best server for computers to play variants currently?

[Angrim]

So I used to do a lot with chess variants(suicide, atomic, crazyhouse) on FICS, but I just logged back in there and looked around, and there don't seem to be any serious engines playing variants there anymore. Did all of the variant programmers move somewhere else, or did engines playing variants just die off?

I've also looked at lichess, and it seems decent for humans to play variants, but not very friendly to computers if I read their policies right.

If it matters, I'm currently mostly thinking about atomic, looking for some serious competition for my engine to motivate me to work on it more.

Angrim

[Angrim]

nobody knows? Anyone know where people who would know tend to discuss stuff?

[EroSennin]

Isn't Lichess friendly enough? I sometimes play bots there

[Fabian Fichter]

Lichess does allow bots, you just need your account get marked as a BOT account, then you are allowed to use an engine, see https://github.com/careless25/lichess-bot. You can also watch bots playing live at https://lichess.org/tv/bot.

Here is the news where it was introduced: https://lichess.org/blog/WvDNticAAMu_mH ... chess-bots

[Angrim]

ok, read that. So bot accounts are allowed to play rated on lichess, but can't seek matches... people have to know that the bot exists from somewhere else and send it a match request. Am I understanding that right? I'm new to lichess so I may not be understanding how people get matches on there.

I did find this part sad:

Q: Will there be bot contests or tournaments?

A: Bot play cannot be competitive. No tournaments, no leaderboards, no trophies. Because it all boils down to who's got the biggest CPU to run Stockfish on.

So they have determined that nobody will ever improve on stockfish, even in the variants. And without leaderboards and other competitions, there is a lot less motivation to make a stronger engine than stockfish. Or to make an anti-stockfish opening book.

[George Tsavdaris]

I've also looked at lichess, and it seems decent for humans to play variants, but not very friendly to computers if I read their policies right.

If it matters, I'm currently mostly thinking about atomic, looking for some serious competition for my engine to motivate me to work on it more.

Your Atomic engine was always the best i remember on FICS. But now things changed.
There is a _MUCH_ stronger beast in the neighborhood. Stockfish! https://github.com/ddugovic/Stockfish
Can your engine beat this in Atomic?

BTW do you consider ever releasing your engine? I would like to see a decent opponent for Stockfish. It crushes everything right now too easily.

[Angrim]

It should be interesting to test out against stockfish. I think that mine is a bit more optimized for atomic than variant stockfish is, but the base engine for stockfish is of course stronger. Currently I'm going through and dealing with the bitrot from not working on it for so long, the last time I did any serious work on it, long ints were 32 bits.

[George Tsavdaris]

It should be interesting to test out against stockfish. I think that mine is a bit more optimized for atomic than variant stockfish is, but the base engine for stockfish is of course stronger. Currently I'm going through and dealing with the bitrot from not working on it for so long, the last time I did any serious work on it, long ints were 32 bits.

Is it too crazy to request to give it (to me or to public) to test it against Stockfish?
I'm too interested in Atomic Chess so it would be fun.
Or anyway any plans to ever release it?

[Angrim]

Is it too crazy to request to give it (to me or to public) to test it against Stockfish?
I'm too interested in Atomic Chess so it would be fun.
Or anyway any plans to ever release it?

I do not currently plan to give out copies, but I could change my mind someday.

[Angrim]

So I've looked into lichess more, and I still don't see any way for bots to get games on there, so even if bot accounts exist they might as well not. So I am still looking for anywhere that bots can play chess variants and get at least a few games per day.