YLCET - What's the next tournament?

[Vizvezdenec]

It's not like there are a lot of engine devs that are willing to rapidly update in-between...
SF team doesn't care really in terms of in-between updates (it's anyway winning everything), Houdini developer doesn't like to provide a lot of updates and it only matters for Komodo devs and I think it's nothing bad to update Komodo - it will help it developers, and, IMHO, it's one of the goals of such tournaments, to help top developers to spot weaknesses of their engines which are not dissapearing with VVLTC and a lot of cores, basially detecting some major flaws of top programs.

[jhellis3]

60 + 30 would be ok. The only potential issue with 30 is some games can drag on when the 50-move rule is involved.

I definitely prefer the 60 mins base time over 90 though. It is nice to watch high level chess being played, but when you can't find the time to sit down and watch one complete game, it really takes away from spectator enjoyment IMHO. The 60 min games also had a nice pacing to them. There are still occasional long thinks, but not too many for too long as to become boring.

[Nordlandia]

45+30 is another candidate.

[yorkman]

I agree, I think we'll go back to the 60 mins + 10to30sec TC.
We'll also likely leave penalties out of it for engine updates mid-tournament.

Any more takers for a blitz tournament next? Perhaps 15+10?

[Matthias Gemuh]

Blitz 15+10, but Chess960.

[yorkman]

Any other takers for Chess960 over a regular chess tournament?

[CheckersGuy]

Any other takers for Chess960 over a regular chess tournament?

Cant we have both ? Blitz 960 and normal

[Vizvezdenec]

I don't really like chess 960...
For a reason - no engine is really well runed to play chess 960 (well, apart from senpai).
What I mean - SF has rough penalty (50,50) for bishop blocked by it own pawn squares of the board - pure 960 thing that can't happen in real chess, and this (50,50) value is basically just "something", not well tuned etc. Same can be written about the other eval terms - they are made to play usual chess.
Also I think that 960 is good in GM matches because it forces them to think from the start, not reproduce what they pre-analysed with engine, but for engine matches this is kinda... Useless? Engines anyway don't use books in them usually.

[CheckersGuy]

I don't really like chess 960...
For a reason - no engine is really well runed to play chess 960 (well, apart from senpai).
What I mean - SF has rough penalty (50,50) for bishop blocked by it own pawn squares of the board - pure 960 thing that can't happen in real chess, and this (50,50) value is basically just "something", not well tuned etc. Same can be written about the other eval terms - they are made to play usual chess.
Also I think that 960 is good in GM matches because it forces them to think from the start, not reproduce what they pre-analysed with engine, but for engine matches this is kinda... Useless? Engines anyway don't use books in them usually.

Since the engines aren't tuned for chess 960 it would be an (almost) equal playing field. I just think that it is something different and leaving potential bugs aside, the stronger engine should win anyways, or not ?
Additionally, many starting positions probably transfer to a normal position anyways and given enough search depth most eval terms arent affected by not having had the usual starting position because you wont see them at the horizon

[Ovyron]

I don't really like chess 960...
For a reason - no engine is really well runed to play chess 960 (well, apart from senpai).
What I mean - SF has rough penalty (50,50) for bishop blocked by it own pawn squares of the board - pure 960 thing that can't happen in real chess, and this (50,50) value is basically just "something", not well tuned etc. Same can be written about the other eval terms - they are made to play usual chess.
Also I think that 960 is good in GM matches because it forces them to think from the start, not reproduce what they pre-analysed with engine, but for engine matches this is kinda... Useless? Engines anyway don't use books in them usually.

+1

I find GM matches from the starting position to be better, though.