Chess for Android v5.0: Time Control

[abik]

May I know what is this full tournaments?

Ah, that is what is supported right now (every engine plays every other for all games in the given opening/test suite). Perhaps this is called round-robin. In any case, next update will support Gauntlet (one engine plays all other engines in a list) and full tournaments (all engines in a list play each other), in both cases over a test/opening suite.

[Sedat Canbaz]

May I know what is this full tournaments?

Ah, that is what is supported right now (every engine plays every other for all games in the given opening/test suite). Perhaps this is called round-robin. In any case, next update will support Gauntlet (one engine plays all other engines in a list) and full tournaments (all engines in a list play each other), in both cases over a test/opening suite.

This is fantastic news that gauntlet mode will be available...

Thank you in advance

[Gurcan Uckardes]

I'm already running gauntlets since months. Thus, it will be a cosmetic add-on for me. What I see as biggest issue, is the tourneys stopping and waiting for manual intervention to continue because of engines refusing to play until checkmate. I have Bison and Kiwi lately added to unusable engines list. They play well to some point but occasionally exit in such a way that CfA can't proceed to next game.
CfA 4.5.1 was able to proceed to the next game and tourneys were completed without interruption.
I think going back to check and correct terminations is much more bearable than losing hours with pending tourneys.
Given that overall compatibility with fixed time per move is higher than fischer clocks among available engines, for the moment, CfA 4.5.1 is still an option to me.

[abik]

I'm already running gauntlets since months. Thus, it will be a cosmetic add-on for me.

Well, yes, but in the new version you can start a gauntlet using a nicely sorted list of engines and without resorting to the trickery of forcing different timestamps on the engine files just to move the gauntlet engine up.

I am also looking into the hanging engine + gracefully continuing the tournament issue so that hopefully next version is again more to your liking. I am not honoring *all* feature requests though, I like to keep this a fun project

[Gurcan Uckardes]

Of course your precious efforts are well appeciated but this will not save you from our severe critics which in fact are the most helpful ones.
By the way, today's hanging engine was Bruja. Had to exclude it too.

[abik]

By the way, today's hanging engine was Bruja. Had to exclude it too.

I have a very satisfactory solution for hanging engines in the GUI. I ran a full tournament with a "bad bikjump", which simply refuses to move after a few moves, and were able to finish the full tournament without user interaction (all games lost for bad bikjump of course).

If you are interested in a pre-release APK for testing, please drop me a private email.

[abik]

The PGN in such hanging cases will look like this one:

Code: Select all

[Event "Chess for Android Tournament"]
[Site "United States"]
[Date "2015.02.12"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Chess for Android"]
[Black "BAD BikJump"]
[Result "1-0"]
[PlyCount "37"]
[TimeControl "60"]
[Device "Nexus 4"]

1. e4 c5
2. Nf3 e6
3. d4 cxd4
4. Nxd4 Nc6
5. Nb5 Nf6
6. N1c3 d6
7. Bf4 e5
8. Bg5 a6
9. Na3 b5
10. Bxf6 gxf6
11. Nd5 f5
12. c3 Bg7
13. exf5 Bxf5 {from PGN 0.006}
14. c4 {[5/9]-10 2.763} Qa5+ {[7/27]3/d1d2 3.435}
15. Nc3 {[5/10]-5 2.642} b4 {[8/32]132/d1d6 3.101}
16. Qd5 {[5/11]-64 2.492} Qxd5 {[7/28]236/c3d5 2.649}
17. Nxd5 {[7/11]-164 2.382} bxa3 {[9/22]236/b2a3 2.903}
18. bxa3 {[6/10]-227 2.252} Nd4 {[8/32]234/d5c7 2.115}
19. Ne3 {[6/11]-232 2.161} 1-0
  {black resigned:Time Control 0:00:45 vs. flag (engine hangs on move)}

[Gurcan Uckardes]

Ok. It looks useable. Any solution that prevents interruption is fine. Tour.pgn can be analyzed for eventual corrections.
What is your position about adding a gui bonus to wb engines after each ply they make? Wb engines being flagged because of transaction delays is the major issue that keeps me from switching to fischer clocks.

[abik]

Wb engines being flagged because of transaction delays is the major issue that keeps me from switching to fischer clocks.

I am a bit reluctant to add this, since e.g. crafty does the timing very well (so it is possible). If both the GUI *and* the engine are going to mess with the timing to account for some overhead, it feels like this is unfair to engines that do it right.

Perhaps other GUI authors can chime in here? What are the best practices?

[abik]

It looks useable.

Yeah, "useable" is what I was going for