WCRCC 2009

[CRoberson]

The event was successful: we had 22 competitors and numerous spectators. Rybka is the continuing World Computer Rapid Chess Champion.
Congratulations go to Vasik and his team.

This year, as in the first year, we thought we were going to have an exciting tie break match. In the last round, Sjeng drew Scorpio and
left us with just the tournament. I thought it was rather neat when so many claimed Rybka was the clear winner by rounds 5 & 6 then
Rybka gets two draws to Sjeng's two wins in rounds 8 and 10. With the tournament tied for first, it was getting exciting.

I have manually downloaded all the games into a pgn except one. When I get that one, I'll put them on the ACCA site. Does anybody have
the file for Crafty-TwistedLogicCCT? If so, please post it here and I'll update the file before posting all the games on the ACCA site.

Future rule changes:
o Due to lots of issues this year, we will allow only one program per author.
o We may fine tune the rules pertaining to operators.
o Due to issues this year and last year, we may disallow any entries that show up late for the first round. It causes pairing problems.
o I will investigate doing the pairings with other software instead of using one of the bots.

I'd like to thank ICC for hosting the event and all to competitors for their participation.

[Spock]

Great job Charles, thanks for giving your time to organise and run this for the chess community.

[Ferdy]

The event was successful: we had 22 competitors and numerous spectators. Rybka is the continuing World Computer Rapid Chess Champion.
Congratulations go to Vasik and his team.

This year, as in the first year, we thought we were going to have an exciting tie break match. In the last round, Sjeng drew Scorpio and
left us with just the tournament. I thought it was rather neat when so many claimed Rybka was the clear winner by rounds 5 & 6 then
Rybka gets two draws to Sjeng's two wins in rounds 8 and 10. With the tournament tied for first, it was getting exciting.

I have manually downloaded all the games into a pgn except one. When I get that one, I'll put them on the ACCA site. Does anybody have
the file for Crafty-TwistedLogicCCT? If so, please post it here and I'll update the file before posting all the games on the ACCA site.

Future rule changes:
o Due to lots of issues this year, we will allow only one program per author.
o We may fine tune the rules pertaining to operators.
o Due to issues this year and last year, we may disallow any entries that show up late for the first round. It causes pairing problems.
o I will investigate doing the pairings with other software instead of using one of the bots.

I'd like to thank ICC for hosting the event and all to competitors for their participation.

Thanks Charles for the tourney.
A couple of suggestion, adjust number of rounds depending on number of participants, I guess 12 rounds for a swiss system is too much for 22 participants.

There might be participant that will come late with valid reason and is really interested to finish the tournament. Why not just give 0 and 1 for the opponent?

Yes I think pairings should be improved.

[bob]

The event was successful: we had 22 competitors and numerous spectators. Rybka is the continuing World Computer Rapid Chess Champion.
Congratulations go to Vasik and his team.

This year, as in the first year, we thought we were going to have an exciting tie break match. In the last round, Sjeng drew Scorpio and
left us with just the tournament. I thought it was rather neat when so many claimed Rybka was the clear winner by rounds 5 & 6 then
Rybka gets two draws to Sjeng's two wins in rounds 8 and 10. With the tournament tied for first, it was getting exciting.

I have manually downloaded all the games into a pgn except one. When I get that one, I'll put them on the ACCA site. Does anybody have
the file for Crafty-TwistedLogicCCT? If so, please post it here and I'll update the file before posting all the games on the ACCA site.

Future rule changes:
o Due to lots of issues this year, we will allow only one program per author.
o We may fine tune the rules pertaining to operators.
o Due to issues this year and last year, we may disallow any entries that show up late for the first round. It causes pairing problems.
o I will investigate doing the pairings with other software instead of using one of the bots.

I'd like to thank ICC for hosting the event and all to competitors for their participation.

Thanks Charles for the tourney.
A couple of suggestion, adjust number of rounds depending on number of participants, I guess 12 rounds for a swiss system is too much for 22 participants.

