "entertainment".
Republican Rome did not revel in such crude spectacles!
I called them chess hooligans and that is exactly what they are, though I say this with a smile and with admiration for their play.
I would have though the hooligans would be those who use monster hardware without any human effort and just use sheer force to win? Flyingfatman team had some nice games with human intervention.
All the "true" centaur games are interesting right to the end because there is a guiding intelligence behind the play, which often results in unpredictable strategy and creative, entertaining play.
Machine-only opponents are interesting too, but only from an analytic perspective and mostly just while they are in book. In other words, what lines are they following, and what do their preferences tell you about their book's quality and the entity's playing philosophy? Once machine-only entities are out of book it's just a matter of which side has the better position and can the centaur gain the upper hand by anticipating and out-searching the machine. Usually you see tough, grinding struggles where one side asphyxiates the other.
Personally I have no objection to someone renting a campus supercomputer, just as I have no objection to Kasparov coming out of retirement and playing in Freestyle. All's fair. No question people with money or connections have an edge, but then so do people with ideas and talent.
Machine-only opponents are interesting too, but only from an analytic perspective and mostly just while they are in book. In other words, what lines are they following, and what do their preferences tell you about their book's quality and the entity's playing philosophy? Once machine-only entities are out of book it's just a matter of which side has the better position and can the centaur gain the upper hand by anticipating and out-searching the machine. Usually you see tough, grinding struggles where one side asphyxiates the other.
Personally I have no objection to someone renting a campus supercomputer, just as I have no objection to Kasparov coming out of retirement and playing in Freestyle. All's fair. No question people with money or connections have an edge, but then so do people with ideas and talent.
I read somewhere where Arno Nickel or someone was complaining that they did not know that their opponents were machine only. Shouldn't it be obvious with the instantaneous/book replies that that's a machine while the centaurs who may have teams across the internet take time to make moves ?
It should be obvious. Not having read the complaint I am not sure what they could have been upset about. However as a rule you surely play one way against an unassisted machine and another against a centaur. If you don't know what you're playing you're full of doubts. Remember Kasparov's melt-down against Deep Blue in 1997. Whatever the merits of the Game 2 controversy, there can be no doubt that he felt a switcheroo had taken place and that threw his plans and whole psychological framework into disarray.
Part of the problem in that match vs Deep Blue is that unlike almost every other chess player, Kasparov hadn't learned how to deal with losing.
Vas
Vas
Topic Rybka Support & Discussion / Rybka Discussion / Flyingfatman freestyle 6 final - official report
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