Following steps walk-through (from my perspective) how I setup a local debug VM (running Windows 7 HP version) and setup WinDBG in the host OS to connect and debug drivers in the VM

• Created a Windows VM in the VMWare Workstation 7.1. Installed Windows 7 HP. VMWare has this cool feature “Easy Install”. All I had to provide was a username and serial number for my Windows. Everything installed with out any further input from me.
• Power off the VM.
• Edit the VM settings. Add a new SERIAL port. Make sure it is connected to a named pipe as shown below.

Notice that “Yield CPU on poll” should be checked. The options below the “Use named pipe” should also be set as shown in the image above.

• Open WinDBG in the host (machine running the VMWare VM). Press CTRL-K to open Kernel Debugging options. Configure it as shown below. Do not PRESS OK yet.

• Power on the VM now. Once it crosses the POST, press OK in the WinDBG dialog box above.
• If everything goes well, you should see WinDBG happily connecting and showing info from target OS (as shown below).

I created a VM snapshot immediately after I made the the initial connection to the VM via WinDBG. This is my golden snapshot and I can anytime revert to this point, if at all anything gets corrupted inside the VM.

This approach is effective even during the product development, when the dev team has to repro/fix validation reported issues. It makes more sense to set up a policy inside the engineering team where the validation team has to attach this end-user snapshot to each bug entry. All of a sudden, now the developer is given a window in to the exact system where the issue was seen.

Once a developer has this data, IMO, several debug possibilities open up. For ex., in our team we have a script that quickly parses the snapshot to weed out common error conditions (conditions like “not the proper GFX driver”, “Not in AERO mode”,”Wrong combination of our module with another module”…). This is effectively L0/L1 debug. Believe me, this saves a lot of time for us daily. My team doesn’t go through the pain of looking in to some issue only to realize the issue was a stupid user error anymore. Instead they get to spend that time on doing what they are supposed to do – pure, joyous development!

We can still improve on the above technique — Make this “script” in to a full blown rule engine. This engine will read from a rule base containing user-editable rules, apply them on the user machine data and produce the result.

The “rules” I am talking about here can be your L0/L1 conditions, like “read the version of our module; check if this module version is compatible with this OS KB version;” or “check the available RAM when this issue was seen; if it is less than the defined threshold flag it”

Several advantages to this approach:

• Time saver: A “bot” does the sanity checking (L0/L1) automatically. You can use your star people for doing the stuff they do well instead of this mundane task.
• Knowledge base for debug methods: A single repository of rule base is built. This is excellent, in the sense it captures the localized/tribal knowledge from across the team in a single place.
• Cutting-edge debug knowledge: Rule base is more of a “live” entity, meaning, by allowing the team members to update/add rules, rule base keeps growing and always reflects the latest best known methods.
• Free training to the new-comers: Ask them to simply go through the rules
• Make management & your team happy: Automating repetitive/tedious jobs is always good. Mainly, this saves the people from burning out and enable them do stuff that can produce more results. Which management wouldn’t like a team producing more with less, eh?

How to produce the snapshot?

One effective and easy way to collect machine snapshot is by querying WMI. This provides plethora (bordering insanity!) of categories and parameters. Not all produce values all the time though. One caveat: WMI can be extremely slow!

I have attached a small program written in C#2 with this (find the binary & source at the end of this post), for dumping many system parameters from WMI DB.

When you open FDC.exe, following main window pops up.

If you are wondering why clicking on the X button minimizes instead of exiting, it is by design. Exit option is tucked away in the RIGHT-click menu of the systray icon.

Clicking COLLECT (or “Capture Snapshot” via systray icon menu) will instruct the app to enumerate the values from the defined WMI objects (defined in the source code).

Output generated by the tool is in XML format.

You will find the list of objects that need to be queried & dumped in DataCollectionSet.cs. Please be careful when you collect info from the end-user machine. Always keep the privacy part in mind.

In a later post I will discuss some ideas on the rule engine & implementation strategy.

Download the binary:

Download the source:

Its been a long time since I posted movies that are available online, though I keep watching them in dozens, just that my laziness has been on a peak for quite sometime now, preventing me from making a note of all these URLs & posting them.

Here’s a list of some of the East-Asian martial arts films I like (or used to like) a lot with their full videos available online.

