Game 10/10

A few bad moves by both sides and the game ends with a draw.



The Four Knights, Spanish, Classical Defence was played until move 6.

Here is an example of the MCGP2024 making a bad move. This is the position after Maia had moved 11…Qh4

Black is in a good position with a strong King-side attack mounting and then the MCGP2024 played 12. Na4? Going after Black’s Bishop but 12. Qd2 would have been preferable. However, with the actual move played Black could have replied 12…Bg4 and White’s in danger of losing its Queen. However, the Maia bot did not ‘see’ the move 12…Bg4 and instead played 12…Bxh3? Play continued 13. Nxc5 dxc5 and the position is level:

The Maia had positioned its pieces well, with a strong King-side attack but threw it all away. It’s curious in away because in other games with such a mounting attack would relentlessly go in for the kill. I guess there are holes in its neuronal weights that the 6 ply search cannot help with.

The MCGP2024 can also make bad moves of course. Take the following position from the game:

Black had just moved 22…Nf4 and again it’s looking very dangerous for White. Here it played 23. Kh1?? Play could have continued 23…Qh4+ 24.Kg1 Qg3 25. Qxa7 Bh3 and White can do nothing about it! Alas, the 6 ply depth is not enough for the Maia bot to calculate this and the neuronal weights data doesn’t help!

There are quite a few mistakes and inaccuracies in this game and positions where Maia missed winning opportunities. Maybe the MCGP2024 was lucky in getting a draw!

So we have the final score of 6 – 4 to the MCGP2024.

The Wiki Elo list gives the MCGP2024 an active rating of 2339 so in this match that gives the Maia 1900 bot a rating of around 2269 which is not bad considering it was trained from human play rated at 1900 and only 6 ply search. I’m not sure how the depth searching affects the human-like play of Maia but I think it’s possibly wrong to call it Maia, maybe Hybrid Maia is more appropriate? I also wonder what depth setting is required to make Maia 1900 actually play at 1900? Maybe a future project.

Overall, it was an interesting match and highlighted what the Maia data can achieve with some look ahead. It also proved to me how good the MCGP2024 is and glad I own this little machine.

Ray