SuperSteve3D

There will be another high-profile Man vs. Machine match, this time between Kim MyungWan, a young Korean 8 dan professional, and MoGo, the French Monte-Carlo program. MoGo will be playing remotely from a 3000-processor cluster in Amsterdam.

The game will be played on 19×19. First a few quick games will be played to establish an appropriate handicap, then there will be one “serious” match. This market concerns the latter.

The event will be on Thursday, August 7, at 1:00 PM Pacific time, in the Computer Go room at KGS (www.gokgs.com)

 

It’s time now to talk about the many evaluation improvements in Rybka 3 over Rybka 2.3.2a. There are so many that I can only list the more important ones. A lot of the improvement consists of assigning better values to previously existing terms; I won’t go into that. Here is a list of what’s new, in five categories:

A) General terms
1. Better definition of mobility
2. New concept of “range”
3. New “contempt” – now when set Rybka tries to avoid various drawish factors, such as neutral trades, blocked pawn structures, and symmetrical pawn structures.
4. New definition of game phase
5. Revised basic piece values
6. Scoring tactical threats in the evaluation (previously handled only by search)
7. New table of how the value of minor pieces depends on which other ones are on the board
8. Safe squares for pieces
9. Relative placement of certain pieces and pawns

B) Opening Play
1. Try to avoid separating neighbor pawns (as in pawns on c2 and d4, knight on c3).
2. Value the right to castle.
3. Connect your rooks.

C) Endgame Play
1. Some rook endgame heuristics
2. Advanced passers are the key to queen endgames.
3. More knowledge about which endgames are drawish and which are not
4. New terms regarding good rook placement

D) Middlegame Play
1. Understanding good and bad bishops
2. Much more advanced understanding of king attacks
3. Importance of defending the king by pieces
4. “Space” (previously addressed only indirectly)

E) Pawn Structure
1. New definitions regarding unopposed pawns
2. Classification of types of backward pawns
3. Pawn Islands
4. Extra penalty for doubled isolated pawns
5. terms relating to how pawns are placed relative to neighboring pawns

 

Rybka 3 book info

Credits – Vas and Larry: for the brilliant Rybka 3 engine that found so many novelties, nice ideas and refutations. – Dagh Nielsen: for the very inspiring preparation sessions and all the great stuff you found in the Najdorf. – IM Merijn van Delft: for the breath taking Petroff novelty I was allowed to use. – IM Iweta Rajlich: for providing me with some nice analysis and exciting opening material. – My Q6600: no good book without good hardware – Playchess engine room: without all you guys this book would never exist! – ChessBase: for selling my book and giving me this opportunity.

What can you expect – The Rybka 3 book is a combination of the best GM games and computer games of the past few years. – I worked on it for 6.5 months, on average I put around 4 times more hours and effort in this new book when compared with RybkaII. – It contains a lot of novelties, original analysis and new ideas. – It is thoroughly computer checked. – Improvements were made on a daily basis, with the help of 8000 test games being played and analysed. – The book has been tested against a wide variety of other books. – You will find improvements on Playchess theory in it, as well as refutations of some popular Playchess lines. – Although I have a private book, I have made no concessions with the Rybka 3 book, i.e. all the good stuff I found during testing and analysing is in the book.

Availability – The Rybka 3 book is in ctg-format and will be exclusively available through ChessBase.

Why stand alone – With the Rybka 3 book I want to reach a very broad chess audience:

A) Hobby players
B) Club players
C) Correspondence players
D) Tournament players
E) International masters and grandmasters
F) Chess enthousiasts who like to play engine-engine matches
G) ChessBase 8/9/10 users
H) ChessBase engine users who don’t want to have Rybka, but are interested in updating their books
I) Aquarium users
J) All other people interested in the latest opening theory

– Once it was clear to me that this was my goal and greatest wish, I verified the possible options. – As the book was in ctg-format, the agreement with ChessBase was by far the most logical step for me. – A stand alone product will put more emphasis on the book and its pro’s, this would not have been the case when incorporated in the Rybka 3 package. – Only with a stand alone product I can reach the audience mentioned above. – For me earning a little extra is nice, but I must confess that the PR and the exposure generated are far more thrilling for me .

Of course I fully understand that people expected Rybka3.ctg to be in the Rybka 3 package. I hope that I made clear what my considerations were and why I made the step. In any case I can tell you that I gave my very best to make Rybka3.ctg possible and that the ChessBase agreement was a huge boost to make it even better. I hope you will enjoy the new Rybka book

 

Larry Kaufman –
Since yesterday I’ve been testing a version of Rybka that is very close to Rybka 3, with the improved scaling and all my latest eval terms added. I’m running it against 2.3.2a mp. It appears that on a direct match basis, we will reach the goal of a 100 Elo gain, at least on quads. As of now, after 900 games total, the lead is 110 Elo (105 Elo on quads, 120 on my octal). This is with both programs using the same short generic book, each taking White once in every opening. To achieve this result Rybka 3 has to win about 4 games for each win by 2.3.2a on the quads and about 5 for 1 on the octal, due to draws. How this will translate to gains on the rating lists remains to be seen.

 

Mozilla’s record-breaking initiative that was coupled with the release of Firefox 3 has officially paid off as the new browser now holds the Guinness World Record for the most downloads in the course of 24 hours. 8,002,530 downloads have been recorded in the first day of Firefox 3’s life with the number now reaching 28.6 million.