1. Wheels on Meals
2. Fantasy Missions Force
3. Big Boss
4. Fearless Hyena
5. 36 Crazy Fists

Wheels on Meals

Thomas (Jackie Chan) and David (Yuen Biao) are cousins who run a fast food van in Barcelona. The food is delivered by Thomas, who rushes around the square on a skateboard. After fending off a biker gang they continue business as normal.

They go and visit David’s father who is in a mental institution and bump into Sylvia who is the daughter of David’s father’s girl friend. Thomas encourages David to try to ask her out on a date and chickens out of this making the excuse she would have said no anyway.

Cut to the van serving food late at night where Thomas inadvertently bumps into Sylvia who is pretending to be a prostitute. Sylvia (Lola Forner) robs a man in a bed room and runs away to their fast food van.

They figure out that Silvia is a pickpocket. She exploits David’s infatuation with her by asking to hide her in their van to avoid the police.

Both Thomas and David are enamored by her. But after allowing her to stay in their apartment that night, they wake to find Sylvia and their money gone. The next day, they bump into Moby (Sammo Hung), a bumbling private investigator who is also tracking Sylvia. It is discovered that Sylvia is the heir to a sizeable inheritance that a criminal gang is trying to steal from her. When she is kidnapped, Thomas, David, and Moby team up to save her, infiltrating the villains’ castle and defeating them in a martial arts battle.

Fantasy Mission Force

Nominally set during World War II, the film begins with a Japanese attack on an Allied military camp, which a map reveals to be somewhere in Canada. After four Allied Generals, including one who introduces himself as Abraham Lincoln, are taken hostage by the Japanese troops, Lieutenant Don Wen (Jimmy Wang Yu) is called in to organize a rescue effort (rejected candidates for the job include Roger Moore’s James Bond, Snake Plissken, Rocky Balboa and Karl Maka from the Hong Kong film Aces Go Places).

With promises of a huge reward, Don Wen rounds up a group of misfits for the job, which includes two kilt-wearing soldiers, a hobo (Old Sun), a supposed escape artist (Greased Lightning), con artist Billy, and the femme fatale Lily (Brigitte Lin), who sports knee-high red leather boots and a bazooka. En route to the Japanese base where the kidnapped Generals are being held (apparently located in Luxembourg according to the film), the group encounters two small time crooks, Sammy and Emily (Jackie Chan and Ling Chang), who follow them in hope that they will lead them to a cache of money.
As they continue on, Don Wen is seemingly killed in a surprise ambush by spear-wielding tribesmen, and soon the group is captured by a tribe of cannibalistic Amazons led by an effeminate man in a tuxedo. After obliterating the Amazon tribe the group spends the night in a haunted house full of hopping vampires (a traditional Chinese supernatural creature) before reaching their goal.

Once there they find the Generals held hostage gone and the base littered with the dead bodies of Japanese soldiers. Before the group can figure out what has happened they are attacked by sword and axe-brandishing Japanese Nazis riding in 1970s-era muscle cars (it is of note that the highly anachronistic cars are also painted with swastikas and Luftwaffe-style crosses).
Here the plot takes a turn for the melodramatic as the group is wiped out one by one by a machine gun (that clearly does not have an ammunition belt installed), with another killed by a sword in the buttocks. In the end, with only Sammy and Emily left standing, Don Wen arrives and explains that he planned the whole thing from the beginning so that his rescue team and the Japanese soldiers would kill each other off, leaving him alone to collect the reward. Aiming to silence the last witnesses, Don Wen shoots Emily and Sammy is forced to fight him one-on-one.

After a long martial arts fight scene Don Wen is defeated as Sammy detonates explosives hidden in the main building, obliterating it. The Generals soon show up and demand to know why they weren’t rescued earlier, but all Sammy does is dismiss them with the line “I don’t know any Generals. To me you look like clowns.”

