Shredder is Chess960 World Champion

The Chess960 World Chamiponships for computers where played during the Chess Classic in Mainz this year. Chess960 is a variant of chess where the positions of the pieces are randomly chosen at the start of the game. Shredder was competing in the event and won his 11th computer chess world champion title. Shredder is now the most successful chess program of all times.

The Chess Classic is a chess festival with many tournaments and a few hundred chess players. As a tournament hall the Rheingoldhalle in Mainz is used, offering optimal conditions for all participants.

Via W-Lan every player had access to the Internet. This was necessary as most programs did not use the local machines but where running on fast computers operated remotely via Internet. Deep Shredder 10 UCI played on a Athlon X2 2.7 GHz located in Hamburg.

The competition with 20 participants from 8 countries was very strong. Shredder had an excellent start beating Herrmann, Xinix, Spike and Glaurung, but in the 5th round he has lost to Jonny, so after the first day Shredder was second, half a point behind Jonny. Against Ikarus, Deep Sjeng and Pharon Shredder could win again, so with one round to go Shredder was already world champion allowing a quick draw against Naum in the last round.

Shredder as the favourite won the tournament followed by Jonny and Ikarus and got a nice trophy for the title.

Trips to computer chess tournaments are usually not very good sightseeing tours, so only on the last days I got the opportunity to take a look at Mainz.

All Shredder games with Shredder’s evaluations and search depths during the game can be downloaded here.