There might be participant that will come late with valid reason and is really interested to finish the tournament. Why not just give 0 and 1 for the opponent?

Yes I think pairings should be improved.

Now if we can just get rid of all the illegal "copies" that are playing, and get back to a real one-author one-program format where every program is a unique engine, all would be good...

[michiguel]

The event was successful: we had 22 competitors and numerous spectators. Rybka is the continuing World Computer Rapid Chess Champion.
Congratulations go to Vasik and his team.

This year, as in the first year, we thought we were going to have an exciting tie break match. In the last round, Sjeng drew Scorpio and
left us with just the tournament. I thought it was rather neat when so many claimed Rybka was the clear winner by rounds 5 & 6 then
Rybka gets two draws to Sjeng's two wins in rounds 8 and 10. With the tournament tied for first, it was getting exciting.

I have manually downloaded all the games into a pgn except one. When I get that one, I'll put them on the ACCA site. Does anybody have
the file for Crafty-TwistedLogicCCT? If so, please post it here and I'll update the file before posting all the games on the ACCA site.

Future rule changes:
o Due to lots of issues this year, we will allow only one program per author.
o We may fine tune the rules pertaining to operators.
o Due to issues this year and last year, we may disallow any entries that show up late for the first round. It causes pairing problems.
o I will investigate doing the pairings with other software instead of using one of the bots.

I'd like to thank ICC for hosting the event and all to competitors for their participation.

Congratulations for a successful tournament and thanks. I wish I could have participated but I could not guarantee to be there all the time. I watched most of the tournament though.

I wonder whether it would be possible to participate in the future when you may be absent a small fraction of the tournament (a couple of rounds). I guess that leaving the program unattended for a round may be problematic. For instance, if that happen to two operators and they are paired, the programs cannot challenge one another. Or ther are matched automatically? I think I recall this sometimes fail.

Miguel

[michiguel]

The event was successful: we had 22 competitors and numerous spectators. Rybka is the continuing World Computer Rapid Chess Champion.
Congratulations go to Vasik and his team.

This year, as in the first year, we thought we were going to have an exciting tie break match. In the last round, Sjeng drew Scorpio and
left us with just the tournament. I thought it was rather neat when so many claimed Rybka was the clear winner by rounds 5 & 6 then
Rybka gets two draws to Sjeng's two wins in rounds 8 and 10. With the tournament tied for first, it was getting exciting.

I have manually downloaded all the games into a pgn except one. When I get that one, I'll put them on the ACCA site. Does anybody have
the file for Crafty-TwistedLogicCCT? If so, please post it here and I'll update the file before posting all the games on the ACCA site.

Future rule changes:
o Due to lots of issues this year, we will allow only one program per author.
o We may fine tune the rules pertaining to operators.
o Due to issues this year and last year, we may disallow any entries that show up late for the first round. It causes pairing problems.
o I will investigate doing the pairings with other software instead of using one of the bots.

I'd like to thank ICC for hosting the event and all to competitors for their participation.

Thanks Charles for the tourney.
A couple of suggestion, adjust number of rounds depending on number of participants, I guess 12 rounds for a swiss system is too much for 22 participants.

There might be participant that will come late with valid reason and is really interested to finish the tournament. Why not just give 0 and 1 for the opponent?

That is awful for the opponent, who showed up on time and wants to play someone!

Maybe there should be a system of byes, like in "human chess". If you do not show up 5 min before the round, you get a bye with zero points (and you are not paired). If you announce beforehand that you want the bye, you get 1/2 point. You are not paired when you get a bye. I works very well with human players in weekend swiss tournaments.

Miguel

Yes I think pairings should be improved.

[hgm]

I have manually downloaded all the games into a pgn except one. When I get that one, I'll put them on the ACCA site.

PGNs of engine-engine games are not very interesting without having the engine scores in them.