The film ends with a wounded Sammy and Emily driving off together in a jeep, the Generals chasing after them

Big Boss (Bruce Lee)

Cheng is a Chinese man from Guangdong who has moved to Thailand, with the help of his uncle, to find a job working with his cousins in an ice factory. When a block of ice is accidentally broken, something that looks like a bag of white powder comes out. Later that night, the two cousins who discovered the heroin are asked to stay to see the manager. They are told that there are better jobs for them. Apparently, the factory is a front for a drug smuggling ring led by the Big Boss, Hsiao Mi. The cousins are offered good positions. When they decline, they are swiftly eliminated.
Hsiao Mi attempts to cover up the murders, but Cheng and his surviving cousins become suspicious. Two more of his cousins, Hsu Chien and Ah Pei, go to Mi’s house to ask if he knows what happened to them. When they realize he is acting suspicious and start toward the police station, Mi also has them killed (but not before Hsu takes several of Mi’s men down with him). Hsiao Mi then distracts Cheng by promoting him to foreman and providing him with alcohol and prostitutes (turning some of his cousins against him). However, out of affection, one of the prostitutes reveals the truth to Cheng, who then breaks into the factory at night and discovers, his cousins’ corpses. Cheng’s snooping around is immediately discovered by a gang led by Hsiao Mi’s son, Hsiao Chiun.
Cheng defeats the gang and kills many, including Hsiao Chiun. Unfortunately he returns home only to find that his entire family has been murdered. Cheng exacts revenge by killing Hsiao Mi in the final fight, by stabbing him with Hsiao’s knife. Cheng then surrenders to the police.

Fearless Hyena

Shing Lung (Jackie Chan) is a youngster, living in a remote village with his grandfather, kung fu master Chen Peng-fei (James Tien). Lung does not take his training seriously enough, he gambles, and he gets into fights which lead him to display the skills his grandfather has told him he must keep secret.
Lung briefly finds employment selling coffins, working for an unscrupulous proprietor (Dean Shek), who even stoops to selling second-hand coffins. Lung is fired when he accidentally traps his boss in one of the coffins. After making his escape, he runs into three thugs he’d beaten up earlier, who ask him to teach them kung fu. Lung meets their sifu, Ti Cha (Lee Kwan), the unskilled leader of the Everything Clan. Master Ti offers Lung a lucrative job training his students and fighting against the top fighters from rival schools. This boosts the reputation of the school and of the scheming Master Ti. However, Lung makes the mistake of naming the school under the Sien Yi clan name. This comes to the attention of evil kung fu master Yen Ting Hua (Yam Sai-kwoon), who finds and kills Lung’s grandfather. But, Lung eventually takes revenge for his grandfather’s murder after undergoing rigorous training from The Unicorn (Chan Wai-Lau).

36 Crazy Fists

Directed and choreographed by the legendary Jackie Chan, This martial arts classic is a tale of revenge, respect, and the long, hard path to kung fu mastery.

** NOTE ** Jackie doesn’t come at all, he just choreographed the stunts.

Yesterday my site was down as the backend (mysql) had some some issues. I pinged the tech support after waiting for one hour. The tech support guy confirmed that it was a known issue and already a team of guys were on it. I was surprised. If they had known that already, why didn’t they send out a notification to that effect?

Tech support guy helpfully (!?) told me “Since this affected only a small bunch of domains, we didn’t send out the notification, else we would have sent out that”. Even if it is a single domain that is affected, shouldn’t they be sending out a mail notifying this?

Today morning I tested my site again, it was up.

“Finally!”, I thought.

“Wait….something is amiss, where is my latest post English Movies 4?”. It is gone! *angry*

They must have restored an old DB backup, which means my latest post was not yet in that backup set In fact, I don’t have a backup of that post myself. I am royally pissed!!

I wanted to actually name it “The stare”, but just settled on Garry Kasparov, as it is easier to find. You can get it from here. This is how Firefox looks with this theme applied.

Chime in with your opinions on how much it sucks

I love LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0 (though I am still not allowed to own one – my home minister hasn’t approved yet ). The possibilities it opens up are endless; Really a good way to satisfy your creative part.

I own couple of books on NXT (I know…buying the books before the actual NXT pack is kinda stupid, but hey at least I can plan for what I’d do from now itself), and have seen lots of wacky designs done using NXT parts, but still got blown away when I first saw what Steve Hassenplug did with them.

He created a monster chess board with the pieces’ movements controlled via a touch PC. The piece is moved in a GUI in the PC by the user, then the PC calculates the optimal path for the piece to reach from its source square to destination square in the monster board, also deciding what all pieces need to move and make way for the piece moved by the user and then the command (or set of commands) gets relayed to the board. Captured pieces go out of the board, neatly lining up at the outer edge squares. This board even has support for queening process (pawn reaching the last rank). Pretty neat stuff! Watch the following videos to see what I mean.

Steve showcased this in Brickworld 2010. I wish I was there to see this!

