Operator Error at a WCCC

[Sean Evans]

I thought the computers moved through a connection between them.

[hgm]

You thought wrong.

[edwardyu]

Hi HG,

A little bit side-tracked. Do you use Winboard or other GUI to compete with your Taiwan XiangQi opponents in the 2009 Olympaid? If I recall correctly, in 2008 Beijing Olympaid (or WCCC) XiangQi tournaments, some of our Chinese computer authors agreed to play using the ElephantEye (XiangQi Wizard) interface.

Edward Yu

[hgm]

None of the Tawainese programs supported a 'standard' engine-GUI interface. I saw at least one game where they were playing each other automatically, though, on different omputers, and someone on a third computer was observing the game. When I asked them about it, they said they were using a server. It was not clear to me what server, and what protocol they were using to communicate with it. It seemed to be the engine itself that was interacting with the server. (In so far as it is possible to make that distinction; each engine seemed to have its own dedicated GUI, and I don't know if these formed an integrated program, or if there was some engine-GUI separation, and if so, how engine communicated wth GUI, and which of the two then was responsible for contacting the ICCS. I still plan to ask them more about this.

The way we played in the Xiangqi tourney was different from the Chess tourney: we had no board and pieces, but just put the monitors next to each other, with the board in the same orientation, just looking at each other's displays for seeing the moves, and ten copying them to our own screen. We did use an external clock, which we had to push by hand as soon as our program had moved.

As I played with the westernized representation of the built-in bitmaps, I guess this must have been a quite unusual experience for the opponents.

I hardly know anything about XQWizzard, as there is no English documentation. Does it allow you to connect an engine to an ICCS, or does it allow peer-to-peer connections between XQWizzards running on different computers? Does XQWizzard fully implement the rules for perpetual chasing, in engine-engine matches?

Against other UCCI engines, in theory automatic play would be possible under WinBoard (through UCCI2WB) on the same machine (if CPU demands of the engines are not such that they hinder each other). Or on different machines, if they each would run WinBoard, and connect to the FICS-like ICS that I run on yet another computer (under Linux), which I hacked to also support Xiangqi. It seems questionable if any opponents would go for this, though, even if they did have a UCCI engine.

[Steve B]

Another question i have regarding operator involvement at the WCCC's

i know that all of the games are not played out until mate or drawn(insufficient,stalemate, 50 move or 3 fold rep draws)nor does each game last until one of the engines game clock expires
do the operators offer/accept draws and resign for their programs even though the engine itself is not indicating it would resign or showing an eval of 0.00?
i realize that there are time constraints to the length of each round and the event cannot go on endlessly for days with each game of each round being played out to the 50 move rule..but still ..this would seem like fairly significant operator involvement

if the operators are not allowed to do that then do the engines have a mechanism to resign and offer/accept draws when asked by the operator?

Regards
Steve

[pijl]

Another question i have regarding operator involvement at the WCCC's

i know that all of the games are not played out until mate or drawn(insufficient,stalemate, 50 move or 3 fold rep draws)nor does each game last until one of the engines game clock expires
do the operators offer/accept draws and resign for their programs even though the engine itself is not indicating it would resign or showing an eval of 0.00?
i realize that there are time constraints to the length of each round and the event cannot go on endlessly for days with each game of each round being played out to the 50 move rule..but still ..this would seem like fairly significant operator involvement

if the operators are not allowed to do that then do the engines have a mechanism to resign and offer/accept draws when asked by the operator?

In principle the operator may only copy the moves from/to the computer and relay questions/commands from one computer to the other (e.g draw offers or resignation). In practice, agreeing a draw or resigning is also allowed when the TD gives permission to do so.
Richard.

[Steve B]

Thanks Richard
so i gather from your reply ..that the Engines can offer and accept/reject draws and also offer to resign

regarding operators asking the TD to approve draws and resignation when the Engines are not indicating them..

as a frequent WCCC participant..what percentage of games would you say end that way in the Championships you have entered?
obviously i am only asking for your rough guesstimate here

Best Regards
Steve

[pijl]

Thanks Richard
so i gather from your reply ..that the Engines can offer and accept/reject draws and also offer to resign

regarding operators asking the TD to approve draws and resignation when the Engines are not indicating them..

as a frequent WCCC participant..what percentage of games would you say end that way in the Championships you have entered?
obviously i am only asking for your rough guesstimate here

I'm not interested in playing on a lost game, but I have seen that engines are much quicker in noticing that they're lost than the humans watching without silicon assistance. So I usually continue until it is a clear loss (meaning playing on 10 more moves in a lost game), ask the permission of the TD (which I usually get) and resign.
Draws are a bit trickier. Usually they are played out until a 3rd repetition as the machines seldomly offer one (if the engines have the capability to offer draws or resign it is usually turned off to leave it to the operator whether he really wants to draw or resign) and even more rarely accepted that way. Only when the assistance of the 50 more rule is required _and_ both engines indicate the draw (or a very small plus score at best), the permission of the TD is sought to agree a draw. The reason is that it is very common for engines to throw a drawn ending by playing inferior moves or even sacrificing material when they think they are significantly better ... and lose.
But the choice here is personal. Some operators like to play out until their engine finds a mate score.
btw I only attended the WCCC twice (in person): Amsterdam 2007 and Pamplona 2009. In Reykjavik (2005) and Beijing (2008) the Baron was represented by an operator who made the choices whether to play on or seek the TD permission to resign (which is unfortunately the most common end of the game for the Baron).

Richard.