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Commentary & photos from 10th CSA, Tokyo 8-10th March 2000
Jeff Rollason
The article published with permission of author
Part VI: The Final, Rounds 1 to 7
2nd round clash as Kakinoki faces Hiroshi Yamashita's YSS.
Rounds 1 and 2
Well the first two rounds went badly for both of us. Shocky lost both of its games and Shotest lost its first from a clearly won position against Kakinoki and then having plundered Kawabata's defences allowed Kawabata to escape with an entering king. Fortunately for me Kawabata was in time trouble after over 200 moves and lost on time. Not a comfortable start. In both cases the demonstration boards showed our games as these were both East versus West contests, which the East won 3:1.
Shocky's early losses were better than they looked, as it had faced the very strong YSS and IS-Shogi. In the latter game it had performed very well and even reached a position where IS-Shogi saw that Shocky had a forced win. IS-Shogi manoeuved Shocky out of the win, but really this was an impressive result. IS-Shogi is very strong, but had not really looked stronger.
Also in second round the first shock occurred: KFEnd beat the world champion Kanazawa, despite running on hardware about half the speed. YSS and IS-Shogi came through with maximum points.
Round 3
Now Shotest faced Shocky, and my fears were realised! - as it beat Shotest, giving it little chance of coming back from a big disadvantage. It was unlucky for me, but Shocky had won a real game and deserved its win.
Kanazawa lost again, this time to Kakinoki, and again it looked as if Kanazawa's title was slipping away. The previous year saw something similar, but Kanazawa then pulled back to hold on and win.
Round 4
Shotest started badly by having hardware problems. The PC in use had crashed many times with no programs running and we came close to fortfeiting the round. A short spell turned off and a reduced size program (to avoid possible bad memory!) seemed to do the trick and it now defeated KFEnd by squeezing every last chance that KFEnd had of winning. This caused some amusement as the professional commentators remarked that no-one would buy this program as it gave absolutely nothing away, making the user feel that they had played badly!
YSS lost its first game, leaving it and IS-Shogi jointly holding first place with Shotest, Kanazawa, Kawabata and Kakinoki joint second. At this point KFEnd and Shocky already had essentially no chance of the title, unless they won all their remaining games and at least 4 programs tied for first place on 4 wins and 3 losses.
Rounds 5 and 6
This saw Kanazawa win both of its games to share joint first place in the table with 4 points, sharing with YSS, IS-Shogi and Kawabata. Shotest lost both its games and was out of the running. Now the four way tie meant that any of these top 4 programs could win.
Shotest's loss to Kanazawa took a long time to resolve with Shotest's evaluation seeing it ahead as late as move 120, before Kanazawa found a way to capitalise on a weakness, to go on and win on move 199. Shotest now trails 0:3 against Kanazawa at the CSA. Things are different against YSS but an early mistake meant that Shotest was always a little behind in this game, turning into a clearer disadvantage at move 57 and losing at move 167. This was Shotest's first loss to YSS at the CSA, leaving the head to head score at 3:1. There is a bit of friendly rivalry between us (see CSA99.HTM). I knew that Hiroshi's program would prevail sooner or later!
Round 7: The Last Round
The deciding game: Kanazawa vs YSS.
IS-Shogi beat Shotest but then had to wait for the long YSS - Kanazawa game to complete before it knew whether it was world champion. Kawabata had lost to KFEnd so was not in the running. If YSS won then IS-Shogi would be the world champion, otherwise Kanazawa would take the title on tie-breaking points. Finally YSS won and IS-Shogi became the new world champion, beating YSS by just 15 to 14 tie-breaking points!
Shotest's game against IS-Shogi gave a small evalutation advantage right up to move 53, but then a weakness was rapidly exploited by IS-Shogi and the game quickly ended after 95 moves.
Final Results:
Rank
(Seed) | Name | r1 | r2 | r3 | r4 | r5 | r6 | r7 | Win | Loss | SOLC | SB | MD |
| 1. (4.) | IS-Shogi | +6 | +8 | -3 | +2 | +5 | -4 | +7 | 5 | 2 | 23 | 15 | 8 |
| 2. (2.) | YSS 10 | +8 | +5 | +6 | -1 | -3 | +7 | +4 | 5 | 2 | 23 | 14 | 8 |
| 3. (5.) | Kawabata | -4 | -7 | +1 | +5 | +2 | +8 | -6 | 4 | 3 | 24 | 16 | 9 |
| 4. (1.) | Kanazawa | +3 | -6 | -5 | +8 | +7 | +1 | -2 | 4 | 3 | 24 | 13 | 6 |
| 5. (7.) | Kakinoki | +7 | -2 | +4 | -3 | -1 | +6 | +8 | 4 | 3 | 24 | 10 | 4 |
| 6. (6.) | KFEnd | -1 | +4 | -2 | -7 | -8 | -5 | +3 | 2 | 5 | 26 | 8 | 4 |
| 7. (3.) | Shotest4 | -5 | +3 | -8 | +6 | -4 | -2 | -1 | 2 | 5 | 26 | 6 | 0 |
| 8. (8.) | Shocky 3 | -2 | -1 | +7 | -4 | +6 | -3 | -5 | 2 | 5 | 26 | 4 | 2 |
The new world champion is again IS-Shogi. The former champion Kanazawa fell to its all time low of 4th place, having always come 1st or 2nd before. This could be attributed to a combination of bad luck and the author Kanazawa's ill health this year, which has meant that he has done little or no work. YSS's author Hiroshi Yamashita has claimed to have worked hard, and it is unimaginable that the IS-Shogi team did not also work very hard (previous years they could be seen working furiously at the venue on the day before the contest). These efforts paid off and YSS held its position and IS-Shogi re-took the title they lost last year.
Part VII: Conclusions
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