BTW, here is a quick list of facts on the whole system.

• Over 100,000 LEGO® pieces
  • 37,612 in the chess board
  • 17,748 in the robot bases
  • 17,114 in the bodies
  • 22,688 in the mosaics
  • 1,853 in the move selection center
• Total retail cost: around $30,000
• Size of board: 156ft2 (14.5m2)
• Took 4 people about a year to create
• Opponent types
  • Human vs Human
  • Human vs Computer
  • Computer vs Computer
• Play options
  • Normal chess game
  • Chess puzzle
  • Replay historical match
• Programming languages used
  • LabVIEW for the robots
  • C# for the PC user interface
  • Interfaces with standard chess engine

Pretty inspired now to go out get the pack and do some stuff!!

Chessbase is undoubtedly one of the most useful and most prevalent DB software in the Chess community. What with its siblings like CB Light 2009/Premium, everybody has had a chance to dabble with it one point of the time or other.

My interest on Chess started in 2002 (relatively recent). At that point of time CB8 was the king. CA was a distant competitor, with its own set of (cult?) followers. Interesting stories like how Frederick demoed the first CB to Kasparov are abound in the net. Have you ever wondered how CB1 looked? Where the heck can we get hold of this binary now? Even if we get it, will it be compatible with the Windows Vistas and 7s? Don’t worry, you can not only obtain a legal copy of Chessbase 3, but actually can try that out too.

With permission from Chessbase, Gambitchess.com still hosts this binary (& more). Direct download link: ChessBase 3.

There are many other abandonware there, including Fritz1/2.x/Chess Genius/CM2000 and many more. I strongly suggest to explore the wonderful Gambitchess.com site.

These binaries won’t run directly in the latest versions of Windows (I run Win7, YMMV). I used DosBox for solving this issue.

When I started CB3, I was shown this intro screen.

It has support for graphics (with its own set of control codes) too!

The main interface is actually very well laid out. I was able to easily open the accompanying DB and play though a game. Look at the image below. Using a program option, I even made it look colorful. I am actually surprised CB3 can render its board/pieces so well, I’d have been bowled over if I had seen this back in late 80s, heck even now I like it! Wonderful job by the CB guys (I think the current CEO was the main programmer behind this, back then)

You click on DOS > Exit and this is what is throws up. Pretty neat, eh?

I have to say, Chessbase even in v3.0 is a very useful and feature-packed SW.

Next I ran Fritz1. Following image shows the program screen. It is not as colorful as CB3, but hey, it is running on top of good-old DOS.

By default the engine is in 2secs/move mode. I am planning to setup a small match against Firebird to see how easily Firebird can defeat this guy – the games should be good for learning (how to spot / exploit mistakes). Will publish the games if I find anything interesting.

Following is the game position we reached after 9 moves. Till this point I made so many sub optimal moves (a.k.a weak moves ), I was pleasantly surprised when I won the game. Time to put together at least a basic opening repertoire, methinks!

[FEN "r1bqk2r/pppp1pp1/7p/3Nb3/2B1n3/2P5/PP3PPP/R1BQK2R w KQkq - 0 10"]

The game continued:

10. Qg4 Attacking both Ne4 and g7. May be Qe2 is better, but I didn’t even think of Qe2 during the play.

10…Nf6 11. Qxg7 Rg8??

I was expecting 11… Nxd5 12. Qxe5+ Qe7 13.Qxe7+ Nxe7 which I thought was ok for me. What my opponent played is a blunder and loses immediately!

12. Nxf6+!

Taking advantage of the fact Nf6 is the only protector of Rg8.

12…Qxf6 13. Qxg8+

Free piece. Thank you

13…Ke7 14. O-O

I am not sure whether this is the best move here, may be there is an easy win.

14…Bd4?? Mouse slip? 15. cxd4 Qxd4 16. Qxf7+

Rest of the moves are pretty straightforward. Black king takes a fatal march.

16…Kd6 17. Bf4+ Kc6 18. Rac1 Qh8

19. Bd3+ Kb6 20. Be3+ Ka5

Look how Black king has run out of safe squares.

21. Qh5+ Qd5+ should also work. 21…Kb4 22. Qb5#  Rc4++ is also mate. 1-0

Final position:

One thing I observed is the absence of “+” in the notation window to mark “checks”. Look at the image below (highlighted yellow). Rc1+ was just played and there is no “+” in the notation window….aahhh!

