Chess variant tournament: Spartan Chess

[enhorning]

WB 4.6.2 is pretty old by now.

It still seems to be the latest non-beta release. On general principle, I tend to avoid anything labeled beta...

I will give the linked version a try though, and see if the problem still pops up.

[enhorning]

Evert - which versions of Leonidas and Sjaak should I use?

For Leonidas, looking at your webpage, there is both the Jim Ablett compile and the non-JA for r83. Which would you prefer to be in the tournament?

For Sjaak, the latest listed on your webpage is r506, but I have seen you mention newer version than that in this forum. What version should I use, and if it's not on the webpage, could you please give me a download link?

Hoping to finally get this tournament started, after the various delays (due to my last week being rather busy, and the bugs encountered in Leonidas / Sjaak).

[hgm]

WB 4.6.2 is pretty old by now.

It still seems to be the latest non-beta release. On general principle, I tend to avoid anything labeled beta...

In case of WinBoard that is not recommended. The beta releases are almost always superior to the latest stable release, if you refrain from using any novel features. (Unless you pull them directly from git while I am in the process of doing a big change; then they might not even compile.)

Btw, do you accept private engines in your tourneys?

[enhorning]

In case of WinBoard that is not recommended. The beta releases are almost always superior to the latest stable release, if you refrain from using any novel features.

Is there documented anywhere convenient what is new in the 4.7.0 development version?

Btw, the installer did not create a start-menu folder. (Well, manually browsing, there is a folder in at least C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs - but it does not show up in the actual start menu, so this is likely some Windows weirdness.)

Btw, do you accept private engines in your tourneys?

Sure, as long as they are made available to me. The more, the merrier!

[hgm]

http://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/what ... index.html

But I see it is not updated yet. (I did push an update to git www branch, but I cannot install pages myself on the GNU website.) So perhaps it is better to look at http://hgm.nubati.net/news.html , and ignore the 'experimental and unfinished' stuff, which is mostly from the Alien Edition or XBoard. All the rest will go into 4.7.0.

I will e-mail you a version of Spartacus! (Have not worked on it for a long time, and there is not much chance this will improve in the next 6 months, as I am way too busy with my Shogi engines.) But it should play a reasonable game of Spartan Chess.

[Evert]

For Leonidas, looking at your webpage, there is both the Jim Ablett compile and the non-JA for r83. Which would you prefer to be in the tournament?

Either.
Whichever is faster I guess, which would normally be Jim's (you may want to verify that; I haven't, I just assume).

For Sjaak, the latest listed on your webpage is r506, but I have seen you mention newer version than that in this forum. What version should I use, and if it's not on the webpage, could you please give me a download link?

506 is fine. The only changes since then are in FEN parsing for Fischer chess (which is why it's floating around), or cosmetic. For Spartan it makes no difference.

Hoping to finally get this tournament started, after the various delays (due to my last week being rather busy, and the bugs encountered in Leonidas / Sjaak).

Many thanks again for helping to sort those out!

[enhorning]

I will e-mail you a version of Spartacus!

Okay, will wait for it. I should also warn that gmail for some stupid reason (presumably overzealousness against viruses) blocks attachments ending in .exe and .zip - other compression formats seems to get through okay though.

[hgm]

Ah yes, this is the reason you don't have it yet. It bounced. I renamed it to .axe now.

[hgm]

Beware the first Spartacus .exe I sent you was no good for Spartan. I must have broken something when implemeting end-game eval discounts in the material tables. So I sent you a seond one (SpartaN2.exe), which was the most recent one that seemed to work in a quick test.

Speaking about end-game discounts:

I do have an unreleased derivative of Fairy-Max, which I call Pair-o-Max. It differs from the regular version by having an eval that is aware of mating potential and pair bonuses for color-bound pieces. So unlike Fairy-Max (and the N2 version of Spartacus, actually), it knows that KNK is draw, and that KNPKN thus has very little chance to be a win, much less than KPPPKN. Although this makes its eval in the late end-game a bit slow (it has no piece list, so it has to scan the board to determine which pieces are present), it tested a bit stronger than Fairy-Max (most likely because it protects its B-pair better in the middle game).

I made Pair-o-Max in order to be able to do more accurate measure of piece values, being sure that mating potential in a piece (or rather lack of it) would be properly exploited. (E.g. that in Spartan the C value would not be underestimated by needlessly bungling away half the games that get there, through trading C for N in KLCKN, in stead of waiting untill it can force an L for N trade. An especially dangerous pitfall, as normally C < N while L > N!)

I leave it up to you to decide if it would be a good idea to have Pair-o-Max participate in the tourney too. In a sense it is just a slightly improved version of Fairy-Max, sharing almost all code, so this is a lot like allowing two versions of the same engine to participate. And I want the regular Fairy-Max to participate in any case, even though it might not be the strongest version, as it is publicly available, and I am not sure I will ever make Pair-o-Max publicly available.

[enhorning]

Received SpartaN2.exe, and am using it now.

Sure, send me Pair-o-Max, and I'll include it.