Portrait of Alvin Alcala

From a Chess Piece on Freestyle Chess by Bobby Ang, posted in:

April 24, 2014 - Manila

"...Now, the BW reader might ask, why would we be interested in an event where people with computers grind away at each other for 100+ moves hoping for a mouseslip?

The reason why we should be interested is that the second-placer, Maximus, is a Filipino by the name of Alvin Alcala who all by himself competed against powerhouse computer teams and hardware clusters from the USA, Germany, Russia, etc.

The top-placer Intagrand, for example, is an entire team made up of Anson Williams, David Evans (former Freestyle champion), Nelson Hernandez (Top bookmaker and database collector) and Yingheng Chen (the only existing active female Freestyler in the world).

Our hero Alvin used server grade computers 16 cores Intel Xeon, 24 cores AMD Opteron and desktop grade AMD computers 8 cores and 6 cores rented on remote. The engine of his choice is Houdini 4, Komodo TCEC (TCEC means this is the version which competed and won the 5th season of the Thoresen Chess Engines Competition, or TCEC) and the latest stable development version of Stockfish.

 

First, who is Alvin Alcala?

Alvin Alcala has three kids named after chess greats. Eldest is 11 years old Emmanuel Augustine, 10 years old Sofia Angelique and youngest eight years old Mikhail Gabriel all of them getting chess coaching to improve their thought process and improve their thinking systems. His wife Jessie is a public school computer teacher in Negros Oriental.

Alvin studied at Mapua Institute of Technology and earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He was member of MIT chess team and played in NCAA and Glutaphos Inter-collegiate chess championships from between 1993-1997. All my team members are now professionals in their respective field all of them working overseas. Israel Yadao works in Australia, Arjoe Loanzon in the USA, Richard Roxas in Saudi Arabia and Nomer Torrijos works as a Seaman.

They were a pretty tough squad at that time -- from 1993-1995 the MIT team became a three-peat champion of the NCAA and in 1994 NCR leg champion of Glutaphos Inter-collegiate chess championship.

After graduation the chess sets had to be temporarily set aside in order to earn a living. Alvin worked at coal mining and oil & gas industries in Philippines for 8 years and it was in 2006 that he decided to work overseas as Quality and HSE Manager in the market leader for providing Cathodic Protection System in the Middle East Abdulla Fouad Impalloy Co. He has been at it for 8 years now and this was what started his online chess interest as there were no available chess clubs in his area.

How did he start into online chess?

He got hooked on computer chess in 2010 and started building his chess resources by creating his own ctg book. This is a tree of analysis similar to what GM Alexander Kotov described in Think like a GrandmasterF where each move is a branch and the possible replies to each move is a sub-branch. Theoretically, if you make a special tree for each opening you would be prepared for any opening your opponent plays. Emphasis on “theoretically.”

Anyway Alvin also started building a huge database collection of human games, correspondence chess games, computer engine games and freestyle chess games. He purchased two desktop PC’s to help him tune his ctg book and most of the time test the quality of his tuning by playing computer engine and book tournaments in the Playchess server (the playing server of Chessbase).

You know what one weakness is of computers playing chess? Their predictability. In round 5 Takker beat Akhtar’s French Defence by dominating with his dark-squared bishop. Akhtar is an automatically playing engine, so Alvin prepared accordingly.

* * *

maximus (ct) (2617) -- akhtar (2493) [C02]
Long 90’ + 15’’, Rated, InfinityChess F, 27.02.2014
[Alvin Alcala]

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5!

The move 3. Nc3 is also part of my repertoire but e5 gives more chances to win as engines do not normally understand how to play such structures.

