2011 6h Annual ACCA Pan American Computer Chess Championship

[CRoberson]

These should work:

set kibitz 1
set formula computer & !rated & time=45 & inc=10

Yes, that should work. But how is "noescape" to be handled?

To my knowledge he doesn't have it on the system. We might need to test that escapes are allowed but I think they are.

[sje]

The Linux and Mac (OS/X 10.7 compatible) versions can be had from:

http://www.freechess.org/cgi-bin/Downlo ... erface.cgi

Note that older versions of timeseal compiled for a PowerPC CPU host will NOT work under Mac OS/X 10.7 because Apple dropped PowerPC emulation in that release.

I have tested the NEW timeseal for OS/X 10.7 with HGM's server and it works.

[hgm]

All participants beware!

During the GECCO a bug surfaced, where games were messed up because the board size suddenly changed to 10x8, making the engine crash. This happened when someone started a Gothic Chess game on the server.

We think we traced the bug, because the affected participants all had their gin variable set to 1, and none of those that had gin=0 were affected.

So be sure to set gin to 0 ("set gin 0")

(gin=1 requests the server to notify you of any game that starts on the server. Apparently the current WinBoard has a bug, where such a notification affects the game in progress. For wild games this apparently involes the sending of the board, and the sizeof that board is then remembered by WinBoard...)

[jdart]

I sure hope this works. Arasan has been playing on FICS (freechess.org) since 1996, so that is a sure thing. But this server is new to me.

[CRoberson]

I sure hope this works. Arasan has been playing on FICS (freechess.org) since 1996, so that is a sure thing. But this server is new to me.

HGM has been running monthly tournaments on his server and posting the results on the programmers section of CCC for almost 3 years now. I entered some myself starting in Feb 2009.

I think it should be fine.

[michiguel]

I sure hope this works. Arasan has been playing on FICS (freechess.org) since 1996, so that is a sure thing. But this server is new to me.

Last time, FICS made half of the participants disconnect all the time. Last time I connected to that server, it kept doing the same thing.

Miguel

[jdart]

I've been ok on it but during the last ACCA tourney I tried connecting from an east coast machine and that was not reliable.

--Jon

[marcelk]

It is probably a winboard/xboard quirk. On FICS has shown the same problem. Only no sane person has gin=1 on FICS anymore that is why it popped up at HGM's. The workaround is easy: set gin 0 as player and as second measure HGM has disabled the starting of wild games for the time being.

[hgm]

Well, since everyone now has gin=0, I revoked the latter measure. Between the tourneys I did a test with gin=1, while starting a Gothic game on another machine, and indeed this is what the log of one of the players said:

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200559 <first :  5     -3       20      25945 f7f5 h2h3 g4h6 c1f4 f8e7
200839 <first :  6    -20       48      80172 f7f5 f1e2 f8e7 h2h3 g4h6 e1g1
200899 <first :  6     -8       54      91070 f7f6 h2h3 g4h6 c1f4 d7d6 f1d3 f6e5 d4e5
201280 <first :  7     -4       92     166681 f7f6 h2h3 g4h6 c1f4 h6f5 f1c4 f8e7
204084 <first :  8     -4      372     716850 f7f6 h2h3 g4h6 f1e2 f6e5 c1g5 f8e7 g5e7
209231 <first :  9     -7      887    1751179 f7f6 f3g1 f6f5 h2h3 g4h6 c1h6 g7h6 d1h5 e8e7 e1c1
213838 <first :  9     -6     1347    2662015 f7f5 h2h3 g4h6 f1e2 f8b4 c1f4 e8g8 e1g1 a7a5
<ICS: \012\015{Game 2 (admin vs. conan) Creating unrated gothic match.}\012\015trics% 
ics input 9, castling = 7 0 4 7 0 4
recognized 'unrated gothic match.' (-1) as variant gothic
Switch board from normal to gothic
shuffleOpenings = 0
241848 <first :  9      2     4148    8005677 d7d6 h2h3 g4h6 c1f4 f7f6 f1d3 d6e5 d4e5 h6f5
241858 <first : move d7d6

You see the player (which had gin=1) suddenly gets a message

{Game 2 (admin vs. conan) Creating unrated gothic match.},

and that WinBoard reacts to that, because I assumed you would only get such messages to announce starting of your own game, not of other people's games. So long agoI put code in WinBoard to react on it:

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  /* Game start messages */
  if (strncmp(why, "Creating ", 9) == 0 ||
      strncmp(why, "Continuing ", 11) == 0) {
    gs_gamenum = gamenum;
    safeStrCpy(gs_kind, strchr(why, ' ') + 1,sizeof(gs_kind)/sizeof(gs_kind[0]));
    VariantSwitch(boards[currentMove], StringToVariant(gs_kind)); // [HGM] variantswitch: even before we get first board
#if ZIPPY
    if (appData.zippyPlay) {
      ZippyGameStart(whitename, blackname);
    }
#endif /*ZIPPY*/
    partnerBoardValid = FALSE; // [HGM] bughouse
    continue;
  }

The variant-switch was needed before ZippyGameStart, so the engine would know which variant to play. So this was really the only place I could add it. But it should obviously be suppressed when you are already involved in a game. So I will probably add the line

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    if(ics_gamenum == -1) // [HGM] only if we are not already involved in a game (because gin=1 sends us such messages)

before VariantSwitch. (This assumes you are not observing a game. But observing a game of one variant, and then starting a game in another variant is recipe for trouble anyway...)

So I consider the problem correctly diagnosed, and playing with gin=0 should be 100% safe. It is a WinBoard problem, not a server problem; on FICS WinBoard would have the same problem (when gin=1) when crazyhouse games were started anywhere on FICS.

[CRoberson]

ACCA 2011 standings

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rk ID  name   col   opp   res  tot
 2 h Hannibal wbwb  ragt  111  3
 1 t Thinker  -bww  -lqh  011  2
 3 c Crafty   wbwb  pqag  1==  2
 4 g Gaviota  wbbw  lrhc  110  2
 7 p Telepath bwwb  csra  011  2
 5 a Arasan   bwbw  shct  10=  1.5
 6 q RedQueen -wbw  -cts  1=0  1.5
10 s Symbolic wbwb  aplq  001  1
 8 l Plisk    bwbw  gtsi  000  0
 9 i Tinker   ---b  ---l  000  0
11 r Parrot   bwb-  hgp-  000  0

Round 3

Hannibal-Gaviota 1-0
Crafty-Arasan 1/2
Thinker-RedQueen 1-0
Telepath-Parrot 1-0
Symbolic-Plisk 1-0

tentative Round 4 (if everyone shows up)

Thinker-Hannibal
Gaviota-Crafty
Arasan-Telepath
RedQueen-Symbolic
Plisk-Tinker
Parrot-BYE

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