2011 6h Annual ACCA Pan American Computer Chess Championship

[CRoberson]

We usually have this in late Oct or early Nov. What is your preferred weekends and the weekends you absolutely can not compete?

Rules and TC are the same as the past. We are open to a test venue since the Pan Am event is smaller than WCRCC. FICS is probably out of the question.

So, lets hear it from all you competitors/researchers/scientists... from Greenland to Antarctica with the Atlantic to your east and the Pacific to your west.

[jdart]

I am available except the weekend of Nov. 5th.

[CRoberson]

There has been some offline talk about using HGM's system. The concern is that it might not be able to handle a tournament that has many spectators. Also, there is a load on HGM to create those spectator accounts.

HGM,

If you are open to hosting the tournament, we'd like to run some tests. Basically, several playing games with several spectators and simulated spectators. Let me know what you think.

[marcelk]

There has been some offline talk about using HGM's system. The concern is that it might not be able to handle a tournament that has many spectators. Also, there is a load on HGM to create those spectator accounts.

I expect HGM's server can handle the traffic and load just fine. Guests can login as 'guest' and observe, as on FICS.

If then indeed the tournament takes place outside Pan America, will such entries also be accepted? (And on a personal note: if I happen to be in the US during the tournament, which seems quite likely, can I enter in that case?)

[bhlangonijr]

There has been some offline talk about using HGM's system. The concern is that it might not be able to handle a tournament that has many spectators. Also, there is a load on HGM to create those spectator accounts.

I expect HGM's server can handle the traffic and load just fine. Guests can login as 'guest' and observe, as on FICS.

If then indeed the tournament takes place outside Pan America, will such entries also be accepted? (And on a personal note: if I happen to be in the US during the tournament, which seems quite likely, can I enter in that case?)

It depends on the number of observers that are simultaneously connected to HGM's server. If the number is high (lets say, more than 100) I am afraid they may experience some trouble like hanging connections, disconnections, etc.

[sje]

I'll try to enter Symbolic and should succeed with that as I 'm not changing any software or machinery for a few weeks. The downside is that my fast machine is busy doing perft(13) and so will be unavailable. Instead, Symbolic will enter battle running on an older box and with only a FICS 2285 rating.

[georgerifkin]

We usually have this in late Oct or early Nov. What is your preferred weekends and the weekends you absolutely can not compete?

Rules and TC are the same as the past. We are open to a test venue since the Pan Am event is smaller than WCRCC. FICS is probably out of the question.

So, lets hear it from all you competitors/researchers/scientists... from Greenland to Antarctica with the Atlantic to your east and the Pacific to your west.

mr roberson, will it be possible to watch the tournament as a guest on icc? thanks

[hgm]

Any news on this?

I had a look at the mamer tournament manager, because the open-source version first used to completely ignore colors at all, because it contained a bug that reset the white and black counts before every round. After I fixed that bug, the pairings were still rather crappy, because it made pairings irrespective of color, and only started to make color assignments when the pairings were already fixed. So a player could get three consecutive blacks because two players that already had two happened to be paired. While I understand that in all official systems this is a strict no-no, as bad as playing the same opponent twice.

I made an attempt to fix that today, by adding an extra condition in the search loop of 'FindBestOpponent':

Code: Select all

      if((!tp->AlreadyPlayed(opponent->name)) && (!opponent->IsPaired()) && (opponent->activeFlag != 0)
#ifdef HGM_fix
	  && (tp->ColorDue() != opponent->ColorDue() // they are due different color, never a problem
	     || tp->ColorDue() ? // both are due white. Check if one of them could accept black without breaking 'absolute' color rules
				 tp->GetConsecutiveBlacks&#40;) < 2 &&
				 tp->GetBlacks&#40;) - tp->GetWhites&#40;) < 2 ||
				 opponent->GetConsecutiveBlacks&#40;) < 2 &&
				 opponent->GetBlacks&#40;) - opponent->GetWhites&#40;) < 2
			       &#58; // both are due black. Check if any of them can accept white
				 tp->GetConsecutiveWhites&#40;) < 2 &&
				 tp->GetWhites&#40;) - tp->GetBlacks&#40;) < 2 ||
				 opponent->GetConsecutiveWhites&#40;) < 2 &&
				 opponent->GetWhites&#40;) - opponent->GetBlacks&#40;) < 2
	     )
#endif
	) &#123; 

Originally it rejected pairings only because
1) you already played the opponent
2) the opponent was already paired to someone else
3) the opponent was forfeited from the tourney

The code I added should also reject pairings that later would lead to a forbidden color assignment, which (I think) is more than two times the same color in a row, or the difference of whites and blacks more than two. I hope this will fix the problem; test will be in the blitz tourney next Saturday.

[jdart]

Any update on the date? "late Oct or early Nov." is fast approaching.

[CRoberson]

Any update on the date? "late Oct or early Nov." is fast approaching.

So far nobody has stated any no playable weekends except Jon Dart and myself. Jon nor I can do Nov 5 and I have a conflict on Nov 12. Thus, November 19/20 seems to fit all.

Which of the potential participants or HGM has issue with the weekend of Nov 19/20?