A poll to gauge interest in possible tournament

[Adam Hair]

When WBEC and ChessWar both ended in 2012, IMO the computer chess community lost two important proving grounds for chess authors. To be sure, there still exist some great tournaments such as TCEC, Graham's Amateur series, Geert's Country Chess, and Gsei's Web tournament to name a few. However, of those mentioned only Gsei's Web tournament uses own books, learning, multiple cores, and pondering. However, at the present time the Gsei tournament has a limited field. WBEC and ChessWar were expansive tournaments, running over 100 engines with each edition. Each of these tournaments allowed many engines to be run in competitive conditions and provided valuable feedback and enjoyment to the authors.

I do not think that I can replace either one of these tournaments. And I am not trying to compete with any existing tournament. However, I am interested in conducting competitive tournaments involving engines of all levels of strength, using everything built into each engine to play chess. I would like to gauge how interested the community is in my proposal. So please vote in the poll, and feel free to express your opinion in this thread.

[Graham Banks]

Would you provide a generic opening book for any engines that don't have their own, or would those engines be excluded?

[gerold]

That would be nice. Long time control and a good opening book but a very short opening book. A continuing tournament with new proven engines added maybe once a month with older engines dropped from the list.

Best,
Gerold.

P.S. You may use TB. I don't like to use them myself. I prefer to let the engines do all the work.

[ZirconiumX]

Maybe Marc Lacrosse's performance.bin book might be a good start. It's a pretty good general purpose book, and it's still available at WBEC.

The thing about bring your own book is that the book authors might have anti-engine lines to gain an advantage in the opening.

Matthew:out

[lucasart]

There are far too many improvised "rating lists". Have a look at the tournament forum: almost every week a new one is created...

It's quality and consistency we need, not quantity. A proper website that attracts a large audience, and maintains a serious and well conceived rating list.

There is already CCRL, and Graham's awesome amateur divisions tournament. If you want to do another similar thing, it needs something extra to be relevant and/or interesting. For example:
* A website
* Strict and fair testing procedure, the likes of IPON.
* No clones. In fact only open source engines, that way it is easy to enforce and spot the cheaters. Closing the source is what allows clones to thrive.

CEGT has become rather messy and dispersed (too many lists at different tc with or without pondering).

[michiguel]

Would you provide a generic opening book for any engines that don't have their own, or would those engines be excluded?

No idea what Adam's plans are, but according to Chesswar site

Engines use their own book, if any
UCI engines with no book will use my custom tournament Polyglot book, or a Polyglot book provided by the author
WB engines with no book may use my custom tournament BookThinker book by request from the author

I could not find it, but I think WBEC followed a similar concept.

IMHO, that custom book, if the author does not provide anything, should be minimal just to avoid repetitions. However, if only two games are played between each engine, a book is not even needed to guarantee that.

In addition, the book provided by the author should be unique, since the author of the book should immediately become part of that team (and there should be no more than one team per author, if Leo's rule are followed). Leo made this an author competition, not an engine competition.

One of the interesting things about this type of tournaments is that it exercises every single muscle of the "chess entity" that is competing. Different tournaments have different goals, but one with this characteristic is not very common. One that follows a similar concept is the gsei tournament organized by Luca Lisandrello, which is currently being played at this moment.

Miguel

[Graham Banks]

When WBEC and ChessWar both ended in 2012, IMO the computer chess community lost two important proving grounds for chess authors. To be sure, there still exist some great tournaments such as TCEC, Graham's Amateur series, Geert's Country Chess, and Gsei's Web tournament to name a few. However, of those mentioned only Gsei's Web tournament uses own books, learning, multiple cores, and pondering. However, at the present time the Gsei tournament has a limited field. WBEC and ChessWar were expansive tournaments, running over 100 engines with each edition. Each of these tournaments allowed many engines to be run in competitive conditions and provided valuable feedback and enjoyment to the authors.

I do not think that I can replace either one of these tournaments. And I am not trying to compete with any existing tournament. However, I am interested in conducting competitive tournaments involving engines of all levels of strength, using everything built into each engine to play chess. I would like to gauge how interested the community is in my proposal. So please vote in the poll, and feel free to express your opinion in this thread.

Adam - you should do what most interests you.
Whatever you decide to do will be appreciated by most engine authors and enthusiasts.

[Modern Times]

Adam - you should do what most interests you.
Whatever you decide to do will be appreciated by most engine authors and enthusiasts.

Agreed.

[tpetzke]

Hi Adam,

my first participation in Chesswars and WBEC were unfortunately the last one those tournaments were held.

But I remember me being really excited when I saw my shiny new engine winning and the frustration when it was losing (even more so when it was on time or something stupid). So yes I miss them.

As far as the conditions go and if you really want the engines to use whats in the engines then probably table bases should not be allowed and also games should be played out.

Thomas...

[velmarin]

Adam - you should do what most interests you.
Whatever you decide to do will be appreciated by most engine authors and enthusiasts.

I agree with this.

My vote went to YES.