Chess for Android v5.0: Time Control

[Gurcan Uckardes]

Some pc GUI's provide overhead option and some engines provide the same as engine setting (Komodo Android for ex). Anyway, I think giving 50 miliseconds per move extra to Crafty will not tranform it to a Stockfish but it can save many engines. Most flagged ones were very close to survive as far as I observed.
I did't spend hours to test what happens with longer tc like 15'+10" (official fide rapid) though. I simply stressed at 1'+0", which is the most difficult.
I think Ferdinand can have an idea here as an engine programmer.

[Ferdy]

Some pc GUI's provide overhead option and some engines provide the same as engine setting (Komodo Android for ex). Anyway, I think giving 50 miliseconds per move extra to Crafty will not tranform it to a Stockfish but it can save many engines. Most flagged ones were very close to survive as far as I observed.
I did't spend hours to test what happens with longer tc like 15'+10" (official fide rapid) though. I simply stressed at 1'+0", which is the most difficult.
I think Ferdinand can have an idea here as an engine programmer.

One of the issues facing the engine programmers is the timebuffer they will allocate in the engine for this new environment. For some desktop gui, most of them have already figured this out. Myself allocates a gui lag of 20 ms per move. Added to that is another uci option TimeBufferMilliSec default at 60ms, so I have a total of 80 ms time safety buffer. For CFA I don't know exactly the engine and gui time lag that should be considered. Perhaps Aart will give this figure so the engine authors will be able to make some adjustments. I don't know how to measure this in android, I still have to study it .

Another idea that may help is for Aart to allow the engine timebuffer options available to the user, so that it can be adjusted when importing engines if necessary. I don't know if there is standard option name for this. Say for uci engines,

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option name TimeBufferMilliSec type spin default 60 min 0 max 1000

For computer chess inactive engine authors this could be a problem. If Aart will find out that the CFA lag is too much compared to desktop gui's for example, then perhaps he will make some modifications/improvements in this area.

[abik]

Very well. I am adding a GUI lag option that will add some ms for each move (without showing up in the reported time controls of course).

[abik]

Chess for Android 5.0.5 will be made available shortly on my website and Google Play. New features:

• sorted engine list
• Gauntlet and full tournaments
• support for the open exchange format
• GUI time lag option

Results of a sanity tournament under 1 minute for the full game, both sides of the first position in the Nunn opening suite.

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                              Score     S-B    Ko  Te  Ga  Di  Ci  Bi  Ch  
 1 Komodo 8 32-bit          11.0/12    53.0    XX  10  11  11  11  11  11  
 2 Texel 1.05 32-bit         9.0/12    39.0    01  XX  01  01  11  11  11  
 3 Gaviota v1.0              8.0/12    29.0    00  10  XX  10  11  11  11  
 4 DiscoCheck 5.2.1          8.0/12    29.0    00  10  01  XX  11  11  11  
 5 Cinnamon 1.2b             3.0/12     3.0    00  00  00  00  XX  10  11  
 6 BikJump v1.8 (32-bit)     3.0/12     3.0    00  00  00  00  01  XX  11  
 7 Chess for Android         0.0/12     0.0    00  00  00  00  00  00  XX

[Gurcan Uckardes]

Very nice and I can't wait to "mess with it"
Btw, i'm surprised to see Cinnamon working. How can i get the binary? The one coming with your first pack hadn't worked for me.

[abik]

The one coming with your first pack hadn't worked for me.

Did you try my Chess Engines package v1.1?

[Carlos777]

Chess for Android 5.0.5 will be made available shortly on my website and Google Play. New features:

• sorted engine list
• Gauntlet and full tournaments

Thanks for this new version Aart. Gauntlet works fine. Although it would be great if we can choose the number of rounds to be played, not only the 10 games by default.
About the sorted list, it sorts the engines that start with a capital letter first and then the engines that start with the lower case. Could you change it, so it does not matter if it is written with upper or lower case, like this:

Adroitchess
alfil
Bbchess
Bismark
bison
...
?

[abik]

Although it would be great if we can choose the number of rounds to be played, not only the 10 games by default.

Note that the option to play from both sides of an external book, like the Nunn opening suite, defines the number of rounds. So you could simply make a PGN with n start positions to get 2n rounds. I like to vary the starting positions, so for that reason I never added the feature to change the number of rounds in the random case.

[Gurcan Uckardes]

Updated to 5.0.5 from gplay on intel device. I can't see the gauntlet. Normal?

[abik]

Updated to 5.0.5 from gplay on intel device. I can't see the gauntlet. Normal?

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UCI and XBoard => Engine Tournament => [opening book/test suite] => [Invite Engines] => ....

then if more than 2 engines were invited

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.... => Round Robin or Gauntlet