Re: On-line engine blitz tournament September

Joost Buijs · Post by **Joost Buijs** » Wed Sep 16, 2026 2:05 pm

The monthly on-line engine blitz tournament for September will take place on:

Saturday the 19th of September, 2:00 PM EST (Boston time) 20:00 CET (Amsterdam time)

To connect, use the following command:

winboard -zp -ics -icshost nightmare-chess.nl -icshelper timeseal -fcp ENGINE.exe -fd ENGINEFOLDER -autoKibitz -keepAlive 30
(For UCI engines, add -fUCI)

If you don’t have an account, please submit a request to admin@nightmare-chess.nl.

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

The format will be Swiss system, 4/1 time control, 11 rounds.

Lisebeth prefers to start the tournament on top of the hour, so please log in 15 minutes early. Late entries are not supported.

Roland Chastain · Post by **Roland Chastain** » Wed Sep 16, 2026 8:32 pm

I'd love to participate. It works with XBoard too, I imagine?

"4/1" (just to be sure) means four moves in one minute?

jshriver · Post by **jshriver** » Wed Sep 16, 2026 9:57 pm

Looking forward to participating for the first time.

For anyone wanting a little more engine control I wrote this to use instead of xboard.
https://github.com/jshriver/icsdrone-rs

Im also open to any suggestions or improvements or bug reports.
-Josh

Bart Weststrate · Post by **Bart Weststrate** » Thu Sep 17, 2026 7:53 am

Roland Chastain wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 8:32 pm I'd love to participate. It works with XBoard too, I imagine?

"4/1" (just to be sure) means four moves in one minute?

4 minutes for the whole GAME and 1 sec. increment per move

Roland Chastain · Post by **Roland Chastain** » Thu Sep 17, 2026 9:31 am

Bart Weststrate wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2026 7:53 am 4 minutes for the whole GAME and 1 sec. increment per move

Thank you. I believe this corresponds to the -each tc=240+1 option of Cutechess-cli.

Other question. Is it mandatory to participate with an engine that you created yourself, or not?

Joost Buijs · Post by **Joost Buijs** » Fri Sep 18, 2026 1:22 pm

Roland Chastain wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2026 9:31 am
Other question. Is it mandatory to participate with an engine that you created yourself, or not?

It’s not strictly mandatory to enter the tournament with a self-developed engine, but we don't want everyone playing with Stockfish clones either, as that would completely defeat the purpose of the tournament.

Roland Chastain · Post by **Roland Chastain** » Fri Sep 18, 2026 4:34 pm

Joost Buijs wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2026 1:22 pmIt’s not strictly mandatory to enter the tournament with a self-developed engine, but we don't want everyone playing with Stockfish clones either, as that would completely defeat the purpose of the tournament.

Yes, that makes sense. I'll use either one of my own engines or a small engine from someone else that I've modified.

I hope my internet connection doesn't let me down.

I'm not sure how to provide the username and password. Will XBoard ask me for them?

Joost Buijs · Post by **Joost Buijs** » Fri Sep 18, 2026 5:05 pm

Roland Chastain wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2026 4:34 pm
I'm not sure how to provide the username and password. Will XBoard ask me for them?

I'm on Windows, I don't know anything about XBoard. The server will prompt you for a username and password, but you can also put the credentials in a Winboard/XBoard initialization file to have it logon automatically, under Windows this is ics.ini, I think under Linux it is called .icsrc.

As alternative you can also connect the engine to the server with ICSDroneNG, and use another FICS-GUI with a guest logon to watch the games. FICS is very archaic, 30 years old software, you cannot compare it with chess.com or TCEC.

If you want to attend make sure that everything works, and play some test-games before entering the tournament.