The time control is buggy ... x moves in x minutes

[Frank Quisinsky]

If I read what programmers thinking ...
Who can create a bugfix?

[Graham Banks]

If I read what programmers thinking ...
Who can create a bugfix?

Never had any issues with it under ChessGUI.

[Ras]

Who can create a bugfix?

Nobody - you didn't even say whether it's a GUI or an engine issue, and also not which one.

[Graham Banks]

Who can create a bugfix?

Nobody - you didn't even say whether it's a GUI or an engine issue, and also not which one.

Some modern engines need to have the move overhead set higher, otherwise they run short of time for the final few moves.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Graham,

I have been using Shredder (UCI Mother GUI by one of the three UCI programmers Stefan Meyer-Kahlen) for many years. After about 2 million games (no blitz games, OK, 1.780.000 ) of my PCs no major problems. Some small bugs, but I have reported them for years and exchanged a few mails with Stefan. But all in all ... GUI is OK for me. Move-overhead is normally not necessary for Shredder.

This is a real problem.
Arena is nogo for me ... the features are Frank pure. Too many time I have worked with for the project in the past, so I will not be see that today.

But I have checked out Cutechess in the last few weeks. The GUI is very cool. Not such strong network features I like in Shredder (when I added more PCs in a tournament), but it works great for me. The tournament features comes from Arena (in this case an idea by Martin itself ... tournament configuration file). But Stefan ask for using and create his own with more important hidden details and the important network features.

A bit of a joke with my thread title. Yesterday I saw some time problems again after checking the games from my running tournament. The time-managment is for different engines not optimal. I am not the beta tester of all the engines, the programmers can look in the games. Time is up after I reportat an half life bugs to programmers. If I write something about bugs today, in most cases the programmers get very angry with me. But I am really harmless on good days. On bad days I throw all this shit out of the window ... no, no ... no place outsite my windows, all the other electronics with problems ... you know.



Honestly, in so many years I have never seen so many of such problems as various of the participating engines from my tourney like to produce.

But at the end of the day everything is OK, because you know ... I am very buggy too.
So, with time ... I like the bugs engines produced and thinking ... super, welcome on my PC.



Best
Frank

[Ras]

Some modern engines need to have the move overhead set higher, otherwise they run short of time for the final few moves.

Depends largely on the GUI - if that is slow even on modern hardware, then that's a GUI problem. In my engine, I have the move overhead with 50ms as default, but I also have 100ms as safeguard buffer: the time for a move is something like (T - 100ms)/N - 50ms. So at defaults, the last move can tolerate 150ms move overhead.

the important network features.

Does "network" mean stuff with neural networks, or a PC network (ethernet, wifi, internet)?

[Jouni]

Is there any FIDE tournament today without increment?

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Ras,

what you wrote to Graham ...
Indeed, not thinking about it before.
That have a reason that I start after Cobol in young years never a programming language in detail. Or headache in the night if I am thinking about a problem with my perfectionism.

I am sorry, means PC network ...
Different machines are working in a network on the same *.sto Shredder configuration file. That's really very nice and the main reason I am using Shredder since so many years. To edit any changes in *.sto file is very easy. If I update an engine for an example. The debug feature is great, can see a lot with debug=on. Again, speaking from "PC network" not the neural network.

Best and have a nice evening!
Frank

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Jouni,

You wrote:
Is there any FIDE tournament today without increment?

I think:
Is there any FIDE tournament in the past with increment?
And who is FIDE?
Never important in computer chess in the past.

I think modern engines today should not have time management problems with all the different time controls.
If so, it looks not very professional in times when engines produced such high Elo's.

Just my personal opinion!
But you are right ... I will try other time controls in the future.
For the first time with my next tournament.

I start now a fight against my old-school opinions.
At the moment the draw rate is very high and my thinking-time and move-average in my brain is not perfect also.
But I am working on it.

Best regards
Frank

[Ras]

I am sorry, means PC network ...

If that means you can have the GUI on one PC, and the engine running on another PC, and connect that over network: that is going to add network latency. Sending out stuff over a network just is much slower than things are running on the same PC, even if you have fast gigabit ethernet.

Engines are usually written and tested for local usage, without network. Means, problems with time controls are not a bug in that situation. You need to manually configure the move overhead, taking the network latency into account. I'd guess my engine could cope with that even at defaults - but my engine is also too weak to be at the top so that I rather make it more robust than squeezing out the last Elo point, which just doesn't matter at around 2700 CCRL.