HOWEVER, there were many crashes in the division and two engines - Arasan and Hannibal - were disqualified and automatically relegated to division 3. Their games were also ignored and as a result the final scores were: Fritz 13, Texel 11.5, Xiphos 11.5, ChessBrain 9.5, Nirvana 9, Vajolet2 5.5. Xiphos lost the tiebreak to Texel since it had a crash, but it also lost in the head-to-head tiebreak.
The crashes were the most significant feature of the division, unfortunately. There were 10 of these, Arasan had 4, Hannibal 3 and one each for Fritz, Xiphos and ChessBrain. There were 3 crashes in the first double round alone. The crashing engines of the first few rounds had their parameters changed to try to stop them from crashing again. This worked for about 30 games, and then Arasan crashed for the third time. If this wasn't enough in the 12th and 13th double rounds Hannibal crashed twice, causing it to be disqualified right at the end of the division.
The promotion race was very close, mainly between Xiphos, Fritz and Texel. It was hard to follow the action because of the crashes, the crosstable did not take Arasan's disqualification into account. Hannibal's disqualification changed everything in the last minute as well. Xiphos led the table at the halfway point and could have promoted for a third time this season - recall it started as a newcomer in division 4. In round 7 Fritz beat Xiphos and in round 10 Texel beat Xiphos. Then in round 11 Xiphos crashed, so it couldn't rely on tiebreaks to qualify. Entering the last round Fritz had a 0.5 point lead over Texel and Xiphos. Texel played against ChessBrain, and unexpectedly lost one game and got only one draw. Xiphos played Fritz in the last 2 games of the division, it needed at least a point to overtake Texel. However, Fritz beat Xiphos again, and in the last game Xiphos was ahead but could only get a draw.
DIvision 1 will start soon, Texel and Fritz will be joined by Fizbo, Ginkgo, Booot, Jonny, Gull and Laser. They will play 2 double RRs, same as division 2-4, but this time the time control will be 60+10 so games will be twice as long. I really hope we don't see as many crashes as in division 2, the engines should be stable at this level.
No comments:
Post a Comment