Luckily, I soon found the option to bring back the “+”.

• Click on “Rybka button” (the one with fish picture on it).
• Go to Options > Display Options.

Selecting option 1 (above picture) will bring the beloved “+” back. I usually have options 2 and 3 selected too.

Methinks DeepAquarium should come with this option enabled by default.

[FEN "5rk1/8/2p1r1p1/3p1n2/R1qP3P/4P2P/1R3P2/3QB1K1 b - - 0 1"]

My Notes:

Let us try breaking down the position:

• White is materially up (2 pawns). Does this matter with queens on board? Nah!
• Both the white rooks are placed excellently, controlling the open files.
• Rf8, in the absence of Nf5 will be interesting,though it is kinda difficult for Black to reach the somewhat exposed White king. Nf5 unfortunately has no proper square to go to. Hmm…not entirely true, if White king is in f1, Nf5 has a cute fork in e3!
• Black queen is being attacked by Ra4. Wait….Queen has no retreating squares. It is trapped!

With these data, we can see that bringing King in to the fork is the best way.

Solution: 1…Qf1+! 2.Kxf1 Nxe3+ 3.Ke2 Nc4+ 4.Kf1 Ne3+ = 1/2:1/2

Black found a cute way to save 1/2 a point. If you saw this line, you are great (I didn’t, to be honest!). But, did you see all the sub variations too? I saw them only when I tried playing this position against Rybka2.2.

1…Qf1+!

Only move to save the game.  1…Nxe3?? This move loses immediately to 2.fxe3 Qf1+ 3.Kh2 Rxe3 With the threat of Qxh3+ followed by Rf1# But White can calmly play 4.Qg4! +- Black has no more threats 

2.Kxf1

Is White forced to take the queen? Yes. Let’s see what happens if he refuses the sacrifice. 2.Kh2?? Nxh4! 3.f4 ( 3.f3 also leads to same ideas Nxf3+ 4.Kg3 Ng1 5.Qg4 Rxe3+ 6.Kh2 (6.Kh4 Qf6+ 7.Qg5 Rxh3+ 8.Kg4 Qf3#) 6…Rxh3+ 7.Qxh3 Qxh3+ 8.Kxg1 Rf1#) 3…Rxe3 4.Bg3 Qxd1 5.Bxh4 Qf3 (5…Qd3 Also leads to a mate in 9 (!?). Rybka showed me how. Can you find it? ) 6.Rg2 Qxh3+ 7.Kg1 Qxh4 8.Ra1 Rxf4 9.Ra8+ Kf7 ( 9…Kh7 10.Ra7+ ( 10.Rh2 Re1+ 11.Kg2 Rf2# ) 10…Kh6 -+ White has no more tricks ))

2…Nxe3+ 3.Ke2 Nc4+ 4.Kf1

( 4.Kd3?? White won’t get the draw anymore 4…Nxb2+ 5.Kd2 Nxd1 6.Kxd1 Re4 Attacking d4 and h4, indirectly forcing the rook to be in the same rank 7.Rb4 Rff4 8.Rb8+ Kf7 9.Bc3 Replacing the rook in guard duty 9…Rf3 10.Bb2 Rxf2 –+ )

4…Ne3+ = Perpetual

Installation took around 45 minutes in my Windows XP SP3/3GB/C2Duo system. The worst part I hated was when the installer asked me to reboot 3 times (once after .NET runtime got installed, the next after Windows Installer 4.5 got installed and one more reboot I don’t remember now for what). Usually I start off these time-consuming installations in the background and do my other stuff (usually E-Mail and PPT!) in the foreground. These constant reboots annoy you because you are forced to get off the thread you are in, you may even not go back to that thread again, trust me. I guess these reboots are probably because of the Windows XP, these may not be applicable on Windows 7.

After the final reboot and the success thing, I clicked on the VS2010 menu entry. First thing I noticed opening VS2010 was the revamped splash screen.

Looks good, but doesn’t show any progress nor any kind of status. This leaves one wondering what is happening in the background and when you will get to see the IDE, especially in a slow machine!

The main workspace window is totally revamped. it is immediately likeable. It certainly makes you feel as if you have more space, somehow, given the same area

Solution Explorer & other tabs are auto-minimized at start. Also, if you notice they give you the floating-window impression since they blend in well with the workspace color palette. This is in line with the max-space-for-development philosophy.

