WCCC Schedule + Book Rules + programmers representative

[Don]

Well, actually WinBoard/Xboard already implements capturing the required information, and save it to file. The demo you see at http://80.100.28.169/chess/chess.html is actually just a WinBoard running an engine tournament, where I configured to to put the game data in the required folder of the server tree. Which is possible, because the games are played on the server machine itself.

Of course when each player uses its own machine, such a setup is impossible, and it is unavoidable that the moves should be transferred from the machine running the engine to the server. So what I had in mind is let each participant run an ftp watchdog program on his machine, which then uploads the moves and PVs to a specified place on the central server. For those using WinBoard / XBoard this would be all they have to do.

Those using other software would have to somehow let it create the required files with moves and PVs. Many GUIs produce log files in real time, including all engine-GUI communication, and these could provide a good place to extract the data from.

I don't expect remote desktop would change anything (although I never used it). You would simply let the remote machine upload the required files to the server directly, bypassing the machine running the front-end desktop.

The idea is for this to be painless. If you are running xboard like I do, then you are all set and no problem. If you are using the shredder or fritz interface, then you have to do something else. I'm not sure some of these interfaces support an adapter. I once tried to build a batch (.bat) file for Larry on his windows machine which wrapped a chess program (and did a couple of other things) and I think Fritz would not allow it, it wanted an exe file. Windows is always a bit more difficult because there are fewer useful abstractions, everything is a special case to be handle separately and evidently a bat file has a different status than an exe and is not a proper shell. Of course I may not understand this properly as I am not very strong in windows but I could not make it work.

Because of this I'm not sure there is a simple universal solution such as using a simple adapter. But the natural solution is for HG or someone to modify polyglot for UCI programs and have a separate adapter for winboard programs. You run the adapter which runs the chess program but also captures the data HG needs. The adapter would be trivial to write because it does not have to understand any of the communication passing back and forth - other than picking up the move and any scoring information it wants.

The reason I suggest modifying an existing adapter is that I don't want to run 2 adapters. It's like in the old days I remember trying to hook up a guitar or something and I did not have the right plugs but I had all kinds of adapters. I think I had to hook 2 or 3 together to get what I needed and it was pretty ugly

Nobody would be required to use one of these adapters if they were willing to provide the information in the right format of course.

Another solution is to the ICGA to purchase a bunch of the fancy auto-sensory boards for the tournament! Just raise the fees a few hundred dollars and we are all set!

[hgm]

The problem is that the auto-sensory boards, no matter how fancy or expensive, don't do what you want. They are great for human vs human, but in engine matches seeing engine scores and PVs is 90% of the fun. The boards are useless in this respect. Furthermore, they are a great hindrance to the operators, which no longer are free to analyze on the official match board.

I don't think people running their engines under Shredder or Chessbase GUIs would use any adapters, normally. So in your scheme there would be nothing to modify, and they would have to use a dedicated adapter for this. And, unless I am mistaken, a suitable adapter already exists: "InBetween" could be used to make a log of two-way GUI-engine traffic, and the log could be used to extract the required info.

[Don]

The problem is that the auto-sensory boards, no matter how fancy or expensive, don't do what you want. They are great for human vs human, but in engine matches seeing engine scores and PVs is 90% of the fun. The boards are useless in this respect. Furthermore, they are a great hindrance to the operators, which no longer are free to analyze on the official match board.

My comment was tongue in cheek, I was not serous about that idea.

I don't think people running their engines under Shredder or Chessbase GUIs would use any adapters, normally. So in your scheme there would be nothing to modify, and they would have to use a dedicated adapter for this. And, unless I am mistaken, a suitable adapter already exists: "InBetween" could be used to make a log of two-way GUI-engine traffic, and the log could be used to extract the required info.

[Albert Silver]

Well, actually WinBoard/Xboard already implements capturing the required information, and save it to file. The demo you see at http://80.100.28.169/chess/chess.html is actually just a WinBoard running an engine tournament, where I configured to to put the game data in the required folder of the server tree. Which is possible, because the games are played on the server machine itself.

Of course when each player uses its own machine, such a setup is impossible, and it is unavoidable that the moves should be transferred from the machine running the engine to the server. So what I had in mind is let each participant run an ftp watchdog program on his machine, which then uploads the moves and PVs to a specified place on the central server. For those using WinBoard / XBoard this would be all they have to do.

Those using other software would have to somehow let it create the required files with moves and PVs. Many GUIs produce log files in real time, including all engine-GUI communication, and these could provide a good place to extract the data from.

I don't expect remote desktop would change anything (although I never used it). You would simply let the remote machine upload the required files to the server directly, bypassing the machine running the front-end desktop.

I like it, but would ask is there a way for it to publish the PGNs with the engine's depth and eval as move annotation? The reason I ask is simply that sites like Playchess or ICC, which reach large audiences (largER in any case) use PGN scores they link to as a means to relay.

[hgm]

They can link to the official WCCC pages, can't they?

[Albert Silver]

They can link to the official WCCC pages, can't they?

The WCCC pages will be providing live coverage? I had no idea, in that case, yes, of course.

[hgm]

Well, that is what we are trying to set up now.

What I had in mind is to set up one directory with a viewer for each board, e.g. http://www.uni-tilburg.nl/wccc/board3/chess.html, and then let the players on that board ftp the necessary data to that directory, so the viewer will display it like in the currently running demo. Before each match the players would have to specify the files to upload to.