Israel’s Deep Junior still the king at World Computer Chess Championship
This is Junior’s eighth world champion title.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFcomputerized chess match 370(photo credit: International Computer Games Association)
Deep Junior, a program written by Israelis Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, won the World Computer Chess Championship on Sunday.This was the 20th world championship since the event was initiated in Stockholm in 1974.This was Junior’s eighth world champion title. It first won at Maastricht in 2002, and then at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan in 2004, Turin 2006, Pamplona 2009 and Tilburg 2011.Deep Junior, assisted by Grandmaster Alon Greenfeld, ran on a Dual 12 core Intel Xenon I5 2.7 GHz computer sponsored by Intel.Five other programs took part in the tournament, among them two former world title holders: Shredder from Germany and Hiarcs from England.It was held in a double round robin format – all programs played each other twice, once with the white pieces and once with the black ones.Deep Junior started the tournament in a storm, winning its first four games.Its only loss came in round 5, with a defeat by Jonny from Germany, a strong program running on a massive 2400 core system.The second half of the tournament saw a close race between Deep Junior and Jonny, which climaxed in the 10th and final round, with Deep Junior holding a halfpoint lead over Jonny.Jonny needed a win to become champion and pressed hard, gaining two dangerous connected passing pawns.
But Deep Junior found extraordinary defensive resources by sacrificing one its knights for the pawns, and the game eventually ended in a draw after 89 moves.
