Season 12 superfinal, games 89-92

After 92 games Stockfish leads 25-8 with 59 draws. The draw rate continues to be low, now at 64.1%. Komodo finally gets a win, even though it was a biased opening.

Stockfish started game 45.1 with an eval over 1 that increased slowly. The center and queen side were blocked and the engines mostly shuffled for a while. The evals moved faster when Stockfish shifted its pieces to the king side and made a small hole in the pawn wall.




Stockfish doubled its rooks on the h file. Komodo gave a knight in an attempt to allow its pieces to get to the king side. Stockfish gave the knight back, creating a connected pair of passers on the queen side.




Stockfish had threats on both sides of the board and Komodo's defense collapsed. Stockfish broke through the king side and Komodo did not have enough defenders. The game was adjudicated before Stockfish won more material, its PV showed mate.

Evals stayed relatively low at the start of game 45.2. All the pieces and almost all pawns remained on the board, the engines moved without making contact. Evals started to increase slowly after the engines opened the a file and Komodo got a rook into the 7th rank.

For a while Komodo prepared its attack, evals increasing with all pieces still on the board. On move 46 there were a few exchanges, and on move 55 the engines exchanged queens. Evals were over 2.5 by then.

Komodo broke through the pawn wall with a bishop sacrifice. It got the piece back a few moves later, and the game reached a RN vs RN position with Komodo a pawn up.

Komodo pushed the c pawn forward, Stockfish tried to counter with its e pawn but Komodo simply blocked it with the king. Stockfish had to lose its knight for the white passer. Finally a win for Komodo, the last one was on game 56, also a biased opening like this one.

Komodo kept its king in the center uncastled in game 46.1. Stockfish had an eval advantage of around 0.8, the engines exchanged pieces until only RRN vs RRB remained on move 30. Komodo pushed pawns on the queen side until they reached the white pawns and locked together. The engines shuffled for a while, then opened the position with pawns exchanges. The game reached a double rook ending and a perpetual check draw. In the reverse game 46.2 Stockfish castled despite the semi open files on the king side, its eval was even negative for a short while. The engines started to shuffle on move 32, and 30 moves later opened the position with exchanges. Komodo's eval came down, it pushed its queen side passers and Stockfish gave a rook for a knight to stop it. The game ended in a drawn RRN vs RBN position.