Armageddon (OLD VERSION) (DISCONTINUED FOR A REMAKE)

Volume 1 - Chapter 10: First Meeting Time (Part 2)

The first time Baku Madarame and Sora Yukari met in a chess match was one year ago.

Well... Not technically face-to-face at a random chess event, but rather, on the website called chess.com.

At that time, Baku used the nickname "Hikaru", while Sora used his nickname "Sora Blank".

The two had words for each other on internet, as Sora arrogantly proclaimed himself that he was undefeated on this website. And Baku just replied "Just wait and see, who is the better."

A chess match between "Hikaru" and "Sora Blank" had been made official, and the result was quite tough, as Baku handed Sora his first defeat after 30 minutes, which ended "Sora Blank"'s undefeated streak on chess.com.

After the match, Baku hadn't appeared on that website since then, while Sora would have tasted some lost but received more experiences.

And then no rematch between them happened since then, as that epic match was deemed as the first and only match between "Hikaru" and "Sora Blank".

Until right now, on April 2nd.

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As it turns out, it seemed Sora had greatly underestimated Baku, once again.

Sora opened his eyes, temporarily breaking out of the deep concentration he had been in up until now and looked over his desk at his opponent.

Meanwhile, Baku was still calm and stoic as always.

That being said, Sora thought he would be able to beat Baku. If anything, Baku Madarame being like a supercomputer, just like his sister Shiro, is both his biggest strength and weakness.

Identifying traps and tricks, and intuitively knowing which kinds of moves - like an early b6 push by black for example - can result in long term weaknesses which will be exploitable down the line.

Baku, like Shiro, and as well as most computers, can avoid this for the most part by analysing the position at a depth of around twenty moves. If a move won't create a big weakness within that amount of moves then a computer will judge it as a good move, especially if it accomplishes a short-term goal or prevents an opponent's tactic.

To Sora, there is a problem with this, however.

Ii was called: The Horizon Effect, also known as The Horizon Problem.

A name for the issue wherein a game such as chess has so many possible game states that computers and A.I can only feasibly evaluate a small percentage of them.

Human beings can overcome this weakness by using their intuition and pattern recognition. A human chess player for example will easily be able to identify a variety of traps and tricks in a game by virtue of recognising them. Once a player falls for a trap once, they won't do so again because they'll remember it next time. A computer however has no simple way of doing this - the only way a computer can identify a trap is by evaluating the game state many moves down the game tree.

Right now, Sora had fallen behind a bit but when he realized all of this, he figured out how he could win. By exploiting tricks and traps that would have a negative effect mainly on the positional play of the game - something Baku couldn't easily see, if at all.

Sora: Knight to g6.

Meanwhile, some students watching this match were slightly surprised at his movement, as on the surface it looked like he was simply giving away his knight for free.

However, this was the trap Sora Yukari knew that Baku Madarame would fall for.

If the pawn on f7 takes his knight, it will open up a diagonal which the pawn previously blocked which Sora could use to force Baku's castled king from out of its safety into the centre of the board. From there, it will be easy to attack and will eventually result in checkmate, even for a supercomputer, recovering from a position where the king is isolated is near impossible.