Rybka wins 10th ICT in Leiden

Rybka this weekend won the 10th edition of the International Computer Chess Tournament (ICT10) in Leiden, The Netherlands.

By Eric van Reem

In the 10th edition of the International Computer Chess Tournament (ICT10) the latest Rybka version by Vasik Rajlich scored 8 points out of 9 games. Rybka lost only one game, against number 2 Deep Sjeng by Gian-Carlo Pascutto. The Belgian program played a fine tournament and scored 7 points.

Two programs shared the last spot on the winner’s podium: Hiarcs by Mark Uniacke and Shredder by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen. Both programs scored 6 points. Rybka won the “Theo van der Storm” trophy, named after the late CSVN secretary and organizer Theo van der Storm.

On the table below you can see the final results. Remarkable: only 13 of 63 games ended in a draw!

ICT 2010 | Final Standings


An international tournament it was: we had participants from nine countries: Holland, Germany, UK, Hungary, Brazil, USA, Poland, Belgium and Israel.

Computer chess still attracts many (new) programmers. Last year only eight programs came to play the ICT, but this year no less than 14 (!) professionals and amateurs came to Leiden, not only to play the games, but also to discuss chess in general and chess programming in particular. These lively discussions often inspire programmers to improve their engines.

It was also nice to some new faces in Leiden, like special guest Don Dailey. He is an American computer games and chess researcher and programmer. Dailey is author of various computer chess programs starting in the 80s. He played in Leiden with his latest program Komodo.



A newbie in Leiden was the Brazilian with the remarkable name Ben-Hur Carlos Vieira Langoni Junior. He debuted with his program RedQueen. He started working on his chess program just one year ago and promised to come back again! Hopefully he will score more than 0,5 point next time.



The next major computer chess tournament will be the ICGA 18th world computer chess championship in Kanazawa, Japan from September 24th till October 2nd. You can find more info on www.icga.org.

In November the Dutch Computer Chess Federation (CSVN) will celebrate its 30th anniversary of the Dutch Open Championship. The exact dates will be announced soon. Please check www.csvn.nl for information about the Dutch Open and the other activities of the CSVN. On the website you can also see many pictures of the ICT 10 tournament and you can download all the games (go to downloads-games-CSVN International Computerchess tournament).

On Saturday a side-event was played for owners of dedicated chess computers. Ruud Martin won this tournament with a Revelation Rebel 5.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank tournament director/webmaster Jan Krabbenbos and arbiter Rienk Doetjes for organizing another trouble-free tournament.

All Rybka games

Game viewer by ChessTempo


Game viewer by ChessTempo

Photos © Eric van Reem

Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN