13th Amateur Series Division 4

[Spock]

I was also very worried about Rotor ! At the half way mark it was still dead last, but it did make a bit of a come-back. Even so it was a bad tournament for Rotor, it deserved to finish in the top 5. Anyway, it did enough to live another day in D4 for the next series

[Michael Sherwin]

13TH AMATEUR SERIES (Division 4)

Intel QX6700 Quad Core
ChessGUI
128mb hash each
3-4-5 piece tablebases
Ponder off
HS-Large Remis book (limited to 12 moves)
40 moves in 28 minutes repeating (adapted for the CCRL)
4 cycles 44 rounds
All engines 32-bit 1CPU
Run by Ray Banks

The winner will gain automatic promotion into Division 3 for the following series. The second placed engine will play a ten game match against the second bottom engine from Division 3 with the winner possibly playing in Division 3 in the following series. The bottom engine will be automatically relegated into Division 5 for the following series. The second bottom engine will play a ten game match against the second top engine from Division 5 with the winner possibly playing in Division 4 for the following series.

Final Standings

27.0 - Crimson 1.0
26.5 - Queen 4.02
26.5 - Critter 0.39a
26.0 - Homer 2.01
22.5 - Matacz 1.4
21.5 - n2 0.1
21.0 - Typhoon 1.00-358
20.5 - Rotor 0.4
20.5 - Counter 1.1
18.5 - Horizon 4.4
17.5 - Delphil 1.9g
16.0 - RomiChess P3k


The complete tournament pgn can be downloaded here:
http://kirill-kryukov.com/chess/discuss ... p?id=15386

Well, I was going to keep my mouth shut!

I hope that I am wrong, however, I believe that if this tournament was rerun under Arena or Winboard the results would look much different. And for more programs than just mine. If my suspicion is right then ChessGui results are invalidating the CCRL rating list. Like I said, I hope that I am wrong! Has this possibility actually been looked into

[Spock]

Well, I was going to keep my mouth shut!

I hope that I am wrong, however, I believe that if this tournament was rerun under Arena or Winboard the results would look much different. And for more programs than just mine. If my suspicion is right then ChessGui results are invalidating the CCRL rating list. Like I said, I hope that I am wrong! Has this possibility actually been looked into

What on earth are you going on about ????

If you ran the tournament 10 times under say Arena or Winboard you'd get 10 different results every time. And if you expect that every time you run a tournament, the rankings will be exactly the same as the ELO ratings of the participating engines, you are sadly mistaken.

Engines have "bad tournaments" and "good tournaments", that is just the way it goes.

To suggest ChessGUI has influenced the result in some way is an insult to the author.

[Graham Banks]

I hope that I am wrong, however, I believe that if this tournament was rerun under Arena or Winboard the results would look much different. And for more programs than just mine. If my suspicion is right then ChessGui results are invalidating the CCRL rating list. Like I said, I hope that I am wrong! Has this possibility actually been looked into

One can have good tournaments and bad tournaments. This was just a bad tournament for RomiChess.
Looking forward to the release of the much stronger new RomiChess!

[Graham Banks]

CEGT

2524 - Critter 0.39a
2485 - Matacz 1.4
2458 - Typhoon 1.00-358
2422 - Homer 2.0 (2.01 is a bit stronger)
2412 - Queen 4.03
2408 - RomiChess P3K

UCI Engines Ligue

2385 - Rotor 0.4
2383 - Crimson 1.0
2377 - Critter 0.39a
2376 - N2 0.1
2367 - Delphil 1.9g
2332 - Counter 1.1
2289 - Queen 4.03
2266 - Homer 2.01

WBEC

Division 2
Matacz 1.4
Typhoon 1.00-358

Division 3
Queen 4.03
Horizon 4.4
Delphil 1.9g

Division 4
Rotor 0.4
RomiChess P3K

ChessWars

2383 - Matacz 1.4
2358 - Homer 2.01
2342 - Rotor 0.4
2328 - Delphil 2.0b2
2313 - Typhoon 1.00-358
2303 - Queen 4.03
2302 - N2 0.1 64-bit
2289 - Horizon 4.4
2286 - RomiChess P3K
2213 - Counter 1.1