3...c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.a3 f6 7.Bd3 fxe5 8.dxe5 c4 9.Bc2 g6 10.0-0 Bg7 11.Nbd2 Nge7

Taking the pawn with 11...Nxe5 12.Nxe5 Bxe5 is too dangerous. After 13.Nf3 Bf6! (to prevent Ng5 in some variations) 14.Ba4+ Kf7 15.Be3 Qd6 (Black’s queen would be in serious danger after 15...Qxb2? 16.Bd4 if, for example, 16...b5 then 17.Ne5+ Bxe5 (17...Kg7 18.Bc2 Ne7 19.Qd2 followed by Rfb1) 18.Bxe5 bxa4 19.Bxh8 Qb7 20.Qf3+ Ke8 21.Rfe1 the position is resignable) 16.Qd2 White has full compensation for the pawn.

12.Qe2 0-0 13.b3 Qc7 14.Re1 b5 15.Bb2

This was a key move of the Takker-akhtar game.

15...Na5

Black deviated from Takker vs Akhtar, but I still managed to use the same strategic play from that game.

16.bxc4 bxc4 17.a4! Nac6

I don’t want black to get opportunity of getting space on the queenside via Qa5 so decided to sac a pawn.

18.a5! Nxa5

After this capture Black started to get trouble of coordinating his pieces while I keep improving my pieces like a coiled spring.

19.Ba3 Nac6 20.Bd6! Qd8 21.h4 a5 22.Nf1 h6 23.Ng3 Rf7 24.Qe3

White gradually improves his position. His plan now is to make a break on the kingside via pawn attack h5, f4 and g4.

24...Qe8 25.h5 Nf5 26.Nxf5 gxf5 27.Qf4 Bf8 28.Reb1 Bd7 29.Nh4

A manuever to place the knight to f4 square via g2.

29...Ne7 30.Bd1 a4 31.Qe3 Rg7 32.g3 Rf7 33.Ra2 Bc6 34.Ng2 Bg7 35.Nf4 Nc8 36.Bc5 Na7

Black is totally clueless on my plan.

37.Bc2

Now that the knight is protecting h5 it’s time to improve bishop position for the g4 break.

37...Nc8 38.Kh2 Qd7 39.Ng6 Ra5 40.Qd4 Qc7 41.f4 Be8 42.Bb4 Ra6 43.Qg1 Qb6 44.Bc5 Qa5

Everything is now ready for the breakthrough.

45.g4! fxg4 46.Bd4 Qd8 47.Qxg4 Na7 48.Rg1 Nb5 49.Bc5 d4

[49...Nxc3 cannot be played because of 50.Rb2 Nb5 and now the e8-bishop is overloaded and cannot come to the defense of the e6 pawn after 51.Nf8! a3 52.Rxb5 Bxb5 53.Qg6! wins]

50.Rxa4 Rxa4 51.Bxa4 Nc7

52.Nh8! Re7

[52...Kxh8 53.Bf8!]

53.Bxe7 Qxe7 54.Ng6 Bxg6 55.Qxg6 d3 56.Rb1 Qf8 57.Kg3 Kh8 58.Bc6

With the idea of Be4.

58...Nd5 59.Bxd5 exd5 60.Qc6 Qg8 61.Kf3 d2 62.e6 Qd8 63.Qd7 Bf6 64.Qxd8+ Bxd8 65.Rg1!

The king is trapped in the corner. Now white will simply harvest the black pawns.

65...d4 66.cxd4 Kh7 67.Ke2 c3 68.Kd1 c2+ 69.Kxc2 d1Q+ 70.Kxd1 Bh4 71.d5 Be7 72.Ke2 Kh8 73.Kf3 Kh7 74.Rg6 Ba3 75.Ke4 Bb4 76.f5 Ba3 77.f6 Kh8 78.Kf5 Bb4 79.Rxh6+ Kg8 80.Kg6 Ba3 81.Rh7 Bc5 82.h6 Ba3 83.Rd7 Bb4 84.Rd8+ Bf8 85.e7 Kh8 86.Rxf8# 1-0

Man + Machine will still beat Machine anytime. This may change in the future, but not yet.

 

Source: http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=Sports&title=Freestyle-chess&id=86488