All the windows are totally dockable. Nice thing I found out was you can get the current source window to full screen by just double-clicking on the filename. This is great since this allows me to have multiple code windows open in my 2 monitors, or may be design window in one monitor and the corresponding code window in the other (see the image below).

In VS2008, for extra syntax highlighting + dev help, I rely a lot on Visual AssistX. I haven’t played with VS2010’s intellisense fully yet to determine whether I still need Visual AssistX or can throw that away. Also, the intelli-trace feature looks good, need to try out that too. Will post my follow up notes after a month or so of using the new IDE. Any specific cool feature I should not miss, do let me know.

[FEN "1r5k/r2BP1pp/pp1R1p2/6B1/4P3/5Q2/PPP4P/1K5R w - - 0 26"]

Solution:

26. Bc8! Most efficient win 26…Rxc8 27. Rd8+ Rxd8 28. exd8=Q# 1-0

[FEN "8/8/8/2K5/k1B4p/7p/1n1pP2R/8 w - - 0 1"]

Solution & Explanation:

The theme of this puzzle is Black’s king vulnerability. Look at how Black king is positioned. If Nb2/d2/e2 pieces are not in the board, White rook can deliver mate immediately (Ra2#). Also, Black is threatening to queen the d2 pawn, moving the pawn off the b-rank. If you understand these elements of this puzzle, White’s first move suggests itself automatically

1. e3!

[Not 1. e4?? d1=Q 2. Rxb2 Qg1+! This is why e3 is needed, to protect g1-c5 diagonal. 3. Kd5 h2! –+ and White has no mate and Black’s advantage is decisive.]

1… d1=Q 2. Rxb2 Qa1

[Note that 2... Qh5+ wont help as after White’s 3.Bd5! Black has no options. It cannot prevent the mate, unless it gives away its queen]

3. Ra2+ Qxa2 the only way to stop the mate.

4. Bxa2 h2 5. Bd5! White bishop comes on time to stop the Black pawn from queening, while Black cannot stop the e-pawn roll. Game over!

[FEN "4k1r1/p3np2/1p2pQ2/3pP1BP/5P2/P2q4/2r3PR/4R1K1 b - - 0 1"]

Solution:

1…Rxg5!! 2.Qxg5
( 2.fxg5 Nf5 Blocking queen from coming for help, with the same idea as that of the main line )
2…Qd4+ 3.Kh1
( 3.Kf1 Qf2# )
3…Qe3 White resigned.

Why? No way for White to stop the mate unless he chooses to lose material. Possible continuation – 4.Qh4 Rc1 5.Rh3 Rxe1+ 6.Qxe1 Qxe1+ 7.Kh2 Nf5 -+

A new site claims to have all flavors of Rybka 4.0 engine available for download (Including SSE4 and Chess960 versions), much before the official release date (May 28th?)

Note: I have neither tested these nor endorse you download these. Download/Use these at your own risk. Remember that Rybka is relatively cheap, compared to CB engines, so I seriously suggest buying the full Rybka (CB GUI) version. Having said that, pick up what you can while that site lasts

Rybka4 download site: http://avenger999.blogspot.com/

Now, regarding what is new in Rybka4: Here’s the Rybka4 release notes (draft) posted in rybkaforum.net today by Vasik Rajlich:

