ArenaSwiss 0.3a

[GONeill]

ArenaSwiss 0.3a

I wanted to run a Swiss tournament in Arena and came across the 2009 program from Eberhard Jiritschka. I have made a few updates, fixed a couple of small bugs and added some new options. Details and the download can be found here:

http://goneill.co.nz/arenaswiss

It still isn't ideal as you have to create a tournament in Arena with the participants, number of rounds, time control, tournament name etc and save it as "swiss.at" which ArenaSwiss then uses to control the Swiss tournament. The README.TXT file gives all the details. Perhaps one day I'll make it more standalone and change the interface into a more modern screen, but the current version seems to function reasonably well.

It's compiled for Windows, but the Pascal source code is included so it should recompile easily for Linux using the Lazarus/Free Pascal Compiler IDE.

Please let me know if this is useful or if you find any bugs!

[mrlissandrello]

Congratulations, you did a good job.

- Your program is compatible with Arena 3.0?
- You could add option 'Pause between games (ms)' ? (Currently you need to enter 'continue').

Regards
LL

[mrlissandrello]

Maybe there is something wrong with the time management: If you choose the option 'blitz' and you change the values​​, ArenaSwiss continues to use the default values​​.

Regards
LL

[GONeill]

Hi Luca,

Thanks for your messages.

ArenaSwiss should work OK with Arena 3.0. One of the problems with it is that it requires you to create a tournament in Arena first (swiss.at), which it then uses as a template for the tournament. It would look much nicer if it ran everything directly from ArenaSwiss. But in this case it turns out to be an advantage as any changes made to versions of Arena just get carried forward in the AT file without ArenaSwiss even noticing them. I think it even works with Arena 2.0

Interesting idea on the pause timing. I too got a bit tired of "continue" so allowed it to be abbreviated to "cont" but the idea of it just timing out after a period of time and then continuing with the tournament on its own might be interesting. I originally added the pause options so that you could just leave it running (e.g. overnight) knowing it would stop at a certain point and wait.

Because of how it uses the .at tournament file, once it starts a tournament changes to the file in Arena are no longer used. I could look into changing this but it could lead to all sorts of complications. For example, you could then try changing the participants during the tournament etc. There are some things you can change in the INI file (the pause and display options) and some things you can change on the pause screen but that's it at the moment.

Graham

[Sergio Martinez]

Hi Graham

Great job!

Testing it

[Bram Visser]

Thanks, will try it !

[GONeill]

ArenaSwiss 0.3b

I have updated the program with the ability to run multiple games between the participants in each round.

I have also fixed the numbering of the games in the PGN file so that they aren't all '1' any more, but this meant tricking Arena into thinking previous games have already been played between the participants in the current pair. So the number of games displayed on the Arena screen now looks a little odd. For example if three games per pairing were being played in the tournament:

Code: Select all

Stockfish 1.0 -- 0.0 Hannibal
Crafy     0.0 -- 1.0 Critter
Houdini    Playing   Fire

the Arena screen will show Houdini - Fire, 0-0-6, Game 7 of 9 (i.e. as if there were six previous draws) for the first game between Houdini and Fire. The game will then be numbered correctly in the PGN file as game 7.

The download is still at:

http://goneill.co.nz/arenaswiss

Regards,
Graham

PS. Don't interrupt a tournament running in 0.3a to load this new version as the results file layout has been changed.

[GONeill]

ArenaSwiss 0.3c

The previous method of numbering the games in the PGN file looked too odd, and also didn't work well with SCID. So I have changed it again, and now there is an option in the INI file to specify how the numbering should be formatted.

The download is still at:

http://goneill.co.nz/arenaswiss

Regards,
Graham

PS. Don't interrupt a tournament running in 0.3b to load this new version as the results file layout has been changed.

[Ferdy]

Thanks for the update, I use your program to run swiss tour, on engines around elo 1200.

Couple of comments.
1. The Fine Scores: Buchholz perhaps can be changed to
Tie-break system: Buchholz, elsewhere to use Tie-break, instead of Fine.
2. I setup a 21-player round robin, set at 7 rounds in arena 3.5, when I run this in ArenaSwiss 0.3c, only 20 players are considered, the last player in the setup was not included.

I run two swiss, at the same time, with two Arena 3.5 installation directory, and each with a copy of ArenaSwiss - works good so far. Cool and neat program .

[GONeill]

I'm pleased you enjoy using the program.

The term 'Fine' was in the original version from Eberhard and I left it there in case it meant something. But 'Tie Break' is better, so I'll change it.

It's the same with the odd number of players. Eberhard wrote it to drop the last player (it shows this in the ArenaSwiss.log file). I'll change it to include a '[Bye]' player. I assume 1 point for a bye is standard practise?