Engine Blitz Tournament

In view of the results of a recent post where Fritz 12 did quite well on a few positional tests I decided to run a 5 minute tournament using some of my favorite engines just to how well Fritz would do and the results were disappointing. 

I thought perhaps is might be due to the fact that at a fast time limit Fritz might be making tactical errors. Here’s what a quick review of Fritz’ games revealed:

Vs. Houdini (32bit) – Fritz won a R+B+P ending.  Well-played by Fritz
Vs. Spike – they castled on opposite wings. Fritz had a better position but didn’t follow up its K-side attack in the strongest way and threw away the advantage.  Spike gained a significant advantage but then misplayed its Q-side attack and the game was drawn in a blocked position. Neither engine played particularly well, both missing some strong moves.
Vs Critter – in a R and N ending where both side had 3P’s, Critter had 3P’s vs. 2P’s on the K-side and Fritz had a passed P on a7, the game looked to be drawn because Fritz’ R was stuck on a6 in front of its P.  Critter began a series of checks that should have lead to a draw when Fritz, in an effort to escape the checks, walked into a mate and had to sacrifice it’s N leaving Critter with a won ending. A serious tactical error by Fritz lost this game.
Vs. Fire xTreme Fritz’ K-side onslaught out of the opening didn’t lead anywhere and Fire xTreme had about a 1/2 P advantage and traded down to a R and P ending which Fritz lost.
Vs. Firebird in a fairly level position Fritz made a bad exchange of its B for a N, drifted into an inferior position and lost a R+N vs. R+B ending when Firebird got its R on the 7^th rank.
Vs. Stockfish in an equal position Fritz voluntarily weakened it P structure the plopped a N on e5 only to find that after …f3 it had to play N/e5xNc6 and give Stockfish the open b-file and the game was all but over.
Vs. Ivanhoe – after an opening error it got an inferior position and walked into a pin that ultimately lost a piece.  Another tactical error.

All-in-all Fritz’ play was not very impressive.  Against Critter and Ivanhoe it made serious tactical errors and in the other games it lost, it always seemed to drift into inferior positions from which it couldn’t recover.

However, to be fair Fritz did do quite well on the brief strategic quiz when given enough time to think. On the SSDF rating list Fritz 12 stands in 21^st place behind the deep versions of Rybka, Shredder, the deep version of Fritz, Junior and, what shall we call them?  The ‘shallow’ Naum, Hiarcs, Zappa and Glaurung.  It has an overwhelming score of 26.5 – 13.5 against Spike. On the CCRL 40/40 rating list Houdini (64bit) is in first place with Rybka, Critter and Stockfish so the placing of the latter two in my little experiment isn’t surprising. 

I’ve been impressed with Fire xTreme the few times I’ve used it in the past and think it may be time to investigate its possibilities a little closer.  I think its development has ended and it may no longer be available for download…at least I couldn’t find it listed anywhere.

Stockfish overlooked a nice tactical shot in this game.