Draw against Fritz 11

Last night before i went to bed i started a blitz game against Fritz 11. I dont use handicap when i play against Fritz nor do i dumb down any of the settings. Anyway, i was White and Fritz played the French against me. I deviated pretty early in the opening with a Novelty. I maintained a pretty good position throughout the game and kept the balance. Enough to score a draw against the mighty German! It is definatley a confidence boost scoring a draw under 30 moves and the draw not being from a long line of opening theory or played from book.

I welcome any comments/questions and further analysis.

nice game

I am no expert in chess so cannot grant you any recomendations or advice. But I can congradulate you in your win. Very good game. I hope your confidence in the game continues to increase.

Nice.

Elona wrote:

I am no expert in chess so cannot grant you any recomendations or advice. But I can congradulate you in your win. Very good game. I hope your confidence in the game continues to increase.

What win? He drew by perpetual check.

Granted, I wouldn't come close to drawing Fritz, especially in blitz. Nice game.

dmeng wrote:

Elona wrote:

I am no expert in chess so cannot grant you any recomendations or advice. But I can congradulate you in your win. Very good game. I hope your confidence in the game continues to increase.

What win? He drew by perpetual check.

Granted, I wouldn't come close to drawing Fritz, especially in blitz. Nice game.

 His confidence has grown from this game. That is a win in my book.

Elona wrote:

dmeng wrote:

Elona wrote:

I am no expert in chess so cannot grant you any recomendations or advice. But I can congradulate you in your win. Very good game. I hope your confidence in the game continues to increase.

What win? He drew by perpetual check.

Granted, I wouldn't come close to drawing Fritz, especially in blitz. Nice game.

 His confidence has grown from this game. That is a win in my book.

Well, I would have to agree with you there.

Excellent draw!  :)

Can you explain your idea behind 7.dxc5?

I don't play the French, but it seems like you basically gave Black an opportunity to gain time developing his bishop. You had other candidate moves, like 7.O-O or 7.Bg5 that get on with development and invite Black to release the tension.

By the way, you can make your engine perform better by setting its contempt value. This is done in official man vs machine matches. Leaving the contempt at the default value of 0.00 to 0.15 basically tells the engine to aim for a draw if it's even the tiniest bit behind (and Black begins 0.33 behind). Would Anand play that way against you or me? ;)

The ideal value for contempt based on Larry Kauffman's testing is:

(engine_rating) - (player_rating) / 12

Rybka (contempt=0 assumes 3250-elo opponent) prefers 21...Rxd1 22.Rxd1 Bg3 23.fxg3 Qxg3 24.Rd8 Qxh4+ {draw} given 10s / move.

Rybka (contempt=100 assumes 1850-elo opponent) prefers 21...Be5 22.Be6 Rd3 23.Bxc6 Rxc8 24.Nxf5 Kh8 25.Rxd3 exd3 (+=) given 10s / move. In other words, it concedes a slight advantage to White but tries to keep the game going in hopes of scoring a win.

Of course, a draw against Fritz 11 is great no matter the contempt value. :)

likesforests wrote:

Excellent draw!  :)

Can you explain your idea behind 7.dxc5?

I don't play the French, but it seems like you basically gave Black an opportunity to gain time developing his bishop. You had other candidate moves, like 7.O-O or 7.Bg5 that get on with development and invite Black to release the tension.

The idea behind 7.dxc5 was to really just get a simple manageable position against a stronger opponent (remember that this is blitz). White has made no serious errors in the opening and although Black has a solid position with good development he will always be trying to somehow get the light squared bishop activated, something which isn't so easy. Later on i think i highlight this with 24.Rd8.

The other candidate moves at Whites seventh would basically put me up against Fritz book 11, something i am NOT prepared to do at this stage =)

As you can see, the game turned out to be fairly simple and Whites moves (best candidate moves) could be found fairly easily. This is probably the best way for me to get a result against the engine in a blitz game.

Thanks for the tip on how to make Fritz play stronger likesforests. I will certainly try out what you suggested. Honestly, i don't play against engines that much. I usually just use them for analysis.

It is an interesting point you make about how Anand would play the game. Of course it would be differently. I think the problem is that Fritz does not know if he is play against the average Graw81 or worlds greatest Garry Kasparov! hehe This is probably the reason why i dont play against computers very often.

Nice game.  I like your insight.