Wyllie Draughts v Alex Moiseyev
by Roberto Waldteufel

It has been 6 years since Man and Machine last did battle over the draughtsboard, but now I am pleased to announce that alongside the British Open Championships at Stonehaven in July 2002 a marathon match of 68 games of 3-move restriction draughts was played between Wyllie Draughts Pro and ACF World Champion Alex Moiseyev, pictured on the left. This match was unique in many ways - the first ever Man-Machine match in Scotland, the longest ever Man-Machine match in the World, the highest proportion of decisive games and biggest winning margin ever in a Man-Machine match.

The venue for this historic encounter was the luxurious St Leonard's Hotel, just outside the town centre set on a hillside overlooking the bay with a picture-postcard view from the window of our playing room. St Leonard's is already accustomed to hosting draughts events, and regularly accomodates local tournaments and matches. Both Alex and I were very happy with the comfortable facilities and friendly staff and management, and would like to express our gratitude to all concerned. Competitors in next year's Scottish Open, also to be held in Stonehaven, may contact St Leonards by telephone on 01569 762044, by Fax on 01569 766222 or by email to Wilma Bruce.

Wyllie Draughts Pro ran on a Pentium 4 1.2 Ghz computer with 1 Gigabyte of RAM and Windows Millenium Edition operating system. We used a reduced deck of openings to help reduce the number of tame draws, so only those 64 of the 144 3-move openings deemed to be the hardest were possible in our match. However, this "hard deck" did not include the 11 new openings recently voted to be accepted into the crossboard deck by the EDA, as Alex had not prepared for these openings. The games were played on a fine wooden tournament board using a wooden cased Garde chess clock. Time controls were 24 moves in 45 minutes each, followed by 36 moves every hour. In practice this allowed me to set Wyllie to 2 minutes per move "thinking time", since opening book moves and forced jumps were of course played instantly.

Throughout the week George Miller was in daily telephone contact with us, so as to post results from both our match and the British Open on his Checker Solutions web site. He tells me his hit count doubled during this week, so events in Stonehaven certainly seem to have been closely followed World-wide.

Opening

Result
11-16, 24-20, 7-11
Wyllie won Red side
9-14, 22-17, 6-9
2 draws, but Alex missed a win with White
9-13, 22-18, 10-15
Wyllie won White side
10-14, 22-18, 6-10
2 draws
9-13, 24-19, 10-14
Wyllie won White side
9-13, 24-20, 5-9
Wyllie won White side
9-14, 23-18, 14x23
Alex won White side (This is NOT a typo - Alex won the weak side!)
9-13, 23-18, 6-9
Wyllie and Alex both won White side but lost Red side
11-15, 24-20, 12-16
Alex won White side
10-15, 21-17, 15-18
2 draws
10-14, 24-19, 14-18
2 draws
10-15, 22-17, 9-13
2 draws, but Wyllie missed a win with White
9-13, 23-19, 6-9
2 draws
11-15, 24-19, 15x24
Wyllie won Red side
10-14, 24-19, 7-10
2 draws
11-15, 21-17, 15-19
2 draws
10-14, 22-18, 7-10
2 draws, but Wyllie missed win with White
10-15, 23-18, 9-14
2 draws
10-15, 23-18, 6-10
Wyllie won White side
12-16, 22-18, 16-19
2 draws
10-14, 23-19, 6-10
2 draws, but Alex missed a win with White
10-15, 22-17, 6-10
2 draws
9-14, 22-17, 5-9
Wyllie won White side
10-14, 23-18, 14x23
Wyllie won Red side
10-14, 23-19, 7-10
Wyllie won White side
10-15, 21-17, 6-10
Wyllie won both sides - this is the first time Alex has ever lost both sides of an opening!
10-15, 22-17, 7-10
Wyllie won Red side
10-14, 24-20, 7-10
Wyllie won White side
9-13, 23-18, 10-15
Wyllie won Red side
10-14, 22-18, 12-16
2 draws, but Wyllie missed win with White
9-13, 22-18, 11-15
2 draws
9-14, 23-19, 14-18
2 draws
9-13, 24-19, 5-9
Wyllie won White side
10-15, 22-17, 15-19
2 draws

Final score Wyllie 16 wins, Alex 3 wins, 49 draws