Season 10 live blogging, Thursday Nov 9th

Houdini - Komodo

This is round 7 of stage 2, Houdini leads the table with 3 wins, Komodo second with 2 wins.

move 8: Houdini is taking its time with the first move out of book. It is still tired after the last game against Stockfish. Over 5 minutes and we have a move, eval very low. Komodo answers almost immediately and with small negative eval, interesting.

move 9: Houdini immediately exchanges knights, and Komodo's queen is moving. Komodo's PV shows an early endgame is possible.

move 12: still following the previous Komodo PV, evals close to 0.

move 17: still the same PV, only RRB vs RRB remaining. Hard to see any outcome but a quick draw at this early stage.

move 24: Houdini still thinks it has a small edge. With so many pawns on the board it is hard for the pieces to move around, I think we'll see a lot of shuffling now. I hope Houdini lowers its eval so we can go home early.

move 31: shuffling in progress, Houdini could try to attack on the king side but Komodo is prepared.

move 35: Houdini's eval jumped a little, a change after more than 10 moves. Still not a lot seems to be differrent on the board. Now back to the previous 0.17.

move 37: now some exchanges, a pair of rooks and pawns on the king side, probably no change in eval. Perhaps Houdini will release us?

move 40: Houdini threatened mate, Komodo saw it though. Now the rooks are gone and we're left with opposite color bishops. Houdini still thinks it is ahead, long game ahead.

move 66: still nothing happening. Houdini is on increments and 30 moves left on the 50 move counter, though more exchanges are possible.

move 72: could it be?? Houdini lowered it eval and a draw adjudication is near.

move 80: finally over, really boring game. Houdini and Komodo are first and second at the end of the first RR.