brainwagon

I don’t know if any of you have noticed that you can see some of the things that I’ve posted on the current day in previous years on the left. I find it nice to recycle topics which I might have talked about in previous years and bring them back to the top of my consciousness. Back in 2004, I linked to two bits of sofware: the first, a fledgling internet telephone project called Skype (you may have heard of it since), but the second was Oliver Brausch’s 1600 line chess program called Olithink. In revisiting his chess page, I see he’s trimmed the size to 1424 lines, and he claims it now to be competitive with Crafty, even though Olithink doesn’t have an opening book or endgame databases. I fired it up against Crafty using Xboard, and with this single game, Crafty did beat Olithink, but I must admit that it held its own fairly well until making a mistake at move 48.

Here’s the pgn:

[Event "Computer chess game"]
[Site "mark-vandewetterings-macbook.local"]
[Date "2008.04.08"]
[Round "-"]
[White "Crafty-20.14"]
[Black "OliThink 5.1.2"]
[Result "1-0"]
[TimeControl "40/300"]

1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. h4 g4 5. Ne5 Qe7 6. d4 d6 7. Nxg4 Qxe4+ 8.
Qe2 Qe7 9. Qxe7+ Bxe7 10. Nf2 Nh6 11. Nc3 Nc6 12. Bxf4 Nf5 13. Nd5 Bd8 14.
O-O-O Nfxd4 15. Ne4 Be6 16. Nef6+ Bxf6 17. Nxf6+ Ke7 18. Bg5 h6 19. Ng8+
Kf8 20. Nxh6 Re8 21. c3 Nf5 22. Nxf5 Bxf5 23. Bb5 a6 24. Ba4 Re2 25. Rd2
Rxd2 26. Kxd2 Be4 27. Rg1 b5 28. Bd1 Ne5 29. b3 Kg7 30. Rf1 Re8 31. Bf6+
Kf8 32. g3 Re6 33. Rf4 Ng6 34. Rf2 Ne5 35. Be2 Nf3+ 36. Bxf3 Rxf6 37. Ke2
Re6 38. Bxe4 Rxe4+ 39. Kf3 Re1 40. Rc2 d5 41. h5 Kg7 42. g4 c6 43. Kf4 Re4+
44. Kf3 Kh6 45. Re2 Rxe2 46. Kxe2 f5 47. Kf3 Kg5 48. gxf5 c5 49. f6 Kxf6
50. Kf4 a5 51. a3 Ke6 52. b4 axb4 53. axb4 cxb4 54. cxb4 Kf6 55. Ke3 Ke5
56. Kd3 Kf6 57. Kd4 Kg5 58. Kxd5 Kxh5 59. Kc6 Kg6 60. Kxb5 Kf6 61. Kc6 Ke7
62. Kc7 Ke6 63. b5 Kd5 64. b6 Kd4 65. b7 Ke3 66. b8=Q Kd3 67. Qe8 Kc2 68.
Kb6 Kd3 69. Kc5 Kc2 70. Qe3 Kb2 71. Kc4 Kc2 72. Qf2+ Kb1 73. Kb3 Ka1 74.
Qb2#
{White mates} 1-0

The better move would appear to be 48. … Kxf5.

Anyway, it’s a very neatly written program. Check it out.

Addendum: I left Crafty analyzing the above position for five minutes. Kxf5 does appear to be better, but it appears that Olithink is already almost two pawns down, even with that move. Crafty ranks the move that Olithink chose as being down by 4 pawns.