CCT: New rules for CCT Events #2

[hgm]

Well, this is a clear choice by the organizers. It is a tournament for authors, not a tournament for programs. If the author can't be there, he can't be there, and he is out. We don't want his program, we want the author. If he cannot be there, having the program there is pointless.

Well, clearly we have different opinions on this. I will defer to what the majority wants. But I would point out that, as far as I know, none of the CCT events prior to CCT 12 had this rule in place.

Indeed; the rule was new, and intentionally created to formalize the change of policy by the new organizers.

I was not giving my own opinion, btw, but that of the organizers.

[Don]

Peter,

These rules sound good.

We now have a policy in place to handle such future situations and it's pretty simple - we are going to let YOU deal with it. We are not going to make any claims so it will be up to your patience how much extra time to allow beyond the deadlines and rules.

In order to protect ourselves from accusations of being bad sports we are going to make it public that we don't think you should stop any of the games should our opponents have trouble. This means it will be totally up to you to figure out what is fair and consistent and to take any heat for the decisions. It should not be a problem if you put a firm policy in place beforehand but I leave that up to you.

We are going to focus on playing chess and keeping everything going smoothly on our end and to let you run the tournament.

Hello everyone,

I have looked over the rules, and have tweaked a few for future events.

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Registration:

1. FICS has agreed to facilitate computer accounts for the CCT tournament. Authors should sign up a human account first, then contact the Tournament Director with their desired engine account name to register their program account. The Tournament Director will then get the account registered, and an email will be dispatched to the particpating author with their account password. This usually will take no longer than 24 hours. (Registration form will handle the above if properly filled out)
1a. It is preferred that your computer account name be the same as your engine name. If this is not possible, please the Tournament Director.

2. Only the original author, Operator or a team member of the original program may enter and operate. The definition of a team member is as follows:

An individual who has internal knowledge of the program and is recognized by the author as a member of the development team.. i.e. Developer, book maker. This person must have advanced knowledge of the program, such as how the program is designed, hashing schemes, book making procedures..

2a. Operators will only be allowed under the following conditions:
2a1. The author must be online during the tournament to participate in discussions in channel 64, and in the event there is an issue with their program they can provide real time support to their operator.
2a2. The operator must use the account that the author has signed up. No exceptions will be made.
2a3. No operator can operate more than one program. No exceptions will be made.

3. Book authors will be required to enter with only one team. Two teams (entrants) will not be able to use the same book author. Books can be as unique as a chess program, thus should follow the same rules as one program per author.

4. To enter, you need to be an established author. This means that a program of yours must have a track record in some public environment such as previous official tournaments participation. If your program has not competed in a previous CCT tournament, or in live events like the WCCC, IPCCC, Leiden, then you must take one of the steps below before registration will be accepted.

3a. Ways to establish yourself as a recognized author are:
If Private, your engine should have an history of official tournament participation (World champs, ACCA, Previous CCT, Paderborn etc)
If private, send the engine to the testing team to get their approval or release of the engine to the public.
Send your engine to be tested with the CCRL.
**All new engine authors undergo this screening test, so this is normal.

Clone/Derivatives Rules

1. Each participant (engine) must an original work. No entry can contain code from another program, or be a "clone" of another program. This includes any "personality" settings of an originating program. This includes opening books.

2. Any engine that is found to be "clone" of another program or close to it (e.g. engine output, pondering information, analysis of positions) will be declared void by the Tournament Director after seeking advice from notable sources. The notable sources will be individuals that have no active standing in other projects, and are respected within the computer chess community.

3. The Tournament Director can ask for the compiled executable and corresponding source to the participating version of an engine to let it be examined by the previous mentioned notable sources. If the author of the engine that is suspect were to refuse to confirm the originality of his own work, the engine and the author will be disqualified from the CCT, and will no longer be able to participate in future events.

Rules:

1. Registration will be limited to one entry per author. If an author has two programs, they must choose which one to enter. This is now extended to book authors, which must decide to enter with one team only. There will be no exceptions.

