Operator wanted for the Chess960 WC qualification

[Tord Romstad]

Hi all,

As some of you may have noticed, a qualification tournament for the Chess960 world championships is being held on the ICC June 27-28. I would like to play there, but I can't, because I'm busy playing in the IOPCCC at the time.

To my surprise, it turns out that operators are allowed in the qualification tournament (but not in the main tournament in Mainz). Would anyone like to volunteer as an operator for Glaurung in the qualification tournament?

Before someone accepts, please be warned that there is a technical problem: Glaurung still doesn't have an ICC compatible interface. In order to participate, you would either have to operate manually (which is hard work, and would give Glaurung a serious time handicap against opponents with automatic interfaces) or to cheat by using some interface written by others (XBoard or Winboard should work, I don't know much about the alternatives).

As a small compensation for your work, there is a theoretical chance of winning some prize money: The winner gets 300 euro, and the second place gives 200 euro.


Tord

[Dann Corbit]

Hi all,

As some of you may have noticed, a qualification tournament for the Chess960 world championships is being held on the ICC June 27-28. I would like to play there, but I can't, because I'm busy playing in the IOPCCC at the time.

To my surprise, it turns out that operators are allowed in the qualification tournament (but not in the main tournament in Mainz). Would anyone like to volunteer as an operator for Glaurung in the qualification tournament?

Before someone accepts, please be warned that there is a technical problem: Glaurung still doesn't have an ICC compatible interface. In order to participate, you would either have to operate manually (which is hard work, and would give Glaurung a serious time handicap against opponents with automatic interfaces) or to cheat by using some interface written by others (XBoard or Winboard should work, I don't know much about the alternatives).

As a small compensation for your work, there is a theoretical chance of winning some prize money: The winner gets 300 euro, and the second place gives 200 euro.


Tord

There must be a lot of cheaters around.
I guess that less than 10 chess programmers have written both their own chess interface and their own chess engine. I can only think of four off-hand but I am sure that there are others.
I doubt if *any* of these interfaces are fully ICC compatible and know how to kibits, etc.

So cheaters abound. What shall we do for proper punishment? I suggest that we make them write their own runtime libraries so that they can stop sponging off of the compiler vendors.

[Zach Wegner]

There must be a lot of cheaters around.

Guilty!

I doubt if *any* of these interfaces are fully ICC compatible and know how to kibits, etc.

ChessThinker. And it knows how to kibitz by itself.

[Tord Romstad]

I forgot to include a link to the tournament web site in my first post:

http://www.chessclub.com/activities/chess960_2008

I guess that less than 10 chess programmers have written both their own chess interface and their own chess engine.

There are far more than 10. After a minute of thinking, I can think of Arasan, Armageddon, The Baron, Crafty, Diep, Glaurung, GNUChess, Ikarus, Phalanx, Shredder, Thinker and YACE. I am sure there are lots of others which I don't remember or don't know about.

I doubt if *any* of these interfaces are fully ICC compatible and know how to kibits, etc.

Most of them are probably not ICC compatible at all, but I guess those that are all know how to kibitz. It seems like a trivial feature to implement once you have done all the rest.

So cheaters abound. What shall we do for proper punishment?

Nothing, of course. I didn't mean that using somebody else's interface is not or should not be permitted. I just personally don't like to do it with my own program. I want the program that plays to be entirely my own, and not a hybrid entity where two thirds of the code is written by Tim Mann. In the case that somebody else operates my program, I accept that the operator uses whatever interface (s)he prefers, but I think it is fair to let him know what I would have done myself.

I suggest that we make them write their own runtime libraries so that they can stop sponging off of the compiler vendors.

I don't have any problem with runtime libraries, as long as they don't contain anything chess-related.

Tord

[pijl]

I guess that less than 10 chess programmers have written both their own chess interface and their own chess engine.

There are far more than 10. After a minute of thinking, I can think of Arasan, Armageddon, The Baron, Crafty, Diep, Glaurung, GNUChess, Ikarus, Phalanx, Shredder, Thinker and YACE. I am sure there are lots of others which I don't remember or don't know about.