CCRL

2596 - Critter 0.39a
2581 - Rotor 0.4
2578 - Matacz 1.4
2569 - Crimson 1.0
2568 - N2 0.1
2559 - Counter 1.1
2558 - Delphil 1.9g
2548 - Typhoon 1.00-358
2541 - Homer 2.01
2514 - Queen 4.02a
2510 - RomiChess P3K
2503 - Horizon 4.4

[redmecca]

Hi Graham,

WBEC Ridderkerk claims that Crimson is a clone of the engine Viper (and also that Cyclone is fraudulent).
See here...http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/lastupdates.htm

[Teemu Pudas]

No, he didn't say anything about Cyclone, just that all of Kranium's stuff got deleted because of Cyclops (the illegal clone he sold) and Crimson.

Cyclone and TogaToy are automatically okay because they're GPL clones of a GPL engine.

[BubbaTough]

Mike,

I believe your claim is quite possible. I have certainly run into odd behavior by my engine, including odd moves, start up problems, and sometime even crashes, when people use certain GUIs that I never experience in my regular testing (on Arena and Winboard). Nevertheless, other people seem to get things working fine on GUIs such as ChessGUI, so it is likely I and perhaps you (and possibly a few others) have some bug that does not get triggered in our own testing environments but does get triggered in some of the CCRL testing platforms. That does not mean the GUIs are necessarily to blame (and certainly not CCRL for testing on the platform of their choice) just that its annoying that if folks like us really care about our engines performing on lots of platforms, we have to test regularly on lots of platforms (including ChessGUI, Shredder, Chessbase stuff, Polyglot with Winboard, Arena, etc.). If we were willing to spend the time (and money) doing that our programs (or the GUIs if they are at fault since some of those are still under active development) would overcome compatibility issues and all would be good. On the other-hand, if you are like me and cannot stand spending your limited free time debugging gui compatibility issues instead of working more entertaining aspects of your engine, you are doomed to some degree of frustration. At least be heartened to know you are not alone in your frustration.

-Sam

[Graham Banks]

Hi Graham,

WBEC Ridderkerk claims that Crimson is a clone of the engine Viper (and also that Cyclone is fraudulent).
See here...http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/lastupdates.htm

Crimson will not be taking part in the next series. This division finished before the Crimson situation became clear.
Cyclone is an engine derived from Toga. The Fruit family representative in my amateur series is Grapefruit, so no room for Fruit, Toga, Cyclone or TheMadPrune.
Likewise Stockfish is the Glaurung family representative.

[Graham Banks]

Mike,

I believe your claim is quite possible. I have certainly run into odd behavior by my engine, including odd moves, start up problems, and sometime even crashes, when people use certain GUIs that I never experience in my regular testing (on Arena and Winboard). Nevertheless, other people seem to get things working fine on GUIs such as ChessGUI, so it is likely I and perhaps you (and possibly a few others) have some bug that does not get triggered in our own testing environments but does get triggered in some of the CCRL testing platforms. That does not mean the GUIs are necessarily to blame (and certainly not CCRL for testing on the platform of their choice) just that its annoying that if folks like us really care about our engines performing on lots of platforms, we have to test regularly on lots of platforms (including ChessGUI, Shredder, Chessbase stuff, Polyglot with Winboard, Arena, etc.). If we were willing to spend the time (and money) doing that our programs (or the GUIs if they are at fault since some of those are still under active development) would overcome compatibility issues and all would be good. On the other-hand, if you are like me and cannot stand spending your limited free time debugging gui compatibility issues instead of working more entertaining aspects of your engine, you are doomed to some degree of frustration. At least be heartened to know you are not alone in your frustration.

-Sam

Hi Sam,

if I suspected a problem with ChessGUI, then I wouldn't use it. As far as I'm concerned, it is perfectly fine.

Cheers,
Graham.