We were in the Future Parc in Hall 9, as part of the joint "box" of the Universities and High Schools of Saxonia, Saxonia-Fullstop (=Sachsen-Anhalt) and Thuringia. Jena is a nice old-modern city in Thuringia.
Located between the presentation of "Osotis" and "MobiSoft", we did not only show our software, but also had corresponding exhibition-items of the games there for "touch and play". In the picture you see to the left my external doctoral student Ingo Schwab (Bonn) (alias Fraggle's mental father on LittleGolem) and on the right the computer science student Joerg Guenther from Jena University. The two are just exploring the "connect-4" type game Parade (mechanism by me, realisation by Reinhold Wittig).
Michail Antonow is the inventor of the fantastic connection game ConHex. He was also present at our box. Jörg Günther (already mentioned above) had, in den last few weeks, developed a computer program for playing ConHex (code name GuentHex), which has already considerable playing strength. On Saturday at the fair, a show match (over two games) was played between game inventor and machine.
On Friday afternoon, before the duel, almost an escalation took place. Michail Antonow used Guenther's notebook to make his email, whereas Joerg, sitting left to him, just wanted to install some last-moment improvements in his program exactly on this machine. Me, being the boss of the box, had no choice but to schedule the resources by a dictatorial command.
Three snapshots from the exhibition match
For me, most impressive was the 12 years aged boy who can be seen on all three photos. He comes from Dueren (near Aachen - almost 400 km apart from Hannover) and had taken the train (without parents or comrades) to look around on the CeBIT. By chance, he saw our box and remained for four hours, to follow all details of the ConHex match.
The picture may look differently at first sight. But it was Michail Antonow, who won the show match by a 2-0 score (after two hard-fought games). A revenge is in preparation for Fall 2007 (in Jena ?!).
Also shown was my new "Come on, Sisyphos". It is a quick asymmetrical game for two persons, in which the stronger party (with his five stones) has a very hard job to reach the corner square of the underdog opponent, who has three pieces, only. The special thing with Come on, Sisyphos is that captured stones may be re-entered again in the backyard of the corresponding player.
Michail Antonow also took the role of Sisyphos in a "free" moment.
My external doctoral student Eiko Bleicher (Berlin), known for his special-purpose chess software "Freezer", had brought Sisyphos on the machine; and for many variants of this game he had done complete retrograde analysis. (You need about 9 GigaHertz hours per variant.) At the CeBIT, we showed only those variants which had turned out to be the nicest ones in "our analyses". In the version with five attackers and three defenders, Sisyphos can reach the goal square in 17 move pairs (counting like in traditional chess), when both sides act optimally.
Visitor Reinhold Wittig (Goettingen) originally had order to eat his soup. But for a longer phase he forgot and rolled stones, instead.
On the final day of the fair I was a bit uncautious and offered 5 Euro to each "volunteer Sisyphos" who reached "my" corner" within 60 move pairs. Alexej Quapp from Paderborn was the first of altogether three strong heads who earned the money.
Special guest at our box was Thuriniga's minister for "construction, infrastructure, and traffic", Andreas Trautvetter. Trautvetter was visibly surprised when our answer to his question "Do you also have games for traffic planning?" was a clear "Yes". Left to the minister you see - with happy face - Dr. Michael Achard who was the general organizer of the joint "box".
Just in time for the box party on Monday night, Lars Bremer came in. He is working for c't (the largest serious German computer magazine) and for css-online. ConHex "fixed" him at the very first moment, and for the whole evening he did nothing but to play this fantastic game - ignoring the "lecker Schmalzbrote" from Thuringia.
"EinStein würfelt nicht" was also tried by some visitors - sometimes even on the red floor when normal playing ground was out.
Here, you see Joerg Guenther "sisyphoting". Left of him, doctoral student Peter Stahlhacke (Wermelskirchen), who solved Lasker Morris some years ago, is just progamming a new variant of "Nine men's Morris".
The Weather, finally
Sometimes there was wonderful sunshine, even in the fair's halls.
Then again, we had to fight through a snow storm, in our walk from the tram station to the fair's entry gate. Here you see Michail Antonow with his own construction to keep the head warm. It worked very well.
The morning after: When filling my car for the trip back to home, I saw this nice "Inuit sofa" on the pedestrians lane. It is crazy that the winter just begins when officially spring has started...