Can you arrange it next time such that you capture all the engine kibitz lines (with a bot observing each game or following each engine), and let that bot then save the games automatically? Then you would also not have to fetch and convert games by hand!

This should be very easy to do, when you extend the rule that requires engines to kibitz to requiring them to kibitz in a specific format that allows automatic extraction of score and depth of the played move.

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

I wonder whether it would be possible to participate in the future when you may be absent a small fraction of the tournament (a couple of rounds). I guess that leaving the program unattended for a round may be problematic. For instance, if that happen to two operators and they are paired, the programs cannot challenge one another. Or ther are matched automatically? I think I recall this sometimes fail.

You can set a "zippyPassword" and tell Charles what it is. That's what I did. I only attended maybe 1 game in the entire tournament.

Even without a zippyPassword admins can spoof commands.

[michiguel]

I wonder whether it would be possible to participate in the future when you may be absent a small fraction of the tournament (a couple of rounds). I guess that leaving the program unattended for a round may be problematic. For instance, if that happen to two operators and they are paired, the programs cannot challenge one another. Or ther are matched automatically? I think I recall this sometimes fail.

You can set a "zippyPassword" and tell Charles what it is. That's what I did. I only attended maybe 1 game in the entire tournament.

Even without a zippyPassword admins can spoof commands.

Great!
I did not know about that option. In fact, the Zippy commands are in a different page than that xboard commands and I missed them all.

Interestingly, if I have another account, with this command I can run my engine in one computer and operate it from another.

Miguel

[Ferdy]

The event was successful: we had 22 competitors and numerous spectators. Rybka is the continuing World Computer Rapid Chess Champion.
Congratulations go to Vasik and his team.

This year, as in the first year, we thought we were going to have an exciting tie break match. In the last round, Sjeng drew Scorpio and
left us with just the tournament. I thought it was rather neat when so many claimed Rybka was the clear winner by rounds 5 & 6 then
Rybka gets two draws to Sjeng's two wins in rounds 8 and 10. With the tournament tied for first, it was getting exciting.

I have manually downloaded all the games into a pgn except one. When I get that one, I'll put them on the ACCA site. Does anybody have
the file for Crafty-TwistedLogicCCT? If so, please post it here and I'll update the file before posting all the games on the ACCA site.

Future rule changes:
o Due to lots of issues this year, we will allow only one program per author.
o We may fine tune the rules pertaining to operators.
o Due to issues this year and last year, we may disallow any entries that show up late for the first round. It causes pairing problems.
o I will investigate doing the pairings with other software instead of using one of the bots.

I'd like to thank ICC for hosting the event and all to competitors for their participation.

Thanks Charles for the tourney.
A couple of suggestion, adjust number of rounds depending on number of participants, I guess 12 rounds for a swiss system is too much for 22 participants.

There might be participant that will come late with valid reason and is really interested to finish the tournament. Why not just give 0 and 1 for the opponent?

Yes I think pairings should be improved.

Now if we can just get rid of all the illegal "copies" that are playing, and get back to a real one-author one-program format where every program is a unique engine, all would be good...

Depending on the tournament rules, like requiring engines sources examinations then we can get rid of illegal copies. There are people here that are very good at finding illegal copies, there works should be recognized and appreciated.

With so many open sources nowadays plus the internet, unique engines are not really that many, but a couple if not many strong engines are sprouting. Can we call this advances in computer chess? Perhaps these people have taken advantage of strong open source engines.

World Computer Rapid Chess Championships, its a nice title, but with so many engines that we have, only few have participated. Sometimes authors are not even there when there programs are playing, this happens only once a year, and in fact schedule is announced in advance. Are these people afraid to lose? or maybe they lack resources, like stable internet connections? or simply they don't have time. Maybe try to complete this tourney in 1 day, saturday or sunday, at least 1 day is saved for other activities. Would you believe, if prizes are there for winners, participants will increase?