Reflections on ZaTour Season 1

Today ZaTour season 1 wrapped up. Loki performed consistently and didn’t disappoint. With a great endgame skill, he easily held the first spot with 100.5 points out of 120 (+92 -11 =17). Most of the wins, came with very resilient endgame play. Many drawish and lost games turned into wins thanks to superb endgame skills.

Zahak came second, with only 94.5 points (+86 -17 =17). Zahak dropped many wins thank to shaky endgame play, especially against Loki, where he could win at least 3 out of the many losses he suffered against Loki. Zahak’s chances for stealing the first spot came very close when he was only 0.5 points behind Loki around round 50, only to perform a very bad next round and widen the gap with Loki again. Zahak also blundered a whole rook against Rustic, due to a transposition table bug, which I believe it is fixed now. For more info, please refer to this post.

Barbarossa, disappointed us with many badly played endgames too. Many times Barbarossa had winning endgames with evaluations around +2 and went on to lose them. This is something that needs to be addressed if Barbarossa ever wants to have a chance. Same applies to MinimalChess, thanks to its lack of transposition table his chances in endgames were super slim. Rustic, FairyMax and KingSlayer all performed as was expected from them.

Here is the standings after the last round:

 N Engine             Rtng   Pts  Gm      SB X   Elo Perf Lo                   Za                   Ba                   Ki                   Mi                   Ru                   Fa                  

 1 Loki3                 0 100.5 120 4862.25 0 +1296 83.8 ···················· 11=1==0=10==001=11=1 1=01101101=11011101= =11011111111=11111=1 111111111111111==111 11111111111111111111 11111=11110111111111
 2 zahak-dev             0  94.5 120 4395.25 0 +1104 78.8 00=0==1=01==110=00=0 ···················· 011101101=0=1=01110= 11111101111111101111 1=111=11111111111=1= 10111111=11111111111 11111111111111111111
 3 Barbarossa-0.6.0      0  84.5 120 3733.50 0  +784 70.4 0=10010010=00100010= 100010010=1=0=10001= ···················· 11110111=1101100111= 1111==1=11101=111110 11111111111111111=11 111111111111111111=1
 4 kingslayer            0  62.0 120 2218.00 0   +64 51.7 =00100000000=00000=0 00000010000000010000 00001000=0010011000= ···················· 111111==1110101111=1 111111111111==111=11 11=1111111111==11=1=
 5 MinimalChessEngine    0  39.0 120 1407.75 0  -672 32.5 000000000000000==000 0=000=00000000000=0= 0000==0=00010=000001 000000==0001010000=0 ···················· 11=11110011=0111101= 1=0111==10011111101=
 6 rustic-alpha-2        0  20.5 120  710.00 0 -1264 17.1 00000000000000000000 01000000=00000000000 00000000000000000=00 000000000000==000=00 00=00001100=1000010= ···················· =10=10111001011==0=1
 7 fairymax              0  19.0 120  756.25 0 -1312 15.8 00000=00001000000000 00000000000000000000 000000000000000000=0 00=0000000000==00=0= 0=1000==01100000010= =01=01000110100==1=0 ····················

The PGN of the games for the first season and its test runs can be downloaded here.

Season two will feature Lozza and Nalwald, both are UCI compliant engines, Lozza is written in JavaScript and Nalwald is written in Nim. Which I believe they will both compete Loki and Zahak for the first and second place. Season two will also feature ZuFi (ZaTour’s SuperFinal), which is a 100 game match between the two top engines. The time control will also be revised in season two, to be changed from 25m+2s to 25m+10s to allow for more quality games.

A bonus blitz tournament will be played right after season one, and it will feature the two new engines alongside the others.

See you all in ZaTour Season Two