On-line engine blitz tourney June

[hgm]

The monthly on-line engine blitz tourney for May will take place on:

Saturday June 6, 3pm Boston time (21:00 Amsterdam time)

To connect:

winboard -zp -ics -icshost winboard.nl -icshelper timeseal -fcp ENGINE.exe -fd ENGINEFOLDER -autoKibitz

(for UCI engines, add -fUCI)

[brtzsnr]

The monthly on-line engine blitz tourney for May will take place on:

Since my engine still cannot kibitz (polyglot sends quit and then crashes xboard) what are the options for zurichess to kibitz the pv?

[flok]

I've got hardware issues; half of the cluster is down. So not sure if I'm going to make it for saturday.

[hgm]

The monthly on-line engine blitz tourney for May will take place on:

Since my engine still cannot kibitz (polyglot sends quit and then crashes xboard) what are the options for zurichess to kibitz the pv?

Since other UCI engines work fine under Polyglot, either you must be using a defective version of Polyglot, or your engine must send non-compliant output. Without seeing the Polyglot log it would be impossible to determine what is the case.

You could try to run the engine under uci2wb instead of Polyglot. But if the engine does not print PV info in the proper format, it is not likely to be passed on as CECP 'thinking output' by any adapter.

[op12no2]

Torn Planned a snooker/drinking night out with the boys...

[Henk]

How do you kibitz a PV in winboard. Is it like this ? And how can I check if it works.

Code: Select all

string PV =  variantList[variantList.Count - 1].ToString();
Console.WriteLine("kibitz " + PV);

[hgm]

With the -autoKibitz option WinBoard automatically sends the engine's thinking output in a suitable format to the ICS. So it is just a matter of making sure the engine prints 'thinking output' during its search.

The proper format for this in WB protocol is a line that starts with 4 integer numbers, followed by a text. The text is usually the PV (although formally you could print what you want, and in some cases, e.g. when the engine plays a book or tablebase move, it might even make sense to do so). The numbers are

search depth
score in centi-Pawn
number of nodes searched so far
time used so far in centi-seconds

[brtzsnr]

I posted my output here http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 855#625855

Code: Select all

info depth 12 score cp 29991 nodes 28482085 time 40783 nps 698372 pv d1c1 g3g4 h5h4 b6b1 c1b1 e3c1 b1c1 c6e8 c1h1 

I think the pv line is fine. Xboard correctly shows the engine output when autokibitz is disabled. AFAIR polyglot just sends 'quit' (i dumped the communication between zurichess and polyglot) to my engine and then stops which crashes xboard.

[Henk]

With the -autoKibitz option WinBoard automatically sends the engine's thinking output in a suitable format to the ICS. So it is just a matter of making sure the engine prints 'thinking output' during its search.

The proper format for this in WB protocol is a line that starts with 4 integer numbers, followed by a text. The text is usually the PV (although formally you could print what you want, and in some cases, e.g. when the engine plays a book or tablebase move, it might even make sense to do so). The numbers are

search depth
score in centi-Pawn
number of nodes searched so far
time used so far in centi-seconds

-autoKibitz never worked for my engine. So how can I test if my kibitz code works.

Are you sure time is in fourth place and not in third place. For when I print this to the output 'view engine ouput' shows carbage for third and fourth parameter.

[hgm]

Oh, you are right. What I wrote is the order WinBoard displays them in the Engine Output window. But indeed this exchanges the nodes and time.

For -autoKibitz to work you should print the thinking output before the move. Auto-kibitzing uses the last line of thinking output before the move to build the kibitz command it sends to the ICS. (Usually there is a line for every depth.) If you see a normal progression of PVs in WinBoard's Engine Output window, auto-kibitzing must work.