Season 10 Live blogging, Friday Oct 27th

I have some time to look at the live games without the pressure of a game backlog waiting for my summaries. I thought I'd try to blog while watching, see how that goes.

Texel - Hakkapeliitta

move 39 - while waiting for the next game featuring Houdini I'm watching the end of the Texel game against Hakka (it's impossible to write that in full, sorry). It appears that Texel thought it was ahead but the evals are going down to zero.


move 42 - R vs N ending, Texel's eval not sure where to go. Will Texel beat Hakka in the endgame? Certainly enough pawns for it. Just needs more inaccuracies from black.

move 46 - Texel eval above 1, the a pawn advancing. Hakka is still confident it can draw.

move 48 - now at 1.6, pawns are going to come off soon. Hakka sees the danger finally. The moves are coming at a fast pace, hard to keep up.

move 50 - there go the a and b pawns, c pawn soon? White rook controls the black king, won't be able to help the queen side.

move 52 - Nf4 attacking the white pawns, some hope for a Hakka draw still?

move 55 - the white king is moving in the right direction. There goes the c pawn. Evals are constant, will Hakka hold?

move 60 - Texel's PV shows no movement. Now it changed again... Either pawns will get exchanged or we wait for 50-moves.

move 65 - Texel sees it has a problem, eval down to 0.58.

move 70 - Less than 40 moves now, moves coming every 15 seconds now, less than 20 minutes.

move 71 - long think from Hakka, crash? Just a fail low (I think) and eval dropped to 0.

move 76 - a pawn move, next pawn exchange, now only 2 for Hakka and one for Texel.

move 81 - Texel at 4.58 !!! Hakka blunder? Then it drops back, Texel eval bug...

move 90 - counter back at 40 but PVs show pawns going down soon, perhaps TB draw?

move 100 - Texel avoided taking a pawn since it sees it is a sure draw in its 6-man TB. Waiting for 50-moves again?

move 110 - Texel eval down to 0.12, then up again, counter at 35.

move 116 - Hakka blundered??? Both evals are winning for Texel? The king went the wrong way and now the white rook takes the h pawn... All over, what a disappointment for Hakka. Texel wins by keeping a small eval and waiting for a blunder.

I can't understand the programming, you have such advanced search algorithms and evaluation, how can it be that an engine scores a move at 0 and after the opponent reaction the next evaluation is 317? To me this is a serious bug, not a blunder.

Houdini - Booot

Booot needs a at least a draw to keep its qualifying chances, Houdini would love to win and get back to 3rd place.

The previous game was much longer than I anticipated, I won't have time to follow this game unless it's short.

move 12 - both engines have a habit of not showing a detailed PV, making it difficult to understand what's going on in their mind. Houdini's eval positive, hovering around 0.4.

move 15 - will we have three eval increases in a row? No, down to 0.54. Booot's pieces don't look well placed to me, Na6 bad, e7 blocks the queen and cannot move.

move 16 - a Houdini PV showing many exchages and opposite colored bishops, probably won't happen. Houdini's bishops and d5 pawn very strong. Long think for Houdini, has it found something? After four minutes eval goes back down to 0.53 and there goes the PV.

move 18 - Booot attacking d5, Houdini won't let the pawn be captured. Will the knight fo to b5 and d4? Houdini played b4, the d5 is free but perhaps not a good idea to take it?

move 20 - rooks exchanged and most of the queen side pawns, d5 is still unguarded. Why is Houdini taking so long to retake the rook, I don't see another option. An eval jump perhaps?

move 21 - minimal eval jump for Houdini, Booot didn't take d5 but its eval jumped to 0.44. The Booot PV also shows a drawish ending one pawn down, but no captures for a while so I don't trust the end of the PV. There goes d5 finally, Booot a pawn up, Houdini much more active.

move 23 - Houdini's eval back to 0.58, PV drawish again. I guess we wait for the blunder in this game as well.

Have to go... I'll come back to see how it ends.

OK, back again. As expected, Booot blundered. On move 30 it lost the a pawn, Booot had to stop the white a pawn, eventually Houdini won a piece.

That's all for today, it was fun.