2. No manually operated programs, and all programs must kibitz their evaluation, and book moves/TB hits if possible. Providing as much information as possible for the viewers and participants is key. It should also be noted that 1-3 lines of text is sufficient. Whispering is not the same as kibitzing, as the opponent can not see your evaluation. If your program is found to be whispering instead of kibitzing, you will be asked to disconnect, correct the issue, and return. This disconnection will count towards rule 5.

3. Participants can use any hardware they can attain. Participants choosing to use remotely located hardware are recommended to have a suitable back up solution in the event of an uncorrectable malfunction.

4 . In the event that there is a late withdrawal or uneven amounts of players, the TD can substitute a program in place of the departing entrant to keep the numbered entries the same. And to avoid a bye round.

5. In the event of a disconnection, the party will be given 10 minutes to return to complete the game and no more than 2 disconnections per game will be allowed. On the third time, the game will be a forfeit. It will be required to request the forfeited win immediately upon the third disconnection.

6 . In the event that a program can not continue a game due to interface or program issues, it will forfeit the game. Under no circumstances will a new game be formed or the game restarted.

7. If a program is not open for matches or arrives late for a scheduled round, after 20 minutes the game will be considered a forfeit. This is to eliminate one game holding up the tournament.

8. Seeding will be calculated on results from previous official tournaments. WCCC/Leiden/IPCCC/CCT/Testing Groups.
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What do you all think of these?

Peter Skinner
CCT Tournament Director

[Stephan Vermeire (Brutus)]

Peter,

These rules sound good.

We now have a policy in place to handle such future situations and it's pretty simple - we are going to let YOU deal with it. We are not going to make any claims so it will be up to your patience how much extra time to allow beyond the deadlines and rules.

In order to protect ourselves from accusations of being bad sports we are going to make it public that we don't think you should stop any of the games should our opponents have trouble. This means it will be totally up to you to figure out what is fair and consistent and to take any heat for the decisions. It should not be a problem if you put a firm policy in place beforehand but I leave that up to you.

We are going to focus on playing chess and keeping everything going smoothly on our end and to let you run the tournament.

The thing is: with clear rules it will be much easier for the TD to deal with problems without getting into personal conflicts. Rules are there to make the job of the TD easier!
(By the way, I have great faith in Peters judgement. I think he really is one of the best TD's around and he has performed a great job during the last tournament).

[Peter Skinner]

Under rule 2a, I think the participation of Amyan would not have been allowed. So either this rule is going to be enforced or it should be modified.

I suggest instead of 2a:

- the author may designate an operator for the event. It is the author's responsibility to ensure that the operator is familiar enough with the program to operate it in the tourney. The TD must be informed of the operator's identity prior to the tourney and have a means to contact that person.

I suggest removing the requirement that the author be online. However desirable this might be, it should not be an absolute requirement IMO. Stuff happens and sometimes a person can't be there although the program could be - if this rule were in place.

I am ok with the other subparts of rule 2.

Actually when Scorpio didn't show up for round 1, I withdrew Amyan to have an even amount of participants.

Rule 4 states:

4 . In the event that there is a late withdrawal or uneven amounts of players, the TD can substitute a program in place of the departing entrant to keep the numbered entries the same. And to avoid a bye round.

Since I had Antonio's approval to operate Amyan, I re-entered it when Scorpio arrived. I simply didn't have time to get authority to enter anything else, and it was ready and setup to play.

Peter

[Peter Skinner]

Well, this is a clear choice by the organizers. It is a tournament for authors, not a tournament for programs. If the author can't be there, he can't be there, and he is out. We don't want his program, we want the author. If he cannot be there, having the program there is pointless.

Well, clearly we have different opinions on this. I will defer to what the majority wants. But I would point out that, as far as I know, none of the CCT events prior to CCT 12 had this rule in place.

You are quite right, it was never an issue before.

In discussing the rules for CCT12, it was overwhelmingly decided that people would prefer a "Team Member" or author present over just an operator.

Personally, I never liked the rule. It was what the majority of the previous entrants wanted, so it was added.

I would prefer the program play than not. Would I prefer an author be present? Of course, but in years past, we never really had too many issues with operators.

Peter

[Peter Skinner]

The thing is: with clear rules it will be much easier for the TD to deal with problems without getting into personal conflicts. Rules are there to make the job of the TD easier!
(By the way, I have great faith in Peters judgement. I think he really is one of the best TD's around and he has performed a great job during the last tournament).

