CCT 12: Rule changes and upcoming faster event.

[swami]

Personally I have no interest in 1 minute/game matches. My computer server accounts on ICC and FICS haven't played any lightning matches for years. So I doubt I'll be participating.

I'd be happy to join any standard time control match you have though.

The lightning tournament and a faster standard tournament will be played purely for authors and team members to get more familiar with the ICS interface. This is something that has plagued the CCT for years.

It allows a free alternative as well for testing to take place.

These are both issues that have been brought up to me, so I am just trying to address them as I can.

It has been suggested via email that instead of a 6 round, round robin event that I make it a blitz, double round robin event with a time control of 5 0. This allows for everyone to play everyone that enters, and some think it will hold more interest. It also will allow everyone to play everyone, with both getting a crack with white.

It doesn't matter which is played really.

Peter

1 0 is way too fast to even watch it. I suggest to make it 3 0 (2 0 at least). At least we can follow the games.

This should have been done in FICS long ago, from the very start. With my luck, I just payed a 6 mo subscription in ICC this past week. Oh well

I hope that the people at FICS will process the account requests fast. Mine was inactivated and it took 20 days for someone to respond a couple of years ago. At that point I did not cared anymore. Maybe I should start looking at that right now...

Miguel

2+1 or 1+1 might work well. I actually managed to follow Bright's games rather well in 5+0 blitz tournament that followed the main event last CCT. With few seconds increment, It should be more Ok...

[pijl]

I'm very hesitant to play on FICS. I used to have a computer account there. Until, in the middle of a computer chess tournament, my account was locked and disqualified from the tournament. Reason: I improved my program beyond the original strength so I had to reapply for an account, stating its new strength. At least that was the reason given by the person that locked my account.
I took that as a signal that author accounts were not welcome at FICS and never went back there (my complaint to the admin team mail address was never answered). I figured that when you pay nothing you get scraps, and paid for an ICC account instead. Afterwards I heard that more authors had been treated in a similar way.
I am not convinced that this is a change that will improve the CCT tournaments.
Richard.

[frankp]

I have had a computer account on FICS for several years without any problems. The main issue is not having many other 'authors' to play, mostly computer jockies with the hobby of maximising their rating. But I guess this is true of any server.

[bob]

You should ponder about why the CCT (but also any ACCA event) is mostly an U.S. event, and why seemingly nobody in Europe gives a shit about it. That renders your competitions almost insignificant, as much of the computer chess capacity is in Europe.

I was aware of past CCT and ACCA events, and I was trying to raise interest for it by posting messages about several tournaments, on various message boards some years ago. There is no significant interest over there!

I'm not sure; maybe you don't care anyway. Maybe that is just what you want to have, a competition among half of the world only, not of the whole world.

I am not sure what you are talking about. We have had Junior, Fritz/Quest, etc in past CCT events. Commercial programs are a problem. Look at how many go to the WCCC now. They don't like losing to Rybka. They fear losing to an amateur which can hurt sales. It isn't about them not wanting to participate, it is about them not wanting to lose. Fruit has been a regular competitor as have lots of others from around the world.

When was the last time Fruit competed anywhere? Seems like you are making the best argument ever for = hardware.

How do you figure that? Majority of programmers are against = hardware, because "what is equal hardware"?

[Mike S.]

I think it is a good decision to move to FICS. Maybe it can increase interest among kibitzers. I think it is a really good chess server with intelligent features.

I have good experiences at FICS where I play with BabasChess, a free interface. That one is very comfortable for human play, but probably less so for engine play, for which it doesn't seem to have many features. It can run WB+UCI engines, but you need to type in commands for almost anything engine related (e.g. hash size). But I guess most programmers will use WinBoard or XBoard, anyway.

As far as I can tell, the technical circumstances at FICS are very good. The server is (almost) always up, I would guess to more than 99.5%, always responsive and I am not aware of server related problems. Also, the customizability combined with Babas is very comfortable, with custom function buttons, situation dependant layout change, etc. For example, I have configured a setting which presents me with my head-to-head statistics against a particular opponent, automatically when a game starts.

[BubbaTough]

I tried for a year to get a computer account on FICS with no success. If I were to get one, and it stayed around without frequent use, I would consider attending such events.

-Sam

[Tord Romstad]

There is always the mistaken idea from the masses that quantity is more important than quality. This was originally an "author's event". Somehow that got lost.

I'm confused. Two or three years ago, someone (I no longer remember who) asked me if he could operate Glaurung in a CCT. Because I wasn't sure what the other participants thought about operators, I asked here on the CCC whether people would prefer to see Glaurung operated by someone outside the team or not to see Glaurung play at all. The vast majority -- including Bob -- replied that even though you would prefer if I could be present myself during the tournament, Glaurung with an operator was better than no Glaurung at all.

Have you (this is a plural "you"; the thing I dislike most about the English language is that the second person pronoun is the same in singular and plural) changed your mind about this? If you have, I'll respect your wish by advising people not to use Stockfish in future CCTs, WCRCCs and similar tournaments.

[Michel]

I tried for a year to get a computer account on FICS with no success. If I were to get one, and it stayed around without frequent use, I would consider attending such events.

I don't understand this. In my experience getting a computer account on FICS is completely trivial.

BTW. Very good move to move the tournament to FICS.

[bob]

There is always the mistaken idea from the masses that quantity is more important than quality. This was originally an "author's event". Somehow that got lost.

I'm confused. Two or three years ago, someone (I no longer remember who) asked me if he could operate Glaurung in a CCT. Because I wasn't sure what the other participants thought about operators, I asked here on the CCC whether people would prefer to see Glaurung operated by someone outside the team or not to see Glaurung play at all. The vast majority -- including Bob -- replied that even though you would prefer if I could be present myself during the tournament, Glaurung with an operator was better than no Glaurung at all.

Have you (this is a plural "you"; the thing I dislike most about the English language is that the second person pronoun is the same in singular and plural) changed your mind about this? If you have, I'll respect your wish by advising people not to use Stockfish in future CCTs, WCRCCs and similar tournaments.

We have usually allowed the author to appoint an operator, if he can't be present for some/all of the event. But the original idea was that we _would_ be present most of the time. We wanted to avoid the usual cases where people just enter a program because they have good hardware. They know nothing about the program except for how much they paid for the thing... And we wanted to avoid that, since many ICC/FICS tourmanents were held for computers, but almost never with an author operating or present.

What I believe most would prefer is to have authors show up. They don't necessarily have to operate, since there is really no "operation" to do in an automated event. But we would also prefer to have the stronger programs play, even if the author can't be present for any/all of the event.

[CRoberson]

......

The reason for the shorter time control tournaments is to help with gaining rating and establishing your rating deviation on FICS.

.......

Peter

That lame equation again. That is why I stopped playing on FICS as a human. The rating equation is wrong. Even the author admitted it
years ago and modified the equation to adjust for some glaring issues with it. Then he applied for a patent on the new equation. So, you have to pay to use it (that was the case 4 years ago).

Is FICS using the new equation or the same bad old one?