New Tournament Manager?!: Little Blitzer 2.3

[beachknight]

Hi,

Have not had the time to pre-test, but there seems to be a new tournament
manager for fast TC games, Little Blitzer:

http://www.kimiensoftware.com/index.php

[nthom]

FYI next version I'm working on will have:
- Adjudication controls
- More time control options
- GUI editor for tournament options (engines probably a version or two later)
- Load starting positions from PGN
- Reduced CPU overhead from LB itself

[Adam Hair]

FYI next version I'm working on will have:
- Adjudication controls
- More time control options
- GUI editor for tournament options (engines probably a version or two later)
- Load starting positions from PGN
- Reduced CPU overhead from LB itself

It is working pretty good for me so far

The only problem that I have seen is at the end of my gauntlets.
Say that engine X plays engines A,B,C, and D in a gauntlet. The
very last game of the gauntlet should be X vs D. However, Little
Blitzer plays X vs A and then an extra game between X and B is
started.

Also, it would be nice if the data is automatically saved at the end
of a tournament instead of manually copying it. I had a gauntlet end
earlier today while I was at work. Before I got home, the power went
out for a bit and I did not get to save the gauntlet data. To be more
explicit, I have the pgn file produced, but lost the tournament data
that is displayed in Little Blitzer.

Thank you for sharing Little Blitzer

Adam

[nthom]

The only problem that I have seen is at the end of my gauntlets.
Say that engine X plays engines A,B,C, and D in a gauntlet. The
very last game of the gauntlet should be X vs D. However, Little
Blitzer plays X vs A and then an extra game between X and B is
started.

If the number of rounds specified is not a multiple of the number of engines you will get this - is that the case?

Also, it would be nice if the data is automatically saved at the end
of a tournament instead of manually copying it. I had a gauntlet end
earlier today while I was at work. Before I got home, the power went
out for a bit and I did not get to save the gauntlet data. To be more
explicit, I have the pgn file produced, but lost the tournament data
that is displayed in Little Blitzer.
Adam

This annoys me too, not sure why I haven't done something about that yet. Answer is most likely because I'm lazy

[Adam Hair]

If the number of rounds specified is not a multiple of the number of engines you will get this - is that the case?

The number of rounds were a multiple of the number of engines.
Engine X vs 5 other engines ( gauntlet ) and 358 start positions.
So, I set it up to play 3580 games.

This annoys me too, not sure why I haven't done something about that yet. Answer is most likely because I'm lazy

[nthom]

The number of rounds were a multiple of the number of engines.
Engine X vs 5 other engines ( gauntlet ) and 358 start positions.
So, I set it up to play 3580 games.

Hmmm OK, I'll take a closer look.

[perejaslav]

Can someone tell me how to use the program? How to install an engine in it?
What is Engines.lbe file? How I can add my UCI engines to it?
I downloaded v.2.4. There isn't Readme there, I found Readme from LittleThought inside

[nthom]

Can someone tell me how to use the program? How to install an engine in it?
What is Engines.lbe file? How I can add my UCI engines to it?
I downloaded v.2.4. There isn't Readme there, I found Readme from LittleThought inside

Whoops! Sorry, have re-uploaded with the correct readme.txt

The engines.lbe file needs to look something like:

Engine=C:\Projects\LittleThought\Release\LittleThought-1.06.70.exe
Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\Twisted\twisted20090922\t20090922.exe
Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\AnMon\AnMon_5.75.exe
Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\Hermann\Hermann25\Hermann.exe
Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\Cheese\Cheese_13.exe
Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\Cerebro\Cerebro 3.03d.exe
Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\LittleThought\LittleThought-1.04.exe
Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\Gaviota\gaviota-win32-v0.75.7\gaviota.exe

[nthom]

Hello Nathan,

Thanks for this little tool, I like it. 2.4 is really user-friendly. Maybe it would be even more so if it displayed the type of time control used (currently it displays base time and increment even if x moves/y minutes is used).

Oversight, I will make sure it displays the correct info next version.

One more thing: it is a bit uncomfortable to have to exit and restart when a tournament is over and I would like to rerun it with different settings.

Yes I know, that's just pure laziness on my part - it will require a lot of re-coding to enable this due to the way I've designed it. It was never originally intended to be used in this way

And, I have to admit I am a bit confused about threads and the usage of the +/- buttons. I found that even if the engines were set to use only 1 thread and there was only 1 game left, both engines ran in 2 instances and both instances were shown (in task manager) to use a thread.

Also, it is not clear what exactly the +/- buttons accomplish. Do they split the number of games between the cores so that, for example, it takes half the time to play a certain number of games when 2 threads are set than when only one?
Do I have to pause a tournament to increase/decrease the number of threads?

The total number of games is split up between the threads, but not up front. i.e. when a thread completes one game it checks if the total has been reached and if not, starts a new one. So if there is only one game left it is possible for two threads to start a new game at the same time and give a total higher than what you asked for. I figure it's a minor nuisance given the tool was meant to be used to run 10's of thousands of games.
You do not have to pause to use +/-, pause is simply a quick way to decrease it to zero.

And what does this part of the readme mean:

6. When done, set the threads to zero and wait for it to finish

What is done? Why should I set the threads to 0 when the tournament is over? What do I wait for to finish?

You are correct, if the tournament is over there's no need. I guess I put that there because I am used to setting the number of games to 100,000 and stopping it when I'm satisfied with a result.

Sorry to trouble you with these questions, it seems they pose no problem for others.

I don't mind, it highlights to me what needs improving.

[mhurd]

Hello Nathan

Some strange results I got earlier today using 2.4

1 Houdini 1.03a x64 4_CPU 4888.0/6665
2 Deep Rybka 4 x64 4852.5/6668
3 Stockfish 1.8 JA 64bit 261.5/6671

Settings used :-

Tournament.lbt

Type: 1
TC: 1
Base: 1000
Inc: 100
Rounds: 9999
Ponder: 0
OwnBook: 0
Hash: 32
NumParallel: 4
Variant: 0
Position: EPD:Neutral.epd
AdjudicateMateScore: 1000
AdjudicateMateMoves: 12
AdjudicateDrawMoves: 150

Engines.lbe

Engine=C:\Users\Mike\Downloads\LittleBlitzer-2.4\stockfish-18-64-ja.exe
NumThreads=1
Engine=C:\Users\Mike\Downloads\LittleBlitzer-2.4\Deep Rybka 4 x64.exe
NumThreads=1
Engine=C:\Users\Mike\Downloads\LittleBlitzer-2.4\Houdini_x64_4CPU.exe
NumThreads=1

PC used Quad 4MB

Regards

Mike