If I am one of the best TD's around, then that is due to the participants that make my job look very easy.

I really do have a blast organizing and directing these events. If I didn't, I wouldn't do it, because for the most part, it really is a lot of work. Just ask Charles when it comes to the ACCA Events.

So I thank you for the compliment, but really, it is the participants that make the event worthwhile to me. Just the fact they are willing to come out and play is reason enough to do it. Enjoying the games is just a bonus.

Peter

[Peter Skinner]

I am sure Peter will correct me if I am wrong but I think he missed out the word 'online.' However i agree it has become a major event on the calendar.

No, I never missed the "online" term

When it comes to participation, the top 3 tournaments are:

1. CCT
2. ACCA
3. Leiden

When was the last time a IPCCC or WCCC had 28+ participants? We had Hiarcs, Shredder, Junior, Ktulu, Sjeng, Komodo, Thinker... all that was missing out the the top 10 was Fritz, Rybka and Naum.

Prior years, we were only missing Fritz.

CCT historically, is the strongest event of the year. (The last 8 or so)

Rybka _really_ missed an opportunity to play against what I feel is the #2 program right now in Sjeng. Both would have been on clusters, and both would have entered one of the strongest fields in memory.

From a sales perspective, Hiarcs, Sjeng, and Shredder come out looking like real winners.

Crafty, Ikarus, Scorpio, Komodo, Spark, and Thinker did very well against such a strong field. Amateurs are closing the gap very fast. I was very impressed with the strength of this year's event. The blitz event was amazing as well.

Shredder and Sjeng both showed they could play top chess no matter the time controls.

If no one else noticed it, Shredder is _greatly_ improved over the last released version. Junior was playing with an experimental version, so I take their results with a grain of salt. Amir is trying to polish his product up for a new release, and sure some bugs showed.

Ballsy though to play in a strong event with the possibility of it acting up

Peter

[Harvey Williamson]

I am sure Peter will correct me if I am wrong but I think he missed out the word 'online.' However i agree it has become a major event on the calendar.

No, I never missed the "online" term

When it comes to participation, the top 3 tournaments are:

1. CCT
2. ACCA
3. Leiden

When was the last time a IPCCC or WCCC had 28+ participants? We had Hiarcs, Shredder, Junior, Ktulu, Sjeng, Komodo, Thinker... all that was missing out the the top 10 was Fritz, Rybka and Naum.

Prior years, we were only missing Fritz.

CCT historically, is the strongest event of the year. (The last 8 or so)

Rybka _really_ missed an opportunity to play against what I feel is the #2 program right now in Sjeng. Both would have been on clusters, and both would have entered one of the strongest fields in memory.

From a sales perspective, Hiarcs, Sjeng, and Shredder come out looking like real winners.

Crafty, Ikarus, Scorpio, Komodo, Spark, and Thinker did very well against such a strong field. Amateurs are closing the gap very fast. I was very impressed with the strength of this year's event. The blitz event was amazing as well.

Shredder and Sjeng both showed they could play top chess no matter the time controls.

If no one else noticed it, Shredder is _greatly_ improved over the last released version. Junior was playing with an experimental version, so I take their results with a grain of salt. Amir is trying to polish his product up for a new release, and sure some bugs showed.

Ballsy though to play in a strong event with the possibility of it acting up

Peter

If we were able to use our GUI and book of choice in CCT then I could almost agree with you

The other thing with an online event is perhaps that no matter how good your detection methods someone is more likely to try and sneak a Clone in. The event is more anonymous. IF someone tries it somewhere like Japan they have wasted a lot of money in getting there.

CCT is a great tournament but nothing beats going for a beer, or something stronger, at the end of each day with the other competitors.

[pedrox]

Hello everyone,

I have looked over the rules, and have tweaked a few for future events.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Registration:

1. FICS has agreed to facilitate computer accounts for the CCT tournament. Authors should sign up a human account first, then contact the Tournament Director with their desired engine account name to register their program account. The Tournament Director will then get the account registered, and an email will be dispatched to the particpating author with their account password. This usually will take no longer than 24 hours. (Registration form will handle the above if properly filled out)
1a. It is preferred that your computer account name be the same as your engine name. If this is not possible, please the Tournament Director.