Rybka 4
May 26, 2010
Overview
Rybka 4 is the latest UCI Rybka chess engine. The changes since Rybka 3 are extensive.
General Changes
- The evaluation is more accurate and better aware of king safety and other dynamic factors.
- The search is more efficient in every major category of position.
- Some new endgame heuristics have been added.
- The overall engine behavior has been cleaned up and made less quirky.
New Features
- New parameters controlling engine output, engine priorities, and engine time management during game play.
- Ability to take advantage of large memory pages (_link_) and SSE4.2 and SSE4a instruction sets.
- New logging capability, which documents in .html the evolution of the main line for all analyzed positions.
- Asymmetrical piece scoring (see below).
Asymmetrical piece scoring
It is now possible to adjust all piece values for both colors in Rybka 4. This functionality has three uses:
1) Rybka can be informed that some pieces in some specific position should or should not be traded.
2) Setting higher overall piece values for one color implements contempt. Rybka will attempt to not trade the more valuable pieces, keeping more tension in the position, and she will give higher evaluation scores to the side with the more valuable pieces and therefore avoid draws by repetition.
3) Piece values which are more consistent with top GM practice can be used. For still-unknown reasons, rooks and queens tend to be more valuable in computer play than what top human players believe to be correct. The default values are optimized for computer play. GM Larry Kaufman recommends the following adjustments as more human-like: pawns=0, knights=24, bishops=24, rooks=12, queens=0. (_link_)
Please note that contempt is now off by default and should be set manually when appropriate.
More information
Please see the Rybka 4 user area (_link_) or visit our forum (_link_) for more information.
Credits
A huge thanks to everyone on the Rybka team, as well as to everyone else who has contributed in any way.
- Lukas Cimiotti, for systematically pushing our clustering project through all sorts of ups and downs to being the weapon and asset which it is today, and for the comically shocking effect produced by his mountain of hardware.
- Jiri Dufek, for an awesome Rybka 4 book, for his pragmatic and highly successful tournament preparation, and also for some useful networking skills.
- Jeroen Noomen, for the groundbreaking Rybka 3 books, for several years of superb tournament preparation, and for making sure that Hans stays out of trouble.
- Nick Carlin, for his unique scientific brand of book preparation, for delivering several tournament victories in a short but productive period of time, and for returning to make sure that Rybka 4 was done right.
- Felix Kling and Christoph Kling for our excellent web site, for interesting reports, and for keeping the forum free from marauding bandits.
- Larry Kaufman, for his innovative man vs machine matches, for countless suggestions about quantitative aspects of Rybka‘s evaluation, and for helping with the release and tuning the human material weights.
- Hans van der Zijden, for going anywhere and everywhere to operate and represent Rybka, for proudly wearing whatever “medals” tournament organizers foist on him, and for staying out of trouble.
- Dadi Jonsson, for hosting the Rybka forum – the best forum I have seen on the internet – and giving Felix something to keep free from marauding bandits.
- Steinar H. Gunderson for Microwine, which allows Rybka to run on Linux despite my chaotic coding practices, allowing Felix to remain in the dark about the modern invention that is Windows.
- The Rybka 4 Beta testers for a fun, lively and productive Beta testing period: Majd Ansari, Wieland Belka, Shaun Brewer, Nick Carlin, Lukas Cimiotti, Jiri Dufek, Mathias Feist, Dadi Jonsson, Larry Kaufman, Felix Kling, Joachim Nettelbeck, Jeroen Noomen, Kostas Oreopoulos, Ulysses P., Teemu Pudas, Albert Silver, Shahar Tzafrir, Ernst Walet and Victor Zakharov.
- Mathias Feist, Matthias Wuellenweber and Frederic Friedel from ChessBase, for their organized, professional work, for showing me how a small business should be run, and for putting up with my learning curve on release issues.
- Victor Zakharov, Sergey Abramov and their team from Convekta, for their great enthusiasm, energy and creativity, and for having no fear of the impossible
- Nelson Hernandez, for a professional-quality video interview, complete with interesting background noises, and for provoking me into all sorts of predictions and statements which have so far not come even remotely close to being realized.
- Alan Sassler, for walking me through the arcane issues involved in tuning highly correlated feature sets.
- Shahar Tzafrir, for making sure that our cluster has a tough opponent.
- Rybka forum regulars, for all kinds of ideas, and for making sure I keep my feet on the ground.
- For anyone I may have accidentally left out.
- And, saving the best for last, to Iweta, for being great!
What’s Next?
I’ll keep the details a surprise, but we’ll have a very cool announcement within two weeks.

I like the Asymmetrical Piece Scoring option. Tuning this option properly, I believe, is going to produce some very neat games. Can’t wait to see the results

EPD: 1r2r1k1/n1p2ppp/3p4/q1P2N2/p1BPn2R/R1P3P1/5P1P/2Q2K2 w – -

Answer:

[FEN "1r2r1k1/n1p2ppp/3p4/q1P2N2/p1BPn2R/R1P3P1/5P1P/2Q2K2 w - - 0 1"]

1. Rxe4!! Rxe4 2. Qg5 g6 3. Qf6 +-

I liked the game so much that I spent 30mins analyzing this game today (& 2 hrs writing this blog post with the images ).

