Israel’s Deep Junior still the king at WCCC

[Sean Evans]

Israel’s Deep Junior still the king at WCCC

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
18/08/2013

This is Junior’s eighth world champion title.

Deep Junior, a program written by Israelis Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, won the World Computer Chess Championship on Sunday.

This was the 20th world championship since the event was initiated in Stockholm in 1974.

This was Junior’s eighth world champion title. It first won at Maastricht in 2002, and then at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan in 2004, Turin 2006, Pamplona 2009 and Tilburg 2011.

Deep Junior, assisted by Grandmaster Alon Greenfeld, ran on a Dual 12 core Intel Xenon I5 2.7 GHz computer sponsored by Intel.

Five other programs took part in the tournament, among them two former world title holders: Shredder from Germany and Hiarcs from England.

It was held in a double round robin format – all programs played each other twice, once with the white pieces and once with the black ones.

Deep Junior started the tournament in a storm, winning its first four games.

Its only loss came in round 5, with a defeat by Jonny from Germany, a strong program running on a massive 2400 core system.

The second half of the tournament saw a close race between Deep Junior and Jonny, which climaxed in the 10th and final round, with Deep Junior holding a halfpoint lead over Jonny.

Jonny needed a win to become champion and pressed hard, gaining two dangerous connected passing pawns.

But Deep Junior found extraordinary defensive resources by sacrificing one its knights for the pawns, and the game eventually ended in a draw after 89 moves.

[kgburcham]

This is Junior’s eighth world champion title.

I heard Fruit, Rybka, Ippolit, was very busy in this tournament.

[Thomas Lagershausen]

This is Junior’s eighth world champion title.

I heard Fruit, Rybka, Ippolit, was very busy in this tournament.

My advice to some people here is to read more chessbooks.

So they can see the qualities of Junior in chess.

It is a very special chessprogram and plays really a unique chess for computer.

I appreciate very much that this programm holds the worldchampiontitel in computerchess.

Junior knows more about attackingchess as any other program in the world.

[kgburcham]

This is Junior’s eighth world champion title.

I heard Fruit, Rybka, Ippolit, was very busy in this tournament.

My advice to some people here is to read more chessbooks.

My advice to some people here is to read the name of this site.
The name of this site is "Computer Chess Club,"this is not a book club.

So they can see the qualities of Junior in chess.
I have purchased all of the Deep Copies of Junior.
Junior doesn't finish at the top of the rating lists anymore.

It is a very special chessprogram and plays really a unique chess for computer.
Only against humans

I appreciate very much that this programm holds the worldchampiontitel in computerchess.
Sorry but many don't. Most likely it also does not have original code.

Junior knows more about attackingchess as any other program in the world.

But cannot beat Houdini, Stockfish, Rybka, Critter, Komodo etc.

It takes an extreme amount of energy to move your program up the charts.
It takes an extreme amount of motivation to move your program up the charts.
It takes an extreme amount of dedicated time to move your program up the charts.
It takes an extreme amount of knowledge to move your program up the charts.
Junior cant move up the charts.
Authors lose one or more of these.
Authors get discouraged from others achievements.
Authors lose energy as they get older.
Goals to authors seem less important as they once did when they were young.
Lets see where were we, attacking chess, Junior always feels very "attacked" when it loses to the other top programs.

I will buy the Chessbase version of Deep Junior when Amir releases it after this championship win.
I will not open the wrapper, it will just go on the shelf with the many others.
I have other better attacking programs.
kgburcham

[M ANSARI]

This is Junior’s eighth world champion title.

I heard Fruit, Rybka, Ippolit, was very busy in this tournament.

My advice to some people here is to read more chessbooks.

So they can see the qualities of Junior in chess.

It is a very special chessprogram and plays really a unique chess for computer.

I appreciate very much that this programm holds the worldchampiontitel in computerchess.

Junior knows more about attackingchess as any other program in the world.

My advice to you is to learn a little more about computer chess. Junior has a ridiculously high speculative factor and while that might be interesting against a human, it is suicide against a strong engine. Sure it might get one nice win out of a hundred, but that has nothing to do with "knowing about attacking chess". You can do that type of reckless "attacking chess" by simply changing the contempt factor of the top chess engines, and I assure you that you will get many more "attacking" wins than Junior gets, but that is hardly the goal of the top chess engine authors. They want to make the strongest possible engine and they assume the best possible defense before they go on attack.

So before you try to educate us all about Junior, we know Junior and have been following since it came on the world scene. It was an impressive engine in its time, but today it is several hundred ELO points behind the top 5 engines, and it probably would not be rated in the top 30 engines let alone be the WCCC.

[carldaman]

It was an impressive engine in its time, but today it is several hundred ELO points behind the top 5 engines, and it probably would not be rated in the top 30 engines let alone be the WCCC.

Surely, that must be an exaggeration:

CCRL 40/40 has

1. Houdini 3 64-bit 4CPU 3248
............................
............................
15. Deep Junior 13 64-bit 4CPU 3041

[kgburcham]

It was an impressive engine in its time, but today it is several hundred ELO points behind the top 5 engines, and it probably would not be rated in the top 30 engines let alone be the WCCC.

Surely, that must be an exaggeration:

CCRL 40/40 has

1. Houdini 3 64-bit 4CPU 3248
............................
............................
15. Deep Junior 13 64-bit 4CPU 3041

No Carl it is no exaggeration, your post is correct. Someone has named Deep Junior, which is 15th in your post, as world #1 champion.

[carldaman]

It was an impressive engine in its time, but today it is several hundred ELO points behind the top 5 engines, and it probably would not be rated in the top 30 engines let alone be the WCCC.

Surely, that must be an exaggeration:

CCRL 40/40 has

1. Houdini 3 64-bit 4CPU 3248
............................
............................
15. Deep Junior 13 64-bit 4CPU 3041

No Carl it is no exaggeration, your post is correct. Someone has named Deep Junior, which is 15th in your post, as world #1 champion.

"ICGA champion" would be better stated, at this point in time

[Mike S.]

Nevertheless, to keep computer chess entertaining, a unique style of strong engines is more important than ever. Maybe even more important than +/- 200 computer elos?

Engines are artificially intelligent chess players. Nowadays, our judgement about them is reduced to 4-digit Elo numbers. That is not sufficient. We need more complex "profiles" of their strengths, weaknesses, style, performance in the game phases each, etc. (preferably also including the set of engine features like learning, use of tablebases...).

[carldaman]

Nevertheless, to keep computer chess entertaining, a unique style of strong engines is more important than ever. Maybe even more important than +/- 200 computer elos?

Engines are artificially intelligent chess players. Nowadays, our judgement about them is reduced to 4-digit Elo numbers. That is not sufficient. We need more complex "profiles" of their strengths, weaknesses, style, performance in the game phases each, etc. (preferably also including the set of engine features like learning, use of tablebases...).

I tend to agree. The virtual disappearance of human-engine matches is also doing harm to engine development. We're in need of more engines that play instructive chess in ALL types of positions. Being the top rated engine doesn't necessarily satisfy this requirement.

An engine can be lower rated, but still stronger than the human world champion, while playing very original chess. This is worthy of respect in my book.