Cutechess-cli help

[JVMerlino]

I'm trying to run a 5000-game match between my version of Myrddin, and the one that Jim Ablett graciously made for me. I'm using cutechess-cli (version 6) with these commands:

cutechess-cli -engine conf="Myrddin 0.90 JA" -engine conf="Myrddin 0.90" -each tc=inf/10+0.1 -concurrency 4 -ratinginterval 10 -rounds 5000 -pgnout "Myrddin Test.pgn"

Note that I'm not using the sprt command, or any other command that would (as far as I'm aware) prematurely stop the test. However, I've run it twice now, and both times it stopped very early - once after 127 games and the other time after 168 games.

Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong? Many thanks in advance!
jm

[Michel]

I'm trying to run a 5000-game match between my version of Myrddin, and the one that Jim Ablett graciously made for me. I'm using cutechess-cli (version 6) with these commands:

cutechess-cli -engine conf="Myrddin 0.90 JA" -engine conf="Myrddin 0.90" -each tc=inf/10+0.1 -concurrency 4 -ratinginterval 10 -rounds 5000 -pgnout "Myrddin Test.pgn"

Note that I'm not using the sprt command, or any other command that would (as far as I'm aware) prematurely stop the test. However, I've run it twice now, and both times it stopped very early - once after 127 games and the other time after 168 games.

Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong? Many thanks in advance!
jm

Can't help with cutechess-cli, but you may try fastchess (https://github.com/Disservin/fastchess) which is a drop-in replacement for cutechess-cli. It will soon be used for Fishtest testing.

[flok]

Can't help with cutechess-cli, but you may try fastchess (https://github.com/Disservin/fastchess) which is a drop-in replacement for cutechess-cli. It will soon be used for Fishtest testing.

Interesting!
What are the features of FastChess that should make one consider it to replace CuteChess-cli?

[Ras]

Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong? Many thanks in advance!

You could try the -debug option (the one for cutechess-cli itself, not the engine option). That should display all engine input and output for further digging.

You could also try c-chess-cli, that's what I'm using under Linux (Windows support is documented as "experimental"). Main advantage: no external dependencies. It's also blazingly fast. So fast that it can (and does) even expose engine race conditions if you run as many (or nearly as many) games in parallel as you have logical CPU cores. The -log option writes all engine communication to files.

[brianr]

I think the tc is an issue.
It is either tc=inf or tc=10+0.1 but not both.
Using both looks like a problem as inf is likely not a number of moves that is supported (although I did not check the source).
For example, I often use something like use tc=inf nodes=100.

See the docs:
https://github.com/cutechess/cutechess/ ... -cli.6.txt
tc=[tcformat | inf]
Set the time control. The format is moves/time+increment, where
moves is the number of moves per tc, time is time per tc (either
seconds or minutes:seconds), and increment is the time increment
per move in seconds.

Infinite time control can be set with inf.

[Michel]

Can't help with cutechess-cli, but you may try fastchess (https://github.com/Disservin/fastchess) which is a drop-in replacement for cutechess-cli. It will soon be used for Fishtest testing.

Interesting!
What are the features of FastChess that should make one consider it to replace CuteChess-cli?

It is much better at handling high concurrency and it has no external dependencies (so compilation is trivial).

It also prints more information, such has the pentanomial frequencies and the normalized Elo difference (which Fishtest uses).

[Brunetti]

Can't help with cutechess-cli, but you may try fastchess (https://github.com/Disservin/fastchess)

He can't use Fastchess, his engine uses xboard protocol.

Alex

[Ras]

He can't use Fastchess, his engine uses xboard protocol.

Oh, that makes c-chess-cli a non-starter as well.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

I'm trying to run a 5000-game match between my version of Myrddin, and the one that Jim Ablett graciously made for me. I'm using cutechess-cli (version 6) with these commands:

cutechess-cli -engine conf="Myrddin 0.90 JA" -engine conf="Myrddin 0.90" -each tc=inf/10+0.1 -concurrency 4 -ratinginterval 10 -rounds 5000 -pgnout "Myrddin Test.pgn"

Note that I'm not using the sprt command, or any other command that would (as far as I'm aware) prematurely stop the test. However, I've run it twice now, and both times it stopped very early - once after 127 games and the other time after 168 games.

Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong? Many thanks in advance!
jm

Please use the option stderr, then you will know everything and where you are making a mistake or the GUI may be to blame.

[JVMerlino]

I think the tc is an issue.
It is either tc=inf or tc=10+0.1 but not both.
Using both looks like a problem as inf is likely not a number of moves that is supported (although I did not check the source).
For example, I often use something like use tc=inf nodes=100.

See the docs:
https://github.com/cutechess/cutechess/ ... -cli.6.txt
tc=[tcformat | inf]
Set the time control. The format is moves/time+increment, where
moves is the number of moves per tc, time is time per tc (either
seconds or minutes:seconds), and increment is the time increment
per move in seconds.

Infinite time control can be set with inf.

Yeah, I had already found that, but it was too late to edit my original post. Unfortunately, changing it to just "-each tc=10+0.1" did not fix the problem. Also, before I found that error, I ran my gauntlet overnight, which has that same problem as it includes "-each tc=inf/60+0.1". The gauntlet ran all 1200 games without any issues. So I don't think this syntax (although it *is* wrong) is causing my problem.