I have inserted enough board images, so hopefully the game can be followed with out a physical (or even a computer ) board near by. The big boards represent main line and the small boards represent variations.

White: Rybka

Black: Shredder

Computer World Championship, Round 5, Pamplona

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.O-O Nxe4

Shredder chooses Berlin (Open) variation.

5.Qe2 Ng5

This is a rare move. The normal continuation I have seen is 5…Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6.

6.Nxg5 Qxg5 7.d4

Very active move, threatening the center pawn making use of the discovered attack on the black queen. BTW, black cannot threaten by 7…Nxd4? as it loses material. { 7…Nxd4? 8. Bxg5 Nxe2 9.Bxe2 d5 }

7…Qe7 8.dxe5 Nd4 9.Qd3 Qxe5

This pawn grab by black, with its king in the center feels risky. The logical continuation seems to be {9…Nxb5 Qxb5 10. c6} with the idea of d5.

10.Nc3 Bc5

Finally Black makes some development moves. Another alternative I thought of was 10…Bd6!? Why not directly attack the h2? May be, this is what is called amateur thought.

11.Qd1

My first thought was “Very slow!! Doesn’t this allow 11…O-O after which Black should be ok?”; Instead I would have played the direct 11.Bd2 with the threat of Rfe1.

But, after 11…O-O, White has 12.Re1 Qf6 {12…Qd6 13. Ne4 Qg6} 13. Ne4 Qg6 14.Bd3 {14.Nxc5 Nxb5} with a comfortable position. Wonder how? See this the following image.

And also, if you hadn’t noticed yet, White still has the threat of 12.Re1 pinning the Black queen to the King.

11…Ne6

This move removes that pin possibility.

12.Re1 Qd4

Now, Black threatens the direct Qxf2. Also, queen exchange now will be helpful for Black, since it is a pawn-up.

13.Qf3

Of course White doesn’t want to exchange down to a pawn-down endgame.

13…O-O 14.Re4!

Excellent. Rybka is bringing its pieces out for a King side attack, with tempo. White light color bishop will also join in soon.

14…Qd6 15.Rh4 Qe5

Straight forward threat of back rank mate. Shredder knows that offense is the best form of defense

16.Bd2

White protects the back rank.

16…f5!?

I think this is a good defensive move, though Black still has to worry about bringing out its light bishop. This protects the critical d3 – h7 diagonal, while preventing Ne4. Also, it allows Black queen to go to the king side via f6.

17.Re1 Qf6 18.Qh3

White is threatening Rxh7

18…Qg6

Black prevents that.

19.Nd5

White knight tries to join the attack, inviting a fork. Notice that in the absence of Black’s dark bishop, White has a nice fork in e7 winning the Black queen. Now, what is the purpose of this move if Black can win a piece after 19…c6? White knight can enter the attack with a tempo after 20.Nf4. I can hear you think “wait…the black Knight is already protecting the f4 square”. Exactly, that is why White has to remove the defender before playing Nf4.

19…c6 20.Rxe6!

Pretty logical move. I hope now this sacrifice makes sense to you

Chess becomes more and more interesting & addictive as you start understanding the ideas behind the moves. Nothing like some good-old logical reasoning!

20…Qxe6 21.Nf4 Qxa2 22.Rxh7

22…cxb5

Black threatens back rank mate, by removing the only protector.

23.g3!

No more back rank threats.

23…Rf6 24.Bc3 Kf7

Black king has started running, but it is too late now. Also note that the Black rook cannot move as it allows Rxg7+

25.Qh4

Putting more pressure on f6

25…Qa1+ 26.Kg2 Qa6

Black queen has come for support

27.Bxf6 Qxf6 28.Qh5+ 1-0

Shredder resigned in this position. Why? Lets see the possible moves for Black. 

• 28…Qg6? This leads to a mate in 4. Can you spot it?
• 28…Kg8?? This is worse. Leads to a Mate in 1!!
• 28…Kf8 leads to 29. Nd5 threatening mate or winning the Black queen. Heavy material loss and eventual death after 29…Qh6 30. Qxf5 Kg8 31. Rxh6 gxh6 32. Nf6 Kf7 33. Ne4

• 28…Ke7 leads to the nice Knight fork 29. Nd5+ winning the Black queen.

This is an amazing piece of game by Rybka. Thoroughly world class material!! I enjoyed studying this game, though it is between 2 computer programs, I hope you did too.

Download the PGN