MCEC anyone?

[amanjpro]

So far, I have five participants only:

Barbarossa
Loki
Zahak
MinimalChessEngine
Rustic

I wait a few more days before I start the tournament, so please hurry up and submit your engine here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1podbnb ... -PnIdPObTU

To see the test run of the tournament, head to here:
https://zatour.amanj.me

In case the number of the engines stayed below 10:
- Round-robin of 30 games matches between each two engines
- time control inf/1500+2

[amanjpro]

Somehow, I enjoy this more than TCEC... Either because I can better relate to it. Or, because the chess level is not devine for me, I understand it, I can even expect best moves and sometimes get it right.

I like the playing style of MinimalChess the most, aggressive and open. Zahak used to be the same upto version 0.3.0 or maybe 1.0.0 too.

Loki and current Zahak are more grinders, they sure win games a lot, but mostly boring and positional ones (I'm a tactical player, and can only enjoy/understand that).

Barbarossa seems to think very deep, but narrow. I've seen him being outsmarted by Loki, and against Zahak he had a slightly better endgame, but went ahead and locked the pawns to make the game dead draw.

I'll be adding a chatbox to the website. Probably an IRC chatbox. I am not on Twitch and don't know it, and couldn't figure out how to embed discord in a website

[amanjpro]

Minimal Chess scored a draw against Loki... The first unexpected bloodshed in this test run... Kudos to Minimal Chess

And currently, he is holding an inferior endgame against Loki again... Which if played perfectly it is another draw.

Could MinimalChess score the second draw in a row?

[hgm]

Sorry for the late response; I was away on vacation this week. I have two engines that satisfy the requirements: Fairy-Max and KingSlayer. But I don't know whether it is allowed to register those both. (But I have done that anyway! )It seems good to have Fairy-Max in the tournament as a calibration standard for how strong a bug-free engine with virtually no features should be. KingSlayer should be a lot stronger, though, because it does have Pawn Structure end King Safety evaluation, and knowledeg of drawish end-games, and use move-sorting alorithms like MVV/LVA and killer.

As to the tournament page: it would be nice if there was a possibility for the spectators to chat.

[Henk]

Which version of Fairy-Max. Fairy-Max 4.8V may loose on time and you wrote a while ago that an engine should never loose on time.
So 4.8V is not bug free.

O wait compared to Skipper Fairy-Max is bug free.

[mvanthoor]

Sorry for the late response; I was away on vacation this week. I have two engines that satisfy the requirements: Fairy-Max and KingSlayer. But I don't know whether it is allowed to register those both. (But I have done that anyway! )It seems good to have Fairy-Max in the tournament as a calibration standard for how strong a bug-free engine with virtually no features should be.

What features does Fairy-Max actually have?

Without MVV-LVA and PV-move sorting, it would be impossible to hit 1800+ Elo. If I remove MVV-LVA from Rustic, or TT-Move sorting, the rating tanks by hundreds of points.

[lithander]

Really great idea with the tournament. I have it open on my 2nd screen during work and it's great fun even if I personally can't follow that high level of play (I only play at beginner level)

I like the playing style of MinimalChess the most, aggressive and open. Zahak used to be the same upto version 0.3.0 or maybe 1.0.0 too.

Based on Mike Sherwin's criticism that he wasn't liking the playstyle of my PST only evaluation I added a 13th auto-tunable table for dynamic terms. It's super costly to compute but it provided some ELO gain and if it also turns out to improves the engine's style (which was the main point and you seem happy with it, now) then that's great to hear!

Edit: I should maybe clarify that you're playing version 0.4.4 of MinimalChess that hasn't been tested by CCRL. It's rating should be higher then the 1884 listed in the match info, though. But I don't know exactly how high. Maybe around 2000.

[Daniel Anulliero]

Which version of Fairy-Max. Fairy-Max 4.8V may loose on time and you wrote a while ago that an engine should never loose on time.
So 4.8V is not bug free.

O wait compared to Skipper Fairy-Max is bug free.

Well , i've played tons of games vs fairy may / Umax 4.8 , when I've tested my old engine Jars , LOT occured not very often with fairy max ... you must doing another thing very wrong
And : every engines are bugfree compared to skipper

[amanjpro]

Add freenode chat to the website... not exactly happy with it, but better than nothing

The channel is #zatour

[amanjpro]

Sorry for the late response; I was away on vacation this week. I have two engines that satisfy the requirements: Fairy-Max and KingSlayer. But I don't know whether it is allowed to register those both. (But I have done that anyway! )It seems good to have Fairy-Max in the tournament as a calibration standard for how strong a bug-free engine with virtually no features should be. KingSlayer should be a lot stronger, though, because it does have Pawn Structure end King Safety evaluation, and knowledeg of drawish end-games, and use move-sorting alorithms like MVV/LVA and killer.

As to the tournament page: it would be nice if there was a possibility for the spectators to chat.

Both your download links for FiaryMax and KingSlayer binaries are broken, can you please post them here?