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Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice
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Miguel A. Ballicora



Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 4434
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
PostPost subject: Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice    Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:35 pm Reply to topic Reply with quote
Don wrote:
hgm wrote:
I tried to run Stockfish under WinBoard + UCI2WB, to test how well the exclusion of moves during analysis works. It turned out not to work very well, and the reason seems to be that Stockfish is very tardy in sending the 'info currmove / currmovenumber' commands. Often it only starts sending these comands more than 3 sec after the search started. And to compound the disaster, it then does not send the complete set of moves, but starts somewhere in the middle (where it happened to be searching), so that you will have to wait for the next iteration (and until it finishes!) to get a complete set of moves. This means that the complete set of moves is often only available after 10-15 sec! (Note that you have to wait for a complete set from one iteration, and cannot coplete a partial set from a pprevious iteration with moves from the next, because engines often alter the move ordering from iteration to iteration.)

I noticed that other UCI engines often are also slow in sending currmove info, but those I tried were never that slow.

I know the UCI specs contain the recommendation to not spam the GUI during the first second, but 'info currmove / currmovenumber' cannot be considered spam. They send essential info (namely the set of legal moves) that the GUI has not seen before, and that it could need for issuing a UCI 'searchmoves' command. It is mindless repetition of the set could be considered spamming, but the first such set certainly isn't. So I would expect decent UCI engines to send at least one complete set of moves early on. It doesn't really have to be on the first iteration, but at least such that the GUI has received the info within the first second (and preferably within the first 200 msec).


I believe a GUI should have it's own move generator and not assume anything. If an engine plays an illegal move, how do you adjudicate the win? If any engine says it has won when it hasn't, what can you do?

I can understand however that for a GUI that must easily be able to support a large variety of games, it might be more feasible to rely on some help from the engines.


An ideal protocol may have a command GUI-->engine that says "get_legals" and the engine should reply

legals a2a3 a3a4 b2b3 b2b4 etc. etc.

That would be useful for many reasons and solve many problems.

In HGM's particular situation, I think the adaptor should be modified to translate new winboard's exclude <move> to searchmoves <moves>. The adaptor should have a move generator then.

Miguel
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Subject Author Date/Time
Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Fri Apr 20, 2012 8:00 am
      Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Martin Sedlak Fri Apr 20, 2012 8:12 am
            Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Fri Apr 20, 2012 9:36 am
                  Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Martin Sedlak Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:25 am
      Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Uri Blass Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:13 am
            Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Martin Sedlak Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:38 am
                  Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:55 am
                        Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Martin Sedlak Fri Apr 20, 2012 11:37 am
                              Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:32 pm
                                    Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Ronald de Man Fri Apr 20, 2012 6:49 pm
                                          Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Fri Apr 20, 2012 8:46 pm
                                                Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Ronald de Man Sat Apr 21, 2012 3:09 am
                                                      Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Sat Apr 21, 2012 10:35 am
                                                            Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Ronald de Man Sat Apr 21, 2012 11:36 am
                                                                  Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:14 pm
                                                                        Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Ronald de Man Sun Apr 22, 2012 1:22 am
                                                                              Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Uri Blass Sun Apr 22, 2012 6:40 am
                                                                                    Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:03 am
                                                                                          Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Ed Schroder Sun Apr 22, 2012 10:03 am
                                                                                          Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Sun Apr 22, 2012 7:14 pm
                                          Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Marco Costalba Sat Apr 21, 2012 11:01 am
            Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Gary Fri Apr 20, 2012 12:00 pm
                  Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Marco Costalba Fri Apr 20, 2012 2:07 pm
                        Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Uri Blass Fri Apr 20, 2012 8:25 pm
                              Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Uri Blass Fri Apr 20, 2012 9:31 pm
                                    Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Uri Blass Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:04 pm
                                    Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Marco Costalba Sat Apr 21, 2012 7:55 am
                                          Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Uri Blass Sat Apr 21, 2012 12:44 pm
                                                Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Marco Costalba Sat Apr 21, 2012 2:16 pm
                                                      Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Uri Blass Sat Apr 21, 2012 3:19 pm
      Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Fri Apr 20, 2012 11:29 am
      Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Don Dailey Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:12 pm
            Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:09 pm
                  Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Don Dailey Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:21 pm
            Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Miguel A. Ballicora Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:35 pm
                  Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:52 pm
      Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Joona Kiiski Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:30 pm
            Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Don Dailey Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:11 pm
                  Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice H.G.Muller Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:15 pm
                        Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Don Dailey Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:22 pm
                  Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Sam Hamilton Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:22 pm
                        Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Don Dailey Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:27 pm
      Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Julien MARCEL Sat Apr 21, 2012 2:35 pm
            Re: Stockfish, info currmove and bad UCI practice Don Dailey Sat Apr 21, 2012 3:17 pm
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