The first half of stage 2 will end tomorrow, and there are now three high profile games in a row: Houdini - Stockfish, Komodo - Houdini and Stockfish - Fire. I will only see the first live, the others are too late at night.
Houdini - Stockfish
Stockfish is a point behind Houdini in 3rd place, it needs wins. However I think that in this game it will be happy with a draw, Houdini is a very dangerous opponent and it has the white color advantage.
move 6: Following game 24, though as white Stockfish expected Bxf3 and as black it played Bh5. Stockfish thinks there's almost nothing for white. So far no PVs so we have no idea what to expect.
move 7: Houdini is taking a long time to play. OK, still following game 24. Stockfish's eval down to 0.05.
move 8: Houdini diverges with 0 - 0. Stockfish is looking for exchanges and opening the center, what will Houdini do?
move 9 : another long think for Houdini, it had no problem playing fast as black.
move 10: Houdini's eval is quite high over 0.4. First PV for white, looks very different compared to what black has in mind.
move 11: Stockfish has less developed pieces and needs to castle. Eval now at 0, I never believe Stockfish when it starts seeing repetition draws in the distant future.
move 13: Houdini exchanges bishops, following Stockfish's PV. Still a significant eval divergence, white's king looks exposed, black still hasn't castled.
move 15: Stockfish develops the bishop, it's attacking the center and looking at the white king. Houdini's eval is dropping.
move 17: black finally castles. The black queen controls a long diagonal but is hiding at b8. This looks like a position where both engines would like to not move. Shuffling ahead?
move 20: the remaining bishops are looking at each other, could be exchanged off any move now. Will we see negative evals in this game? Seems unlikely.
move 22: Houdini's Qb5 was unexpected. Houdini lowers eval to 0.05, how will Stockfish respond? Nothing exciting, still eval at 0.
move 24: there go the bishops. Houdini's eval negative?? only -0.06 but still a surprise. Also a long PV from Houdini. Stockfish stays constant on 0.
move 26: Stockfish thought hard sbout this move, but stayed on its PV without moving the eval. It is still seeing a repetition draw.
move 29: there have been no knight moves for a while now. They are like the glue that holds the position together. Houdini's eval drops to -0.19 for no apparent reason.
move 32: will Stockfish go for the repetition in its PV? It is thinking hard, trying to find a better way to continue. Didn't find anything, now will Houdini play along?
move 34: Houdini makes different moves but there is still a repetition offer.
move 36: Houdini will not repeat, now exchanges pawns on the queen side, and Stockfish's eval goes slightly negative for the first time.
move 39: long PV agreement, seems that there is going to be a simplification soon.
move 52: The end of all the exchanges is a drawn N vs R ending, we'll either see a draw rule or a tablebase draw very soon.
move 60: tablebase draw. The maximum Stockfish got was a few moves with negative eval. Both engines were safe throughout the game, Stockfish will have to get wins elsewhere. The next game against Fire is a good place to start.
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