Prize giving ceremony

The champ and his trophy

It was an exciting final on Friday. Last year, Rybka easily won the final against the same opponent and a fourth game was not even necessary anymore. This year, Rybka won the first game as well, but as the Dutch say: “You have beaten the Germans only when they are sitting in the bus”. And the German program Shredder bounced back: Rybka terribly mishandled the position in game 2 which was determined by Rustam Kasimdzhanov and never had a chance in this game. The third game of the day ended in a draw. Rybka was a pawn up in a rook ending, but that was not enough to win the game. In the last game, the peculiar position 614 was created by Natalia Zhukova. Peculiar, because only the rook and knight on h1 and g1 traded places! And a strange game developed: Rybka sacrificed a pawn on the first (!) move, but could easily develop her pieces and soon the American program outplayed Shredder to win the title. Congratulations to Vasik Raijlich and his team! His team mates Jeroen Noomen and Hans van der Zijden came from Holland to support their boss.

Stefan Meyer-Kahlen

Chess960 Computer World Champion Vasik Raijlich

Raijlich was delighted and relieved after the last game: “This final was rather interesting and the games were really nice. But I have to check the last game thoroughly, because I think that the pawn sacrifice was not right”.

In the battle for 3rd place, Naum seemed to be safe after leading 2-0, but Deep Sjeng came back and won two games in a row: 2-2. The last game was dramatic, since Naum lost on time in a winning position. The graphical interface Arena Naumov was using is very buggy and unreliable and suddenly did not want to make any more moves. In the tiebreak with reduced time control (5-5) between the two Internet qualifiers no winner was found: 1-1. And even the last “armageddon game” ended in a draw, but since Deep Sjeng played with the black pieces, the program landed on third place.

Gian-Carlo Pascutto

Alexander Naumov

And finally, for the ones who want to know who created the positions today: Jens Beutel, Lord Mayor of Mainz, ex-Fide world-champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov, the top Russian GM Evgeny Bareev and finally Natalia Zhukova, who won the women´s competition in the FiNet this year.

Natalia Zhukova

Jens Beutel

Rustam Kasimdzhanov

Evgeny Bareev