On-line engine blitz tournament March

[Joost Buijs]

The monthly on-line engine blitz tourney for March will take place on:

Saturday March 9, 2:00 PM EST (Boston time), 20:00 CET (Amsterdam time)

To connect:

winboard -zp -ics -icshost nightmare-chess.nl -icshelper timeseal -fcp ENGINE.exe -fd ENGINEFOLDER -autoKibitz -keepAlive 30

(for UCI engines, add -fUCI)

People without account can submit a request for an account to admin@nightmare-chess.nl

Our tournament manager will be: Eendje (Lisebeth @ ICC)

The format will be: 9 rounds Swiss 5/1

Lisebeth likes to start the tournament on top of the hour, please try to be on-line 15 minutes prior to tournament start, late joins are not supported.

[Joost Buijs]

Belfish (a Stockfish derivative) won the tournament, the other strong engines come close but there still is a gap of approx. 100 Elo.

The number of attendees gets lower and lower each month, if this doesn't improve it's probably not worth while to keep this tournament alive.

Code: Select all

:Tourney Players: Round 9 of 9 
:
:     Name              Rating Score Perfrm Upset  Results 
:     ----------------- ------ ----- ------ ------ ------- 
:  1 +BelFish           [2994]  7.0  [2902] [   0] +08b =05w =02w =03b +07w +04w =06b +10w +11b 
:  2 +NightmareX        [2902]  6.5  [2867] [  46] +11w +06w =01b =04w +08b =03w =07b =05w +10b 
:  3 -WaspX             [2858]  6.5  [2833] [  90] +09w =07w +06b =01w =04b =02b =05w +08b +12w 
:  4 +Goldbar           [2826]  6.0  [2800] [  54] +13w +10w =05b =02b =03w -01b +09w +07w =06b 
:  5 -Marvin            [2794]  6.0  [2785] [ 202] +15w =01b =04w =07b =06w +08w =03b =02b +14w 
:  6 +atomNightmare     [2706]  5.5  [2735] [ 248] +12w -02b -03w +15b =05b +10w =01w +11b =04w 
:  7 +atomGoldbar       [2580]  5.5  [2654] [ 407] +14w =03b +10w =05w -01b +09b =02w -04b +16b 
:  8 -WaDuuttie         [2543]  5.0  [2537] [   0] -01w +15b +11w +09b -02w -05b +16b -03w +13b
:  9 +rpiArminius       [2310]  5.0  [2430] [   0] -03b +14w +12b -08w +16b -07w -04b +13w +15b 
: 10 +TheBaron          [2570]  4.0  [2442] [   0] +16w -04b -07b +14w +13w -06b +12w -01b -02w 
: 11 +Myrddin           [2340]  4.0  [2378] [   0] -02b =12w -08b =13b +15w +16w +14b -06w -01w 
: 12 +atomFloyd         [2249]  3.5  [2266] [  82] -06b =11b -09w +16w +14b -13w -10b +15w -03b 
: 13 +rpiDumb           [2290]  3.0  [2195] [  25] -04b +16w -14b =11w -10b +12b =15w -09b -08w 
: 14 -Barbarossa        [2173]  2.5  [2165] [ 173] -07b -09b +13w -10b -12w =15b -11w +16w -05b 
: 15 +Ares              [2286]  2.0  [2119] [   2] -05b -08w +16b -06w -11b =14w =13b -12b -09w 
: 16 -Skipper           [1666]  0.0  [1971] [   0] -10b -13b -15w -12b -09w -11b -08w -14b -07w
:
:     Average Rating    2505.4

[Henk]

Or maybe once per two months to start. Not once every year because when something goes wrong with your engine you have to wait for another year. Although two months can be long too. Unless your engine never changes and is stable.

[Joost Buijs]

The problem is that with a Swiss tournament and a low number of attendees you will always get 'strange' pairings.

Nowadays most engines seem to play on TCEC, Chess.com and LiChess, the 'new' engine authors probably don't know anything about the existence of servers with the 'freechess' protocol.

I kept the server running 24/7 for 4.5 years now, it costs me money for hardware and electricity, I will move it to another machine, and only turn it on the day before the tournament, there is no reason to keep it online 24/7.

[hgm]

It might be possible to move the server to the talkchess.com VPS. I don't think it causes a significant server load, by modern standards. (It was written decades ago, to be used by hundreds of players rather than just a few engines.)

Does it compile under Ubuntu 22.04?

[RubiChess]

Problem is that todays engines playing on todays hardware and using a book until position is dead draw is boring as hell. Indeed this kind of tournament seems outdated.

Regards.

[Joost Buijs]

It might be possible to move the server to the talkchess.com VPS. I don't think it causes a significant server load, by modern standards. (It was written decades ago, to be used by hundreds of players rather than just a few engines.)

Does it compile under Ubuntu 22.04?

4 years ago I compiled it for the last time under Linux Mint 19.3 (based on Ubuntu 18.04), I don't know if it will compile without modification under Ubuntu 22.04.

Compiling mamer never worked, although it compiles without problem it produces a broken executable, maybe -m32 could solve this but I never tried.

Soon I will move the package to another machine that has 22.04 on it, then I can try to compile it with either gcc or clang.

[Henk]

Problem is that todays engines playing on todays hardware and using a book until position is dead draw is boring as hell. Indeed this kind of tournament seems outdated.

Regards.

It's over.

"Yeah, it must have been love, but it's over now
It was all that I wanted, now I'm living without"

[Joost Buijs]

Problem is that todays engines playing on todays hardware and using a book until position is dead draw is boring as hell. Indeed this kind of tournament seems outdated.

Regards.

It's over.

"Yeah, it must have been love, but it's over now
It was all that I wanted, now I'm living without"

Yes, it's over, however for Skipper there is still room for improvement.

I agree computer-chess is getting a bit boring, especially when you are already busy with it for 46 years like me. One of the reasons that it's at least 4 years ago since I last looked at my engine.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Problem is that todays engines playing on todays hardware and using a book until position is dead draw is boring as hell. Indeed this kind of tournament seems outdated.

Regards.

Then please write what to do to make it not boring chess.

Krzysztof