Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

[hgm]

Enough people have expressed interest to make the on-line engine blitz tourney happen! It will take place on

Saturday February 7, 3 pm EST (= 21:00 MET).

The server IP addres will be 80.100.28.169, and the required helper program will be timeseal (as on FICS). The server will probably be on line at least one hour in advance. All participants are requested to login 15 minutes in advance. To login your egine with WinBoard, use the command

winboard -ics -icshost 80.100.28.169 -icshelper timeseal -zp -fcp ENGINENAME -fd ENGINEDIR -autoKibitz

(Port number is the default 5000, so you don't have to specify that.)

A download is available from my website, containing WinBoard and some shortcuts to start it, including one to login on my server for Human play, and one to start Fairy-Max as a bot on this server. The latter one you can easily convert to one for running your own engine. To make sure the shortcuts work, save the download in your C:\Program Files\ folder. (Vista does seem to fail adapting shortcut targets.)

I will prepare an account on the server for everyone that has expressed interest to participate in one of the threads on this forum. I will send you the password by Personal Message. If you have not received a PM by wednesday with the username and password, post a complaint in this thread.

[smrf]

In case you have addressed me or SMIRF by your posting: concerning myself there is no experience at all with ICS or FICS or other related port communications. Thus I am not able to participate.

[hgm]

Could the following people tell me which engine they are going to operate? I would like to make acocunt names that indicate the engine.

Paul Beresford
Kenny Dail
Tano-Urayoan Russi Roman

Post your choice below (no duplicates, first-come, first served!)

Already taken of the top egines are:

Twisted Logic and Bright (Swami)
Glaurung (Tord)
Fruit (Marc Lacrosse)

[hgm]

In case you have addressed me or SMIRF by your posting: concerning myself there is no experience at all with ICS or FICS or other related port communications. Thus I am not able to participate.

I did not count on you / SMIRF for this blitz tourney. One week after it, (Febr. 14) there will be a Gotic Chess tourney, though, at a time control that would make operation by hand of an engine possible (10+6). Smirf would be most welcome there. I am sure you could learn how to use FICS; Kenny could probably provide you with a ready-to-run executabe for the required client (XBoard) for MacIntosh. Even if you don't want to play, you could use it to observe.

[diep]

Enough people have expressed interest to make the on-line engine blitz tourney happen! It will take place on

Saturday February 7, 3 pm EST (= 21:00 MET).

The server IP addres will be 80.100.28.169, and the required helper program will be timeseal (as on FICS). The server will probably be on line at least one hour in advance. All participants are requested to login 15 minutes in advance. To login your egine with WinBoard, use the command

winboard -ics -icshost 80.100.28.169 -icshelper timeseal -zp -fcp ENGINENAME -fd ENGINEDIR -autoKibitz

(Port number is the default 5000, so you don't have to specify that.)

A download is available from my website, containing WinBoard and some shortcuts to start it, including one to login on my server for Human play, and one to start Fairy-Max as a bot on this server. The latter one you can easily convert to one for running your own engine. To make sure the shortcuts work, save the download in your C:\Program Files\ folder. (Vista does seem to fail adapting shortcut targets.)

I will prepare an account on the server for everyone that has expressed interest to participate in one of the threads on this forum. I will send you the password by Personal Message. If you have not received a PM by wednesday with the username and password, post a complaint in this thread.

I have to apologize for not showing up, i have to play for my chessteam in national league that day. At 9 PM odds are tiny i'm already back. Like it happened 0 times before that i was home that early from a KNSB day.

Good luck organizing.

[krazyken]

I am so not sure of what I'll run with. My best engine is almost certainly Hiarcs 12.1. But I am open to special requests if there is any Mac program that anyone wants to see.

[hgm]

For now I will make an account for you under the name HIARCS.

[hgm]

I have entered 19 accounts now:

Amateur
Brainless
Bright
DanaSah
Diep
Dirty
EveAnn
Fruit
Gaviota
Glaurung
HIARCS
Joker
microMax
Noonian
Quadrox
Telepath
Tornado
Twisted Logic
ZCT

The idea came up to allow some testing beforehand. To this end I will bring the server on line for one night:

Wednesday 22:00 MET (4 pm EST) to Thursday 8:00 MET (2 am EST)

You can test if you can login then, and perhaps play a quick game against Fairy-Max, which I will leave on as a bot.

[hgm]

I also upgraded the ICSclient download to have the -autoKibitz option on in the shortcut for the Fairy-Max ICS bot, and to contain the latest WinBoard executable, which also diverts engine kibitzes to the engine-output window when you are observing an ICS game.

[CThinker]

Can you also please create an account for Thinker? I'd like to first see if the ThinkerBoard ICS client interface works with your server. If all things work well, Thinker might participate.

Thanks...