On-line engine blitz tourney July

[hgm]

The monthly on-line engine blitz tourney for July will take place on:

Saturday July 28, 3pm Boston time (21:00 Amsterdam time)

To connect:

winboard -zp -ics -icshost winboard.nl -icshelper timeseal -fcp ENGINE.exe -fd ENGINEFOLDER -autoKibitz

(for UCI engines, add -fUCI)

[xr_a_y]

Is there a way to participate without being physically in front of the computer. I mean, I can join the server early but I won't be able to join the tournament ( mam join 1) when it open. I'd need something like "auto-join".

[hgm]

I can join you.

I have a remark about this, though: I don't mind occasionally joining participants who have difficulty being present, like in this case. But if possible at all, please be present a few minutes to 9 to join your own program. If everyone would rely on me joining him, it would take me nearly 10 minutes to make sure everyone is in, so that we would start 10 min late. Not because the action of joining itself is so tedious, but because I have to compare lists of engines that are logged in with the participants list from mamer to see who is still missing.

[xr_a_y]

I can join you.

I have a remark about this, though: I don't mind occasionally joining participants who have difficulty being present, like in this case. But if possible at all, please be present a few minutes to 9 to join your own program. If everyone would rely on me joining him, it would take me nearly 10 minutes to make sure everyone is in, so that we would start 10 min late. Not because the action of joining itself is so tedious, but because I have to compare lists of engines that are logged in with the participants list from mamer to see who is still missing.

Thanks a lot

[jorose]

This is one I was looking forward to, but unfortunately I have plans Saturday evening. Next month is gonna be rough (MSc thesis deadline is September 1st) so I likely won't make it either.

Looking forward to running Winter 0.2 in the September edition though =)

[odomobo]

Is any registration required, or do we just have to be logged in at that time to participate? Also, my engine is pretty weak (about the strength of TSCP), is it worth participating?

[D Sceviour]

Maybe this will be a chance to try the next version of Schooner. Some of the changes are:

(1) A new gcc v7.2.0-posix compilation suggested by Andrew Grant. It has increased the speed of the program but seems to be plagued with optimization problems.

(2) The end of PVS Lite. Schooner used a special routine called PVS Lite, which greatly reduced the number of researches. It required an initial open window search, but could never be fine-tuned for aspiration (or threading). It has been replaced with a modified version of Ethereal's aspiration search (again thank you to Andrew Grant for the idea).

(3) The personality book has been dropped. It served useful purpose in the development stages of the engine. However, it does not do much anymore with polyglot and other GUI books available.

(4) The PV display has been reduced to 6 moves unless analyzing. Can anyone read any more than that?

(5) My evaluator has become an overweight 100-headed monster. I decided to start again with something new. I have used a modified version of the Xiphos evaluator. Some credit is due to Milos Tatarevic the author of Xiphos. The simplicity of the Xiphos evaluator is impressive. He has compressed almost the entire evaluation into a 20-line macro.

(6) Hope to have Syzygy EGTB installed and working properly, but still having optimization problems.

[hgm]

Is any registration required, or do we just have to be logged in at that time to participate? Also, my engine is pretty weak (about the strength of TSCP), is it worth participating?

You will need a registered account, because otherwise the tournament manager bot ('mamer') will not accept you in the tourney. (It wants to check your rating, which guests do not have.) If you send me a PM with your e-mail address and engine name I can create such an account.

Engines the strength of TSCP are welcome. There will be weaker participants (running on Raspberry Pi machines), and we are using McMahon pairing, so the expected weak participants will be playing each other from the first round on. You have no chance to win the tournament, of course, but that holds for 90% of the participants. This tournament is not for winning, but for the fun to watch your engine play.

[JVMerlino]

Myrddin will be joining after an absence of a few months. However, I'm in an area where Wifi is not 100% reliable. Since I won't be watching 100% of the time, I apologize in advance if Myrddin drops out and becomes annoying.

[pijl]

Seems something's wrong ... Can't login to the server anymore from either of my machines. Same problem on both sides. Some random characters seems to be sent to the server making it impossible for me to log in to the server. Anyone else with the same problem?