Chess variant tournaments

[enhorning]

I am going to run a series of (mostly Winboard) Chess variant tournaments.

General settings: single-core, 512 MB hash, ponder off.
Hardware: six-core Intel i-970, 6 GB ram.

First up is Knightmate, and the list of participants (i.e. programs I could find as free downloads) so far is:

Faile KM 144_ja
Fairy-Max 4.8(w)
Fimbulwinter KM 50_ja
Gerbil KM 0.2_ja
Jabba 1.0 KM
Joker KM
Lime KM 621_ja
Nebiyu 1.42
SamChess KM 1.2
Sjaak r470
Tadyak 1.1
Vanilla Chess KM 26g_ja

Time control will be 40 moves in 400 seconds (i.e. 10 seconds / move average).

... depending on my patience for doing games manually, Zillions might get added as a participant, or might only play a few games against selected opponents. The preliminary plan is a double round-robin: each program playing every other program as each colour.

If somebody has never versions of these engines, or have more engines they would like to see in the tournament, let me know asap - I am hoping to start this one in a day's time.

Next tournament will probably be Crazyhouse.

[Jim Ablett]

Dabbaba can play Knightmate.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5047625/dabbaba-652-ja.zip

You need to edit 'dabbaba.ini' to turn on Knightmate mode.

Jim.

[enhorning]

Dabbaba can play Knightmate.

Okay, I added Dabbaba to my installed engines.

Is there a way to increase the amount of memory it uses for the hashtable? By default, it uses very little, it seems.

[Jim Ablett]

Dabbaba can play Knightmate.

Okay, I added Dabbaba to my installed engines.

Is there a way to increase the amount of memory it uses for the hashtable? By default, it uses very little, it seems.

Dabbaba dates back to 90's when dos programs used very little memory/hash.
Jens, the author is working on this, but for the moment hash is fixed size.

Jim.

[enhorning]

Hmm, I am running into trouble with Nebiyu in my test blitz tournaments:

[Event "Computer Chess Game"]
[Site "ENHORNING"]
[Date "2012.12.13"]
[Round "6"]
[White "NebiyuChess_1.43"]
[Black "Gerbil KM 0.2_ja"]
[Result "*"]
[TimeControl "60/30"]
[Variant "knightmate"]
[FEN "rmbqkbmr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RMBQKBMR w KQkq - 0 1"]
[SetUp "1"]

{--------------
r m b q k b m r
p p p p p p p p
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
P P P P P P P P
R M B Q K B M R
white to play
--------------}
*

Seems Nebiyu when white sends a setup command with a fen, and three or so of the other programs refuses to accept it, claiming illegal fen / position.

I've also had the odd game when Lime gets stuck on the loading engine stage, but a restart usually solves that.

[Richard Allbert]

How often does Lime have the issue?

do you have a debug log?

Thanks

Richard

[enhorning]

How often does Lime have the issue?

do you have a debug log?

I haven't seen it again since... might have been an issue with the tournament (it was very short time limits, as I was testing things out), or a rare occurrence.

On the other hand, I just had an illegal move from Vanilla Chess:

[Event "Computer Chess Game"]
[Site "ENHORNING"]
[Date "2012.12.15"]
[Round "9"]
[White "Vanilla Chess KM 26g_ja"]
[Black "Jabba 1.0 KM"]
[Result "0-1"]
[TimeControl "40/600"]
[Variant "knightmate"]
[Annotator "1. -0.03 1... +0.01"]

