Release of XBoard 4.9.0 soon

[hgm]

Indeed, that is it (in WinBoard). For XBoard you would have to set the 'Game number' to -2. Be sure no 'rewind' is specified. (Rewinding the index after 1 game would effectively undo the effect of stepping through the file.)

[Guenther]

Indeed, that is it (in WinBoard). For XBoard you would have to set the 'Game number' to -2. Be sure no 'rewind' is specified. (Rewinding the index after 1 game would effectively undo the effect of stepping through the file.)

Well I happened to notice just today that he was talking about a pgn file and not a position file. Obviously here it is somehow different and I also was
not able to do it, but I did not fiddle around for long.
How do you set up a match with a pgn file instead an epd file with repeating lines stepping through the whole pgn?

BTW it would be nice also if one could set the debug option in the tourney manager itself.

Guenther

[hgm]

The same two checkboxes work for both FEN and PGN. What is used depend on which file you specify, there are two different input fields for that. A game file prevails over a position file should you specify both. (PGN already contains a start position, so it would never make sense to use both.)

[Guenther]

The same two checkboxes work for both FEN and PGN. What is used depend on which file you specify, there are two different input fields for that. A game file prevails over a position file should you specify both. (PGN already contains a start position, so it would never make sense to use both.)

Ok I think I had it running right now. It was still missing the cycles number, because I did not realize I had to specify it extra
(number of total start positions in the pgn file) despite I had already checked 'step through lines/positions'.
Actually it is, because my mind added an 'all' to 'step through lines/positions',
which in reality is not there.
Thus I wondered why it always played the same two games from the first line ;-)
I hope Werner, who asked about this comes back to this thread to verify his problem could be solved.

[hgm]

I don't completely understand what you were doing. In an 'old-style' two-player match 'cycles' should be ignored, and the duration of the match is taken from gamesPerPairing. In real tourneys all pairings between the same engines play cycles x gamesPerPairing games, and each next game (or each two games) are taken from the next line or position in the file. How you distribute the total number of games over cycles and gamesPerPairing only determines the order in which the games are played (and then only if there are more than two participants to the tourney). E.g. if you play 4 cycles and 4 games per pairing in a round-robin, each engine will play each other engine 16 times. They will play 4 consecutive games, 2 from line 1, and then play 2 games from line 2, and then two other engines will play (using these same two lines) untill all have played all others (which finishes the first cycle). Then the second cycle starts, and all engines now play from line 3 and 4 in every pairing, etc.

[Werner]

I don't completely understand what you were doing. In an 'old-style' two-player match 'cycles' should be ignored, and the duration of the match is taken from gamesPerPairing. In real tourneys all pairings between the same engines play cycles x gamesPerPairing games, and each next game (or each two games) are taken from the next line or position in the file. How you distribute the total number of games over cycles and gamesPerPairing only determines the order in which the games are played (and then only if there are more than two participants to the tourney). E.g. if you play 4 cycles and 4 games per pairing in a round-robin, each engine will play each other engine 16 times. They will play 4 consecutive games, 2 from line 1, and then play 2 games from line 2, and then two other engines will play (using these same two lines) untill all have played all others (which finishes the first cycle). Then the second cycle starts, and all engines now play from line 3 and 4 in every pairing, etc.

Thanks, it works here now. I even started a 2nd Winboard and loaded the same .trn file. I hope, the tourney is ready in half the time.

[Guenther]

I don't completely understand what you were doing. In an 'old-style' two-player match 'cycles' should be ignored, and the duration of the match is taken from gamesPerPairing. In real tourneys all pairings between the same engines play cycles x gamesPerPairing games, and each next game (or each two games) are taken from the next line or position in the file. How you distribute the total number of games over cycles and gamesPerPairing only determines the order in which the games are played (and then only if there are more than two participants to the tourney). E.g. if you play 4 cycles and 4 games per pairing in a round-robin, each engine will play each other engine 16 times. They will play 4 consecutive games, 2 from line 1, and then play 2 games from line 2, and then two other engines will play (using these same two lines) untill all have played all others (which finishes the first cycle). Then the second cycle starts, and all engines now play from line 3 and 4 in every pairing, etc.

Oops, yes I meant games per matches/pairings not cycles.

[hgm]

I even started a 2nd Winboard and loaded the same .trn file. I hope, the tourney is ready in half the time.

Indeed, that is the idea. You can start as many 'worker agents' as you like on the tourney, and start or stop them at will when you need (part of) the computer capacity for other purposes. (Clicking Machine Match in the Mode menu will finish the current game before stopping.) If none are running the tourney is simly suspended. Double-clicking the .trn file is the simplest way to launch new worker agents on the tourney.

[Werner]

Hi,
I am sorry, I have some more troubles with the setting of uci engines.
I want to make a match between
Deep Shredder 12 x64 1CPU and
Stockfish 1.5.1 x64 2CPU

How can I individually set the number of CPUs for each engine?
I tried with Threads=2 as command line parameter, but then engine crashes.
Is there an easy way? Why is this not shown in engine configuration ?

regards
Werner

[Guenther]

Hi, I am sorry, I have some more troubles ... t&start=20

Post 23 from above thread(HGM):

But it does not have separate Thread controls in the Engine Settings dialogs. I cannot help seeing such 'core odds' games as a specialist application, for which you can expect people to go 'the extra mile'. I mean, where would it stop? Would you also want it possible to play 'hash-size odds' games, or 'tablebase-cache odds' games?

The point is that there already exits a not-so-difficult kludge to force engines to run with other settings than the common GUI settings. Just install the engine with the extra XBoard option -initString to overrule the settings commands that the GUI would send. (Which would have been sent before the "new" command.) E.g.

-initString "memory 64\ncores 2\nnew\nrandom"

This can be added through the Edit Engine List menu dialog of the GUI, so it is not really a big deal.

So you need to overrule the one engine, which doesn't have the threads number you specified in 'Common Engine'.

-initString "ncores %\nnew\nrandom"

replace % with your number (new and random seems to be the normally sent initialisation string according to the specs)
https://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/engine-intf.html#8