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The Knightmate Challenge 2008

Another very interesting Chess variant is Knightmate. The only difference between this game and normal Chess is that the King moves as a Knight, and vice versa. Another way of saying this is that the players have a Royal Knight in stead of a King, (i.e. on e1/e8 in the opening array), which can be subject to check and checkmate, and may castle, while having two Commoners (moving as a FIDE Kings, but capturable like any other piece) in stead of Knights (i.e. starting on b1/b8 and g1/g8).

This game is subtly different from Chess, as the larger speed of the Royal Knight allows you to quickly move it to another shelter, or even have it participate in tactical raids by temporarily jumping over its Pawn shield. The Commoners are very interesting pieces as well, that can be very strong in combination with advancing passers, but very weak in other situations due to their low speed. From watching the games, I got the impression that good Commoner handling is crucial to being a strong Knightmate player.

Because there were so few engines, and their strength differed very much, the event was conducted as a time-odds tourney with 3 classes, where each higher class had to face 12-fold time odds per class when playing opponents of weaker classes. The first class contained only Joker KM, the second CCCP and Fairy-Max, the third Dabbaba and MSKCP. This means that Joker, when playing a 3rd class engine, had to play 40 moves in 5 second, where the opponent could do 40 move in 12 minutes. Twelve-fold time odds should correspond to a rating discount of approximately 250 Elo points.

Final Standings (uncorrected for time-odds handicap)

                              Joker MSKCP CCCP  Fairy Dabba 
 1. Joker KM / 144            ##### 00111 10111 =1110 01100 
                              ##### ==101 10==1 10111 01110   64%  25.5 (745.0, 487.5) 

 2. MSKCP                     11000 ##### 01001 =1001 1101= 
                              ==010 ##### 11001 11001 01111   55%  22.0 (780.0, 402.0) 

 3. CCCP - Knightmate / 12    01000 10110 ##### 01110 1101= 
                              01==0 00110 ##### 01010 11111   54%  21.5 (785.0, 380.0) 

 4. Fairy-Max 4.8v / 12       =0001 =0110 10001 ##### =1011 
                              01000 00110 10101 ##### =1111   50%  20.0 (800.0, 358.3) 

 5. Dabbaba                   10011 0010= 0010= =0100 ##### 
                              10001 10000 00000 =0000 #####   27%  11.0 (890.0, 254.8) 

Download zipped games

Estimated performance ratings:

2398 Joker KM            (H.G. Muller)
2078 CCCP - Knightmate   (Pawel Koziol / Tom Kerrigan)
2050 Fairy-Max           (H.G. Muller)
1835 MSKCP               (Marcel van Kervinck / Jim Ablett)
1639 Dabbaba             (Jens Baek Nielsen / Jim Ablett)