1. f4 b6 2. e3 Mb7 3. Mf2 g6 4. Bd3 Bh6 5. Kg1 Mc6 6. b4 Mg7 7. b5 Mc5 8.
g4 f6 9. h4 Mf7 10. Ba3 d5 11. c3 Qd7 12. g5 Bg7 13. Bxc5 bxc5 14. Qf3 Qg4+
15. Qxg4 Bxg4 16. e4 c4 17. Bc2 Kc8 18. Mg3 Bd7 19. exd5 Bxb5 20. a4 Ba6
21. Be4 Bb7 22. Ma2 Bxd5 23. Bc2 f5 24. h5 h6 25. hxg6 Mxg6 26. Rab1 hxg5
27. Rb8+ Kd6 28. Rxd8+ Rxd8 29. fxg5 Mxg5 30. Ke2 Be4 31. Bxe4 Kxe4 32.
Mf3+ Kc5 33. Rd1 Kxa4 34. Ma3+ Kb6 35. Me3 Rh8 36. Rg1 Rh2+ 37. Kc1 Bxc3
38. Rxg5 Bxd2+ 39. Mxd2 Rxd2 40. Mb3 Rd1+ 41. Ke2 Re1+ 42. Kc3 Re3+ 43. Kb5
cxb3 44. Rg6+ Kd5 45. Rg2 a6+ 46. Kd4 f4 47. Kc6 Kc3 48. Rf2 f3 49. Rd2 e5
50. Ka5 Ke4 51. Rd5 b2 52. Rxe5+ Kg3 53. Rxe3 b1=Q 54. Rxf3+ Ke4 55. Rf4+
Kd6 56. Rf6+ Kb5 57. Rxa6 Qa2+ 58. Re6
{User adjudication} 0-1

Still haven't worked out a fix for the Nebiyu issue, but given that it only affects a low number of games, I might just play those games outside of the tournament manager.

I also get processes sometimes getting left running after Winboard have moved on to new players - in two cases, they were using up cpu as well?!? As it's been several different programs leaving processes behind, I assume it's some kind of Winboard issue.

[JBNielsen]

Dabbaba can play Knightmate.

Okay, I added Dabbaba to my installed engines.

Is there a way to increase the amount of memory it uses for the hashtable? By default, it uses very little, it seems.

Dabbaba dates back to 90's when dos programs used very little memory/hash.
Jens, the author is working on this, but for the moment hash is fixed size.

Jim.

Thanks for adding Dabbaba.

I hope to see a nightrider-tournament some day, by the way...

Dabbaba uses ca 20MB for hashtables (512.000 elements). I have no plans to increase that right now.

As Graham has just started a new tournament where Dabbaba participates, I am trying to get a slightly improved Dabbaba 6.80 ready to release. Read more here http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46405

best, jens

[Ferdy]

I am going to run a series of (mostly Winboard) Chess variant tournaments.

General settings: single-core, 512 MB hash, ponder off.
Hardware: six-core Intel i-970, 6 GB ram.

First up is Knightmate, and the list of participants (i.e. programs I could find as free downloads) so far is:

Faile KM 144_ja
Fairy-Max 4.8(w)
Fimbulwinter KM 50_ja
Gerbil KM 0.2_ja
Jabba 1.0 KM
Joker KM
Lime KM 621_ja
Nebiyu 1.42
SamChess KM 1.2
Sjaak r470
Tadyak 1.1
Vanilla Chess KM 26g_ja

Time control will be 40 moves in 400 seconds (i.e. 10 seconds / move average).

... depending on my patience for doing games manually, Zillions might get added as a participant, or might only play a few games against selected opponents. The preliminary plan is a double round-robin: each program playing every other program as each colour.

If somebody has never versions of these engines, or have more engines they would like to see in the tournament, let me know asap - I am hoping to start this one in a day's time.

Next tournament will probably be Crazyhouse.

Looking forward for Tadyak's performance

[enhorning]

Thanks for adding Dabbaba.

I hope to see a nightrider-tournament some day, by the way...

Dabbaba uses ca 20MB for hashtables (512.000 elements). I have no plans to increase that right now.

As Graham has just started a new tournament where Dabbaba participates, I am trying to get a slightly improved Dabbaba 6.80 ready to release.

Any idea when this new version might get released? If it's fairly soon, I could hold off on Dabbaba's games and play them last, to get the new version participating.

As far as Nightrider tournament - it is on my list of possibilities, but for now, fairly low down, as it is not a version I have personally played.

I've been playing a couple of smaller and quicker test tournaments, while getting used to Winboard, and trying to come to grips with various technical issues... going to start the real tournament tonight, I think.

I'm also leaning towards increasing the time controls - to 40 moves in 20 minutes (30 seconds per move average) instead of 40 moves in 400 seconds / 10 seconds per move average.