9th Annual ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championships

[CRoberson]

The following assumes that polyglot, winboard and komodo are in the same dir.

Basically: winboard treats polyglot as the engine. Polyglot loads an engine via the polyglot.ini file.

o Create polyglot.ini file
Here is an example

[PolyGlot]

EngineDir = .
EngineName = Komodo9.x ; to distinguish from the default version
EngineCommand = Komodo.exe
Book = true ; to enable/disable an PolyGlot book
BookFile = KomodoACCAWCRCC2015.bin
Log = true
LogFile = KomodoPolyglot.log
Resign = true ; to enable/disable resign
ResignScore = 900
ResignMoves = 3
KibitzMove = true
CanPonder = true
ShowPonder = true

[Engine]

hash = 256
ecache = 16

OwnBook = false

o start winboard from the command line or from a batch file. The use of a batch file might be best. You can code auto reconnection via a batch file.

command line

winboard.exe /zp /cp /fcp="polyglot.exe KomodoPolyglot.ini" /ics /icshost=chessclub.com /icshelper=timestamp.exe

[hgm]

Of course the non-geeky way to do it is forget about all this Polyglot nonsense, and just tell WinBoard that Komodo is UCI:

winboard.exe /zp /fcp="Komodo.exe" /ics /icshost=chessclub.com /icshelper=timestamp.exe /fUCI

and then configure the opening book, hash size, cores, EGT path through the Common Engine Options dialog, and any Komodo options you want to be different from the default through the Engine #1 Settings dialog.

And to kibitz, in the ICS Options dialog tick the checkbox "auto-Kibitz". (Or add the option /autoKibitz to the winboard startup command.)

[CRoberson]

New Entrant:

Exchess by Dan Homan.

[Roger Brown]

The following assumes that polyglot, winboard and komodo are in the same dir.

Basically: winboard treats polyglot as the engine. Polyglot loads an engine via the polyglot.ini file.

o Create polyglot.ini file
Here is an example

[PolyGlot]

EngineDir = .
EngineName = Komodo9.x ; to distinguish from the default version
EngineCommand = Komodo.exe
Book = true ; to enable/disable an PolyGlot book
BookFile = KomodoACCAWCRCC2015.bin
Log = true
LogFile = KomodoPolyglot.log
Resign = true ; to enable/disable resign
ResignScore = 900
ResignMoves = 3
KibitzMove = true
CanPonder = true
ShowPonder = true

[Engine]

hash = 256
ecache = 16

OwnBook = false

o start winboard from the command line or from a batch file. The use of a batch file might be best. You can code auto reconnection via a batch file.

command line

winboard.exe /zp /cp /fcp="polyglot.exe KomodoPolyglot.ini" /ics /icshost=chessclub.com /icshelper=timestamp.exe

Hello Charles,

Nooooooooo!



Winboard has moved on significantly since then.

One checkbox for UCI and you are done.

Later.

[jdart]

A few hints for those who are new to this:

1. Add channel 64 to your channel list ("+channel 64"). The TD will give instructions there.
2. Don't set a formula for matches ("set formula" will clear it), although I think the tournament manager can override.

--Jon

[CRoberson]

Site: ICC (chessclub.com)

Let us know how it turns out.

round by round results posted here: http://aigames.net/ACCA/ACCAWCRCC/2015A ... ounds.html

[jdart]

tournament results:

http://tomato.chessclub.com/tom/tnum/ma1793_grid.html.

Komodo was the winner with a perfect 9/9 score.

--Jon

[CRoberson]

Komodo is the 2015 ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Champion. Congratulations to Don Daily, GM Larry Kaufman and Mark Lefler.

http://aigames.net/ACCA/ACCAWCRCC/2015A ... sults.html

[brtzsnr]

This was a fun contest with really strong engines. Thank you Charles for organizing. Here are my takeaways for zurichess:

* Time management is bad. Zurichess uses too little time in the midgame and too much time in the end game. Current algorithm is to allocate per move (time + moves_to_go * inc) / moves_to_go / branching_factor. I adjusted the calculation of the branching factor a bit and got +12ELO
* In some cases (close to being mated, enemy pawn can promote and high depths) the search explodes. In the game against Telepath zurichess spent 9min on a move. This also affects time management which has to be a bit conservative to protect against search explosions. I tried pruning minor promotions, but I get a 5 ELO hit.
* In the end game with a bishop it's best to push the enemy king to the corner of the right color.
* Pondering can be stopped earlier when there is ponder miss. Generally I don't know yet how to abort the search properly when time is up so pondering has to be conservative with the time allocated.
* Crafty won against zurichess with only a bishop and a knight. Zurichess doesn't use end-game table bases, I wonder if it could have avoided the mate.
* I probably need a better opening book for contests.

I uploaded my games here https://goo.gl/FQINPV. There are ten more games, besides zurichess' games. If your engine played agains zurichess and you noticed an area that I need to improve my engine, I would like to hear your opinion.

[hgm]

KBNK is always won if you don't lose B or N on right away (e.g. because the bare King forks them, or has trapped a Knight in the wrng corner).

It is important to have a search abort, not only for ponder misses, but also for time management, to handle the occasional search explosion. The easy part is to have a gloabal 'abortFlag', and return from Search() directly after UnMake() when that flag is set. The hard part is watching for input during a search, check for ponderhit or stop, handle or backlog other commands ('isready', 'setoption') as 'stop' might still come after them.