On-line blitz tourney September

[hgm]

The on-line engine blitz tourney will this month be held:

Saturday Sept 18, 3pm EST (21:00 CET)

winboard -ics -icshost 80.100.28.169 -icshelper timeseal -zp -fcp "ENGINE.exe" -fd "ENGINE_FOLDER" -autoKibitz [-fUCI]

will do it!

[Joost Buijs]

The on-line engine blitz tourney will this month be held:

Saturday Sept 18, 3pm EST (21:00 CET)

winboard -ics -icshost 80.100.28.169 -icshelper timeseal -zp -fcp "ENGINE.exe" -fd "ENGINE_FOLDER" -autoKibitz [-fUCI]

will do it!

Very nice! I would like to attend the tourney if possible.

Unfortunately I'm still struggling to get pondering working under winboard/polyglot.
With older winboard/polyglot versions it worked but unreliable (time losses). With the latest versions I can't get it to work at all. I tell the GUI that my engine can ponder, somehow winboard/polyglot sends 'setoption Ponder value false' back and refuses to send the 'go ponder' command when applicable.
I really haven't got a clue what is going on

[Michel]

With older winboard/polyglot versions it worked but unreliable (time losses). With the latest versions I can't get it to work at all. I tell the GUI that my engine can ponder, somehow winboard/polyglot sends 'setoption Ponder value false' back and refuses to send the 'go ponder' command when applicable.

Well ponder works with polyglot...

Which version of PG is this? Can you post log files of xboard and polyglot?

EDIT: In case you are impatient you can also try HGM's UCI2WB adapter...

[Joost Buijs]

With older winboard/polyglot versions it worked but unreliable (time losses). With the latest versions I can't get it to work at all. I tell the GUI that my engine can ponder, somehow winboard/polyglot sends 'setoption Ponder value false' back and refuses to send the 'go ponder' command when applicable.

Well ponder works with polyglot...

Which version of PG is this? Can you post log files of xboard and polyglot?

EDIT: In case you are impatient you can also try HGM's UCI2WB adapter...

Last time I tried winboard 4.4.4 (it actualy says 4.4.3) with polyglot 1.4.38x.
I use the following command to start winboard:
winboard -ics -icshost 80.100.28.169 -icshelper timeseal -zp -fcp "ENGINE.exe" -fd "ENGINE_FOLDER" -autoKibitz [-fUCI]
Every time I start winboard ployglot_1st.ini is reset to default.
Maybe I should not use the -fUCI option but load polyglot instead with a proper polyglot.ini file?
This weekend I will continue with it, when I can't get it to work I will post the log files.

[hgm]

Perhaps there are things about pondering of UCI engines I don't understand? I thought that UCI engines can ponder by default? But when I run Fruit 2.1 under Polyglot 1.4.38x, there appears aPolyglot option 'CanPonder', which s not ticked.

Polyglot 1.4.38x is meant for use with pre-existing polyglot.ini files, (i.e. not the temporary polyglot_1st.ini made by WB), which is only the case if you explicitly invoke it, rather than with -fUCI. To this end the WinBoard 4.4.4 install includes it as polyglot38.exe. For use with -fUCI, it is best to use Polyglot 1.4.46b, because it can save the settings on a polyglot.ini file dedicated to the engine. So it was added to the install as polyglot.exe, which is the one invoked automatically by WinBoard with -fUCI.

Last weak Adam Hair brought it to my attention on WB forum that there has been an unfortunate mixup preparing the install, and that polyglot.exe and polyglot38.exe are in fact identical files, namely Polyglot 1.4.38x. (And I have had no time to fix that yet.) So the thing to do would be to download Polyglot 1.4.46b, and rename it to polyglot.exe. Then everything should work as intended. I assume you have to set the engine ponder options from the engine #1 Settings dialog, and then tick "persistence", and t should work forever after.

[Joost Buijs]

Hallo Harm Geert,

I will try it with 1.4.46b

I made a pre-existing polyglot.ini and didn't use the -fUCI option, the results are exactly the same, polyglot explicitly turns off pondering and sends "setoption Ponder value false" whatever I do. My engine doesn't look at this option at all, but it seems polyglot just doesn't like to ponder for some reason.

When I set 'Ponder = true' in polyglot.ini polyglot sends me:
5744.908 Adapter->Engine: setoption name Ponder value false
When I set 'Ponder = false' it says in the logfile:
5759.088 POLYGLOT Not sending option "Ponder" since it already has the correct value.
Also it does not seem to look at or react to:
5526.413 Engine->Adapter: option name Ponder type check default true

Also set are:
5526.522 Adapter->GUI: feature option="Polyglot ShowPonder -check 1"
5526.522 Adapter->GUI: feature option="Polyglot CanPonder -check 1"

[Richard Allbert]

CU There!

[Joost Buijs]

Harm Geert,

I tried polyglot 1.4.46b and the results are the same, now I even get other strange things like:

1284407899.286 Adapter->Engine: setoption name Hash value 1024
1284407899.286 Adapter->Engine: setoption name NalimovPath value D:\TB5
1284407899.286 Adapter->Engine: setoption name NalimovCache value 16
1284407899.286 Adapter->Engine: setoption name Hash value 52
1284407899.286 Adapter->Engine: setoption name NalimovPath value ..\egtb

Where the last 2 options come from, I don't know, they are not sent by my engine and they are not in polyglot.ini as well.

[Michel]

Hi,

I tried polyglot 1.4.46b and the results are the same, now I even get other strange things like:

1.4.46b is quite an old version. The latest one is 1.4.58b. It exists here
http://alpha.uhasselt.be/Research/Algeb ... t-release/

But I suspect that version will behave pretty much the same as the one you have.

Regarding the "unwanted options". These are normal. They are set by Winboard (e.g. the hash options come from the "memory" command).

Regarding pondering. Are you sure that you configured your engine in Winboard to use pondering (in xboard this is under the menu option "General Settings", it should be similar in Winboard)? In the Winboard logfile you should see Winboard sending the command "hard" to polyglot. In other words the polyglot logfile should have a line

GUI->Adapter: hard

[Joost Buijs]

Hi,

I tried polyglot 1.4.46b and the results are the same, now I even get other strange things like:

1.4.46b is quite an old version. The latest one is 1.4.58b. It exists here
http://alpha.uhasselt.be/Research/Algeb ... t-release/

But I suspect that version will behave pretty much the same as the one you have.

Regarding the "unwanted options". These are normal. They are set by Winboard (e.g. the hash options come from the "memory" command).

Regarding pondering. Are you sure that you configured your engine in Winboard to use pondering (in xboard this is under the menu option "General Settings", it should be similar in Winboard)? In the Winboard logfile you should see Winboard sending the command "hard" to polyglot. In other words the polyglot logfile should have a line

GUI->Adapter: hard

Hi,

You were right, the 'hard' command was not sent by Winboard.
I was focussing to much on the communication between polyglot and the engine.
This morning I let it run a number of games with fast time control and didn't experience any time losses sofar.

The "unwanted options" are rather strange, one would expect to either Winboard or the polyglot.ini file to take precedence and not send them both.