How to use xboard to match two engines at diffent ply depths

[royb]

I'd like to run some engine vs engine matches (easy to do with xboard) but I want to specify depth of search maximums that are different for each of the two engines.

The man pages show the -depth command line option to set the depth of search, but it seems that is destined to be used for both engines (not what I want).

Has anyone tried to do this before with xboard and if so, how did you accomplish it?

Thanks,

Roy

[Bill Rogers]

I always wanted to do the same thing. I think someone once posted that it could be done using Winboard but not Xboard. If anyone has any good suggestions please let us know.
Thanks
Bill

[bob]

I'd like to run some engine vs engine matches (easy to do with xboard) but I want to specify depth of search maximums that are different for each of the two engines.

The man pages show the -depth command line option to set the depth of search, but it seems that is destined to be used for both engines (not what I want).

Has anyone tried to do this before with xboard and if so, how did you accomplish it?

Thanks,

Roy

I've done this with Crafty in the past. Create two directories for the two copies of crafty. In one, create a .craftyrc file with sd=N, in the other directory, create a .craftyrc file with sd=N+1, whaever N value you want to use.

Then use the -fd -sd options of xboard to tell it to run one engine in each directory and voila', you are done.

[hgm]

The standard way provided by XBoard / WinBoard to send different settings to the two engines is by making use of the InitString:

xboard -firstInitString "new\nsd 6\nrandom\n" -secondInitString "new\nsd 7\nrandom\n"

to play 6 against 7 ply.

[royb]

I'd like to run some engine vs engine matches (easy to do with xboard) but I want to specify depth of search maximums that are different for each of the two engines.

The man pages show the -depth command line option to set the depth of search, but it seems that is destined to be used for both engines (not what I want).

Has anyone tried to do this before with xboard and if so, how did you accomplish it?

Thanks,

Roy

I've done this with Crafty in the past. Create two directories for the two copies of crafty. In one, create a .craftyrc file with sd=N, in the other directory, create a .craftyrc file with sd=N+1, whaever N value you want to use.

Then use the -fd -sd options of xboard to tell it to run one engine in each directory and voila', you are done.

Thanks Bob! I knew I could not be the first person to try to do this. Thanks again!

Roy

[royb]

The standard way provided by XBoard / WinBoard to send different settings to the two engines is by making use of the InitString:

xboard -firstInitString "new\nsd 6\nrandom\n" -secondInitString "new\nsd 7\nrandom\n"

to play 6 against 7 ply.

Thanks very much! This works for any engine -- excellent!

Roy

[hgm]

Note that if you want to have an automatic round-robin with several engines handicapped to a differet extent, you can install all engines in the tournament manager several times under a different name, each with several different handicaps. E.g.

Crafty_6:
crafty.exe WBopt /%sInitString="new\nsd 6\n"
Crafty_7:
crafty.exe WBopt /%sInitString="new\nsd 7\n"
Crafty_8:
crafty.exe WBopt /%sInitString="new\nsd 8\n"

and then you could play the tournament like a normal round-robin with Crafty_6, Crafty_7 and Crafty_8 as participants.

I do this in a similar way for time-odds tournaments, (which I consider more fundamental than fixed-depth games), by using

Joker / 1:
joker.exe
Joker / 2:
joker.exe WBopt /%sTimeOdds=2
Joker / 5:
joker.exe WBopt /%sTimeOdds=5
Joker / 10:
joker.exe WBopt /%sTimeOdds=10

If I then play a round-robin with 10+0 games, Joker / 2 automatically gets always 5 minutes, Joker / 5 gets 2 min, and Joker / 10 gets 1 min for all its moves.