10x8 tourney

[hgm]

I wanted stll to have a "Battle of the Goths" chmpionhip 2009, for engines that play 10x8 Chess. To finish before the end of the year, I should start it around tomorrow...

I currently have the following engines cheduled as participants:

Joker80 np
SMIRF 1.73h
TJches10X8 0.121
Fairy-Max 4.8
ChessV 0.94
BigLion 2.23x (version March 8, 2009)

I am still trying to obtain a version of TSCP-Gothic that can do other initial positions than just Gothic Chess. If I can obtain it, I will also add ArcBishop t the list, to have an even number.

Like last year, I want all engines to play each other 10 times, two games in Capabanca, Bird, Carrera, Embassy and Gothic Chess, with black and white. The games can be watched at

http://80.100.28.169/gothic/battle.html

through a normal browser that supports javascript. This already works now, (I am running some Capablanca test games), but I will likely take that server down during the blitz tourney.

If there are any new engines or versions I overlooked, please let me know quickly!

[michiguel]

I wanted stll to have a "Battle of the Goths" chmpionhip 2009, for engines that play 10x8 Chess. To finish before the end of the year, I should start it around tomorrow...

I currently have the following engines cheduled as participants:

Joker80 np
SMIRF 1.73h
TJches10X8 0.121
Fairy-Max 4.8
ChessV 0.94
BigLion 2.23x (version March 8, 2009)

I am still trying to obtain a version of TSCP-Gothic that can do other initial positions than just Gothic Chess. If I can obtain it, I will also add ArcBishop t the list, to have an even number.

Like last year, I want all engines to play each other 10 times, two games in Capabanca, Bird, Carrera, Embassy and Gothic Chess, with black and white. The games can be watched at

http://80.100.28.169/gothic/battle.html

through a normal browser that supports javascript. This already works now, (I am running some Capablanca test games), but I will likely take that server down during the blitz tourney.

If there are any new engines or versions I overlooked, please let me know quickly!

What is the deal with the game being patented?

Miguel

[hgm]

Gothic Chess used to be patented in the U.S., but according to the website of the U.S. patent office, the patent is expired and was not renewed. The other 4 sub-variants were never patented and are public domain. (Some of them are hundreds of years old. In fact not much younger than the Mad-Queen variant that its the prevailing form of Chess in the Western world today.)

All the 10x8 sub-variants that will be played in this tourney differ only in initial setup. The have the same pieces, consisting of the FIDE set, augmented by the two 'Capablanca pieces', the compounds of R+N (Chancellor) and B+N (Archbishop).

Of course there are more exotic variants that are played on 10x8 as well, e.g. Great Shatranj, where about all the pieces are un-orthodox. (No Rooks, Bishops or Queens, and not even Chancellors or Archbishops.) Some of the other 10x8 variants are even patented (e.g. Falcon Chess).

[hgm]

OK, I started the tourney. We will have 8 participants after all: I was able to hack the TSCP-Gothic binary, and found out a way to replace the initial position. (It was stored as a FEN, so I just overwrote it with another FEN, and will make one version for each of the 5 opening setups we will play.)

I also was abe to fix a problem with ChessV, where some of the variant names contain a single quote (e.g. Bird's Chess). This seems to interfere with the quoting mechanism of PSWBTM. So I had to make a special WinBoard version for this tourney that allows me to write the single quote in PSWBTM as #, and substitute any # at the moment it invokes the engine by a '.

The time control will be 25+0. The tourney was started (with a Bird's Chess round-robin) with the game ChessV - SMIRF. With maximum of 2 x 25 min/game, a full round-robin for 8 participants (8 x 7 = 56 games) should take about 2 days. So with 5 cycles, it should be finished before the end of the year.

Further reporting on this will be in the forum's tournament section.

[beachknight]

Wow. Interesting tournament.

Can Arena or ChessBase do this?

WinBoard is the future!



Best,

[hgm]

Can Arena or ChessBase do this?

No, but ChessGUI can! (It cannot do Chinese Chess, though! )

I like Capablanca variants, because they have much more violent tactics than normal Chess. With three Queen-class pieces per side you hardly ever end up in a dull end-game, and the draw rate is ony 16% (against 32% for norml Chess). And on the strategic side, even the piece values are controversial. Due to the different board size eve the orthodox pieces have different relative value than on 8x8. And of course there hardly is any opening theory.

[smrf]

Unfortunately I have not noticed this event until now.
There is (as might be expected) a more recent SMIRF version.
If you would like to have it participate I will send you a copy tuesday.

Best regards.

[TonyJH]

Hi HG. TJchess10x8 0.121 is the latest version as you just mentioned, but when I just watched a live game at your site, it said TJchess10x8 0.109 is playing.

[hgm]

OK, this was obvously my (very stupid) mistake: I had especially downloaded 0.121 from your web-page, and installed it on my disk, but had forgotten to update the install in PSWBTM.

I will replay all affected games. (I had to replay the Joker - Fairy-Max games already, because I had Fairy-Max play with a corrupted fmax.ini file, where I had redefined Capablanca Chess as using a Lion in stead of an ArchBishop in a previous experiment.)

It seems only fair to replay the Smirf games as well. So Smirf 1.73h-X will be replaced by Smirf 1.75t.

I have deleted all the affected games from the PGN and cross table, and will now first replay all Smirf games in a gauntlet (including the one against TJchess10x8). After that I will set up a gauntlet for TJchess10x8 to play the remaining games. Then we will resume the round-robin of the Bird-Chess games. So the schedule for the upcoming games will be:

SMIRF - ArcBishop
SMIRF - ChessV
SMIRF - TSCP-G
SMIRF - TJchess
SMIRF - Joker
TJchess - ArcBishop
TJchess - Fairy-Max
TJchess - Joker

(each 2 games per pairing).

[smrf]

Thank you for replacing Smirf by its newer version.

Though Smirf-MS-175t probably would not be stronger than the old version, it will be interesting to experience its changed behaviour.