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Schoolbook. (Updated!) 8x10 chess with the rook + knight and bishop + knight pieces added. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, Sep 19, 2009 06:52 PM UTC:
OK, sounds good. Did you consider SMIRF? It can play under WinBoard with my Smirfoglot adapter, and I am pretty sure it should be able to do Schoolbook. In last years 10x8 tourney I held, SMIRF finished between Joker and TJ. But I think TJ has been much improved; I was playing 0.96 last year, and now we have 0.121.

The past day I have been playing Joker80.np vs TJchess10x8 0.121 at game/15 min in Schoolbook. That is, to make sure I got all different games, I started from the Schoolbook opening, and then 16 positions that had a (different) first move made by white. Each engine played each position with white and black, for 34 games in total. Joker80 beat TJchess10x8 by 22 vs 12. 

Most games were very exciting, lots of fireworks. (There were only 2 draws.) Interesting is that the engines differ very much in evaluation for most of the game, usually by 3-4 Pawns, so that they can each think they are 2 Pawns ahead! If you are interested: the PGN file can be downloaded at:

http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/Schoolbook.zip

From watching the games, it seemed to me that the Schoolbook opening array is a bit awkward; in many games the engines had grave difficulty developing the Queen. Often this was the decisive factor leading to their demise.