How can I run an FRC (FischerRandom or Chess960) tournament?

[carldaman]

I've been thinking about running a Chess960 engine tournament, and I've just noticed that the Fritz GUI strangely gives no such option. Is there a way to do so under the Fritz GUI that I'm not aware of? Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Carl

[velmarin]

You just have to be done with a base starting positions,

and prepare a tournament using that base,

for example you can find them here:

http://www.mark-weeks.com/cfaa/chess960/c960strt.htm

[Ferdy]

I've been thinking about running a Chess960 engine tournament, and I've just noticed that the Fritz GUI strangely gives no such option. Is there a way to do so under the Fritz GUI that I'm not aware of? Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Carl

Select home menu then click the lower part of new game icon then chess 960.
To see which of the installed engines supports 960, select engine menu then press change main engine icon.
To run tournament do as usual, select engine menu, then click tournament icon or engine match icon.
I only tested to run tourney with predefined chess960 positions from .cbh file. Tested this under Fritz 13.

[Adam Hair]

Another source for positions is Kirr's Chess Opening Sampler. You can specify how many Chess960 positions you want to use in a tournament and the sampler will randomly choose that number of positions (from the 960 possible positions).

[carldaman]

I've been thinking about running a Chess960 engine tournament, and I've just noticed that the Fritz GUI strangely gives no such option. Is there a way to do so under the Fritz GUI that I'm not aware of? Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Carl

Select home menu then click the lower part of new game icon then chess 960.
To see which of the installed engines supports 960, select engine menu then press change main engine icon.
To run tournament do as usual, select engine menu, then click tournament icon or engine match icon.
I only tested to run tourney with predefined chess960 positions from .cbh file. Tested this under Fritz 13.

Thanks for your replies, but here's a nasty problem.

Selecting chess960 from the home menu at first seems to allow one to run a chess960 match between engines, but at the last moment the normal chess starting position is substituted for the randomly selected chess960 position, and a normal chess game ensues. This is completely farcical.

There seems to be no way to run a chess960 match or tourney under Fritz 12.
Has anyone been successful in doing so?

[carldaman]

I've downloaded the chess960.pgn file, then specified it as the opening DB under the tourney config options in Fritz 12. Unfortunately, the same thing as before happened -- the regular starting position was used anyway, thus defeating the purpose.

[pichy]

I've been thinking about running a Chess960 engine tournament, and I've just noticed that the Fritz GUI strangely gives no such option. Is there a way to do so under the Fritz GUI that I'm not aware of? Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Carl

Select home menu then click the lower part of new game icon then chess 960.
To see which of the installed engines supports 960, select engine menu then press change main engine icon.
To run tournament do as usual, select engine menu, then click tournament icon or engine match icon.
I only tested to run tourney with predefined chess960 positions from .cbh file. Tested this under Fritz 13.

Thanks for your replies, but here's a nasty problem.

Selecting chess960 from the home menu at first seems to allow one to run a chess960 match between engines, but at the last moment the normal chess starting position is substituted for the randomly selected chess960 position, and a normal chess game ensues. This is completely farcical.

There seems to be no way to run a chess960 match or tourney under Fritz 12.
Has anyone been successful in doing so?

Download ArenaGUI or ChessGUI and solve your simple problem. Make sure if you are planning a long tournament of 500 games,then 250 positions would be ideal between two engines since you always want the engines to think by themself and not repeating an opening where there is a slight chance of both engines repeating their moves. If the tourney is a small one for instance 100 games then 50 positions allowing each program to play both sides of each opening would be ideal.

PS: Long time ago I had a FRC short tournament of 400 games between 4 engines and I selected 25 FRC positions, I realized that some of the games were identical using the same Opening since I left learning on and the engines did not had an opening database (Opening Book) fo follow. Some engines like shredder was so smart to repeat the same lines as it did in a previous winning games. [/quote]

Critter and Houdini are my two favorites
http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404FRC/

[carldaman]

Update: I noticed there was a corrupt/unreadable entry in the chess960.pgn file, so I created a new .pgn file, and this finally worked. I had to specify a starting position and that position was used in every tournament game.

Results of my first chess960 tourney:

1. Critter 1.6a 64-bit 4-CPU 4/6
2. Stockfish 2.2.2 JA 64bit 4-CPU 3.5/6
3. Deep Rybka 4.1 960 x64 4-CPU 2.5/6
4. Houdini 2.0c x64 4-CPU 2/6


Critter 1.6 seems to be very strong in chess960. Nice job.

Thanks for the help,
CL

[carldaman]

I've been thinking about running a Chess960 engine tournament, and I've just noticed that the Fritz GUI strangely gives no such option. Is there a way to do so under the Fritz GUI that I'm not aware of? Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Carl

Select home menu then click the lower part of new game icon then chess 960.
To see which of the installed engines supports 960, select engine menu then press change main engine icon.
To run tournament do as usual, select engine menu, then click tournament icon or engine match icon.
I only tested to run tourney with predefined chess960 positions from .cbh file. Tested this under Fritz 13.

Thanks for your replies, but here's a nasty problem.

Selecting chess960 from the home menu at first seems to allow one to run a chess960 match between engines, but at the last moment the normal chess starting position is substituted for the randomly selected chess960 position, and a normal chess game ensues. This is completely farcical.

There seems to be no way to run a chess960 match or tourney under Fritz 12.
Has anyone been successful in doing so?

Download ArenaGUI or ChessGUI and solve your simple problem. Make sure if you are planning a long tournament of 500 games,then 250 positions would be ideal between two engines since you always want the engines to think by themself and not repeating an opening where there is a slight chance of both engines repeating their moves. If the tourney is a small one for instance 100 games then 50 positions allowing each program to play both sides of each opening would be ideal.

PS: Long time ago I had a FRC short tournament of 400 games between 4 engines and I selected 25 FRC positions, I realized that some of the games were identical using the same Opening since I left learning on and the engines did not had an opening database (Opening Book) fo follow. Some engines like shredder was so smart to repeat the same lines as it did in a previous winning games.

Critter and Houdini are my two favorites
http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404FRC/[/quote]

Problem with Arena is that it doesn't properly support the UCI protocol for chess960, so it's useless. I've tried ChessGUI and it works, but it only uses 1 CPU per engine for chess960, for some reason.

I've played a 4-engine 4-CPU tournament with 512MB hash and 5m+5s time control, and the new Critter came out on top (see my other post).

[hgm]

Of course WinBoard would also not have any problems running an FRC tourney. Whether with one or four CPUs. And you would not have to supply a list of opening positions (although you could, if you want to exercise more control over the), as WB would set up a random shuffle before every game. (But you can select to play each opening twice.)