set up fixed depth for winboard engines?

[Togga]

how to do it under arena?

when i set up depth 9 the winboard engines play then at depth 3-4 but not depth 9.

whats wrong with winboard engines and arena?

which chess guis support fixed depth engine matches which not?

[hgm]

Whet you call "fixed depth" in WinBoard engines is actually not fixed depth, but maximum depth. There is no fixed-depth command in WB protocol. So if you don't specify slow enough time control, the engines will run out of time before they reach the depth limit you specify, forcing them to move.

[Togga]

i wanted to play under arena fixed depth games matches, not matches at any timecontrols.
then here is uci better than winboard. when comes winboard protocol 3?

[hgm]

To start with your last question: never, if it is upto me.

You did nt get the point I was tryig to make: to play fixed-depth matches with WinBoard engines you must set very long TC, so that the engine will never run into tme problems, and hence reach the depth you set. It is not a matter of one protocol being better than another. It is a matter of users not knowing how to use one protocol or another...

[Togga]

ok, i understand now, i will try it later.
but when i want to run a match: winboard against uci engine then how i can setup fixed depth for uci engine and timecontrol+ fixed depth for winboard engine?

[hgm]

wiboard -sd 9 -st 9999 -fcp UCIENGINE.exe -fUCI -scp WBENGINE.exe -mg 10

should do it, for a match of 10 games. (Assuming that 9999 min is enough for all engines to always reach depth 9.)

[Sven]

To start with your last question: never, if it is upto me.

You did nt get the point I was tryig to make: to play fixed-depth matches with WinBoard engines you must set very long TC, so that the engine will never run into tme problems, and hence reach the depth you set. It is not a matter of one protocol being better than another. It is a matter of users not knowing how to use one protocol or another...

Users do not necessarily have to know protocols. IMO it is up to the GUI to offer a feature like "play a fixed-depth game", and to internally translate this into the required protocol elements. So the request would be that the GUI sends "sd N" and "level <parameters for nearly infinite search>" to a WB engine when the user wants to play a fixed-depth game. I don't know if Arena does that but WinBoard at least seems not to do it this way.

Maybe it would also be nice if the WB protocol had an "infinite" time control setting, similar to UCI, with the normal "level" command. This would allow to avoid some artificial "level 1 333333 0" setting.

Sven

[hgm]

Maybe it would also be nice if the WB protocol had an "infinite" time control setting, similar to UCI, with the normal "level" command. This would allow to avoid some artificial "level 1 333333 0" setting.

It has. It is called analyze mode.

There is no menu in WB for setting fixed depth; you have to do it through a command line option. But if there was one, it would be caled 'depth limit'. That should make it clear enough to the user that it is a limit, and no guarantee the specified depth will be reached if you don't grant it enough time.

But I don't plan to make such a menu item, as playing fixed depth is not a sensible mode to run an engine in. (It would start to play like an idiot in the end-game, and most engines would exhibit a totally crazy allocation of thinking time, using, say, on the average 1 min/move, and then suddenly 2 hours for a single move where some extensions were triggered.) The recommended way to compare engines in a time-independent way is having them play by node count. I might provide a menu item for that in WinBoard.

[Sven]

Maybe it would also be nice if the WB protocol had an "infinite" time control setting, similar to UCI, with the normal "level" command. This would allow to avoid some artificial "level 1 333333 0" setting.

It has. It is called analyze mode.

Analyze mode is not suitable for that purpose because the engine does not play a move when analyze mode is left. Also you cannot combine analyze mode with "sd" because analyze mode means infinite analysis until one of the specified termination commands occurs (especially "."), and reaching the depth given by "sd" does not belong to these termination conditions.

There is no menu in WB for setting fixed depth; you have to do it through a command line option. But if there was one, it would be caled 'depth limit'. That should make it clear enough to the user that it is a limit, and no guarantee the specified depth will be reached if you don't grant it enough time.

But I don't plan to make such a menu item, as playing fixed depth is not a sensible mode to run an engine in. (It would start to play like an idiot in the end-game, and most engines would exhibit a totally crazy allocation of thinking time, using, say, on the average 1 min/move, and then suddenly 2 hours for a single move where some extensions were triggered.) The recommended way to compare engines in a time-independent way is having them play by node count. I might provide a menu item for that in WinBoard.

Maybe the users want to decide which features they like and which they don't like How many requests for that same feature do you need to change your mind?

Playing fixed-depth games may be less relevant for strong engines, especially those making heavy use of extensions/reductions/pruning. But the world has much more weak engines than strong ones, and it may be an interesting feature for several engine authors even if you don't believe it.

As I pointed out this is already possible today when combining "sd N" with some artifical "level 1 333333 0" setting, or similar. So you would not add new functionality but just a little bit more convenience for users if you would define an explicit "infinite" time limit setting and a way to set up this sd+level combination by GUI and/or command line switch. I see no point in not making something more comfortable which is already possible.

Sven

[Togga]

and how to run this on arena gui?

i want use arena.