Engines Crashing in the Fritz 11 when Playing Tournaments

[mhalstern]

I prefer running Gauntlets and Round Robin Tournaments in the Fritz (Currently have Fritz 11 - Will shortly install Fritz 12) interface, as this allows me to include the Fritz Engines. I see posters in the "Tournaments and Matches" forum using the Fritz Interface and am hoping that I am doing something wrong that can be corrected.

I don't have problems creating uci or winboard (using wb2uci) engines in the Fritz 11 interface and playing engine matches. I do however have many problems with the same engines crashing when running Round Robin or Gauntlet tournaments. I haven't kept track of the engines that I have had problems with. Here is an example from today:

I set up a gauntlet with a new engine playing around 35 other engines g5 2 cycles hash standardized to 64 meg. After fewer than 10 games, Fritz stops the tournament, when the engine Diablo 0.5.1 (Intel 9.1 Build JA) fails to load. The error message read:

error - Diablo 0.5.1 (Intel 9.1 Build is not defined. Fritz had no issues loading the engine and playing an engine match after I clicked "OK." and used the interface to create a match between Diablo and the engine it was supposed to play in the gauntlet.

This makes no sense to me as when engines fail to load and play for a tournament, they will always load and play in a match.

I once emailed Chessbase support with this issue. They were not helpful and suggested that I don't play with the "buggy engines."

Does anybody here have any words of wisdom?

Thanks

[Graham Banks]

Diablo's name is too long. Find the 1kb uci file and edit the engine name to just Diablo 0.5.1. This should solve your problem.

[mhalstern]

This solved my problem.

I'm off to shorten other engine names.

It is not relevant enough to troubleshoot anymore, but it still strikes me odd that Fritz didn't have a problem with the long engine name when running an engine match?! Also the old long engine name is still displayed when running.

I have quick followup question:

Do you know how to pause a tournament in Fritz, and then resume it later?

Thanks

[Graham Banks]

Do you know how to pause a tournament in Fritz, and then resume it later?

Thanks

You can't interrupt a game without having that game restart next time you resume the tournament.
I'd try to catch it between games if you want to stop the tournament,

Cheers,
Graham.

[Alexander Schmidt]

I once emailed Chessbase support with this issue. They were not helpful and suggested that I don't play with the "buggy engines."

Nothing has changed with the buggy Fritz GUI and the Chessbase support

[Graham Banks]

I once emailed Chessbase support with this issue. They were not helpful and suggested that I don't play with the "buggy engines."

Nothing has changed with the buggy Fritz GUI and the Chessbase support

Never had any problems running tournaments under Fritz. The bugs probably lie elsewhere, in other features.

[mhalstern]

I once emailed Chessbase support with this issue. They were not helpful and suggested that I don't play with the "buggy engines."

Nothing has changed with the buggy Fritz GUI and the Chessbase support

Never had any problems running tournaments under Fritz. The bugs probably lie elsewhere, in other features.

Overall, I like Chessbase. I've been buying their programs for a long time. My earliest purchase was Knightstalker, whick I believe was the direct predecessor to Fritz. I had to quote their reply, as it was a bit rude and showed that they did not take any time to look into the issue.

Later

[Harvey Williamson]

This solved my problem.

I'm off to shorten other engine names.

It is not relevant enough to troubleshoot anymore, but it still strikes me odd that Fritz didn't have a problem with the long engine name when running an engine match?! Also the old long engine name is still displayed when running.

I have quick followup question:

Do you know how to pause a tournament in Fritz, and then resume it later?

Thanks

When you run an engine match each engine is only loaded once. I prefer a tournament as the engine is loaded before each game and the hash is cleared.

If you want to pause a tournament just close the current game and when asked to adjudicate it say no result. You can then just open the tournament again later and press run/continue.