2. Only the original author, Operator or a team member of the original program may enter and operate. The definition of a team member is as follows:

An individual who has internal knowledge of the program and is recognized by the author as a member of the development team.. i.e. Developer, book maker. This person must have advanced knowledge of the program, such as how the program is designed, hashing schemes, book making procedures..

2a. Operators will only be allowed under the following conditions:
2a1. The author must be online during the tournament to participate in discussions in channel 64, and in the event there is an issue with their program they can provide real time support to their operator.
2a2. The operator must use the account that the author has signed up. No exceptions will be made.
2a3. No operator can operate more than one program. No exceptions will be made.

3. Book authors will be required to enter with only one team. Two teams (entrants) will not be able to use the same book author. Books can be as unique as a chess program, thus should follow the same rules as one program per author.

4. To enter, you need to be an established author. This means that a program of yours must have a track record in some public environment such as previous official tournaments participation. If your program has not competed in a previous CCT tournament, or in live events like the WCCC, IPCCC, Leiden, then you must take one of the steps below before registration will be accepted.

3a. Ways to establish yourself as a recognized author are:
If Private, your engine should have an history of official tournament participation (World champs, ACCA, Previous CCT, Paderborn etc)
If private, send the engine to the testing team to get their approval or release of the engine to the public.
Send your engine to be tested with the CCRL.
**All new engine authors undergo this screening test, so this is normal.

Clone/Derivatives Rules

1. Each participant (engine) must an original work. No entry can contain code from another program, or be a "clone" of another program. This includes any "personality" settings of an originating program. This includes opening books.

2. Any engine that is found to be "clone" of another program or close to it (e.g. engine output, pondering information, analysis of positions) will be declared void by the Tournament Director after seeking advice from notable sources. The notable sources will be individuals that have no active standing in other projects, and are respected within the computer chess community.

3. The Tournament Director can ask for the compiled executable and corresponding source to the participating version of an engine to let it be examined by the previous mentioned notable sources. If the author of the engine that is suspect were to refuse to confirm the originality of his own work, the engine and the author will be disqualified from the CCT, and will no longer be able to participate in future events.

Rules:

1. Registration will be limited to one entry per author. If an author has two programs, they must choose which one to enter. This is now extended to book authors, which must decide to enter with one team only. There will be no exceptions.

2. No manually operated programs, and all programs must kibitz their evaluation, and book moves/TB hits if possible. Providing as much information as possible for the viewers and participants is key. It should also be noted that 1-3 lines of text is sufficient. Whispering is not the same as kibitzing, as the opponent can not see your evaluation. If your program is found to be whispering instead of kibitzing, you will be asked to disconnect, correct the issue, and return. This disconnection will count towards rule 5.

3. Participants can use any hardware they can attain. Participants choosing to use remotely located hardware are recommended to have a suitable back up solution in the event of an uncorrectable malfunction.

4 . In the event that there is a late withdrawal or uneven amounts of players, the TD can substitute a program in place of the departing entrant to keep the numbered entries the same. And to avoid a bye round.

5. In the event of a disconnection, the party will be given 10 minutes to return to complete the game and no more than 2 disconnections per game will be allowed. On the third time, the game will be a forfeit. It will be required to request the forfeited win immediately upon the third disconnection.

6 . In the event that a program can not continue a game due to interface or program issues, it will forfeit the game. Under no circumstances will a new game be formed or the game restarted.

7. If a program is not open for matches or arrives late for a scheduled round, after 20 minutes the game will be considered a forfeit. This is to eliminate one game holding up the tournament.

8. Seeding will be calculated on results from previous official tournaments. WCCC/Leiden/IPCCC/CCT/Testing Groups.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What do you all think of these?

Peter Skinner
CCT Tournament Director

I have no clear point 3.

Can I participate with a public opening book? For example with the Rebel-Prodeo book or the PolyGlot book of Marc "performance.bin", independent that is used by other engines?

If only one program can, what?

[hgm]

I think the rule makes it lear that using a public book like performance.bin falls in the same category as using an open-source program like Fruit 2.1 for an engine.

You can do it if the author is in your team.