Depends on what you count as a chess interface.
If you mean a GUI, then the closest I came to that is an unfinished attempt using xview libraries (loooong time ago, I've lost the sources) and an extended winboard_x that properly addresses winboard FRC engines. I cannot claim that as my own ...
The Baron and CTD have their own console interface, where you can play chess from (and which is basically an extended winboard/gnuchess command set with some extra features to print things a bit nicer, save PGN etc).
Richard.

[Tord Romstad]

I guess that less than 10 chess programmers have written both their own chess interface and their own chess engine.

There are far more than 10. After a minute of thinking, I can think of Arasan, Armageddon, The Baron, Crafty, Diep, Glaurung, GNUChess, Ikarus, Phalanx, Shredder, Thinker and YACE. I am sure there are lots of others which I don't remember or don't know about.

Depends on what you count as a chess interface.
If you mean a GUI, then the closest I came to that is an unfinished attempt using xview libraries (loooong time ago, I've lost the sources) and an extended winboard_x that properly addresses winboard FRC engines. I cannot claim that as my own ...
The Baron and CTD have their own console interface, where you can play chess from (and which is basically an extended winboard/gnuchess command set with some extra features to print things a bit nicer, save PGN etc).

Your console interface (which I remember from our game Mainz two years ago) was what I was thinking about. For a chess tournament, a console interface is just as good as a GUI, and in some ways even better (it is much more easily portable, for instance).

Tord

[Harvey Williamson]

4. Livingston Chess960 Computer World Championship
30 July-1 August 2008

Rapid Chess
20min / game + 5s / move

Course of events
Mi., 07/30: First set of rounds - 3 rounds
Do., 07/31: Second set of rounds - 3 rounds
Fr., 08/1: Big and small final - 4 matches + poss. Tie-break (5min /game + 5s / move)

Start time of rounds
Each: 11:00 h, 12:30 h, 14:00 h
Finale additionally: 15:30 h, Tie-break: 17:00 h

Participants:
Rybka
Chess 960 Computer World Champion 2007 World Computer Champion Amsterdam 2007
IPCCC 2006-winner
#1 of SSDF-World ranking

Deep Shredder
Chess960 Computer World Champion 2006
Chess960 Computer World Champion Reykjavik 2005

ICC qualifier

ICC qualifier

[pedrox]

During the qualifying tournament, games of for 5 + 5 swiss system of 9 rounds played on Friday 27, the eight best programs will be the end of Saturday.

I wonder if there will be over on Friday qualification 8 programs playing, at the moment I know two programs that think play HIARCS and Glaurung.

[Tord Romstad]

During the qualifying tournament, games of for 5 + 5 swiss system of 9 rounds played on Friday 27, the eight best programs will be the end of Saturday.

I wonder if there will be over on Friday qualification 8 programs playing, at the moment I know two programs that think play HIARCS and Glaurung.

The tournament has not been announced very clearly; it wouldn't surprise me if most programmers are still not aware of it. Also, several of the former participants from the Chess960 world championships (Ayito, CTD, Glaurung, Homer, and Sjeng) are playing in one of the two other tournaments that weekend, and may have problems finding operators.

A tournament with a big number of operators would be a bit dull, but still better than a tournament with very few participants. I hope some people will offer to operate most of the existing Chess960 programs. I realize that fewer people are interested in Chess960 than in normal chess, but on the other hand I hope the possibility to win prize money (300 euros for the winner, 200 euros for number two) will attract some operators.

Tord

[Olivier Deville]

Hi Tord

I like to operate engines and I think I have nothing to do on June 27th-28th. I can run Glaurung on a Dual Opteron 252 with Windows XP Pro 64 as an OS.

I have never tried the chess960 variant though and I hope it works fine under Winboard_x. Therefore tests would be needed. Otherwise we can try another GUI of course.

If other people are interested in operating Glaurung, feel free to say so, I don't mean to close the offer

Olivier