On-line engine blitz tourney October

[pkumar]

"India is 3 hours and 30 minutes ahead of Amsterdam, Netherlands" - says Google. So the tournament starts at local time 0:30 hrs. I agree that it will be wee hours here even if the start is one hour earlier. If the present timing is convenient for most participants then so be it. As we are crazy enough to pursue this crazy hobby, any minor inconvenience is not going to deter us.

[hgm]

India might not have Daylight Saving Time, as we currently still have. But the day after tomorrow the clock will be moved back one hour here, and I think the difference should go up to the 'official' 4:30 hr for the rest of the winter season. I would not shift the time of this event anyway, now that I have already announced it.

[pkumar]

No problem. I intend to participate. I shall check the time difference. I hope it will be 3 hr 30 min this time. And btw, thanks to you for the effort to organize this tourney.

[shrapnel]

No problem. I intend to participate. I shall check the time difference. I hope it will be 3 hr 30 min this time. And btw, thanks to you for the effort to organize this tourney.

You don't work ?
Are you a Pensioner or a student ?
Would be nice to have so much free time.

[mkchan]

Hope random movers are welcome, I'm entering TekiRandomMover instead of WyldChess this time

[hgm]

Anything is welcome. If you enter a random mover, I will enter N.E.G.

But perhaps we should try McMahon instead of Swiss if there are too many asymptotically weak programs.

[Henk]

Anything is welcome. If you enter a random mover, I will enter N.E.G.

I also thought about creating a Skipper version that only searches one level deep. What do you need more to test evaluation.

[Michael Sherwin]

Hi HG, I'm going to try to participate. I downloaded the AA beta version of WinBoard. For the shortcut in the target field I have, "C:\Michael\Chess\WinBoard\WinBoard\winboard.exe -zp -ics -icshost -icshelper timeseal -fcp RomiChess.exe -fd RomiChess -autoKibitz"

When I start it up I get "Fatal Error". I assume that is because I'm way too early at the moment. The time here is 5:20 AM Mountain time. The error message is, "Could not connect to host -icshelper, port 5000: No such host is known.

Am I set up correctly? Or is something wrong?

Thanks!

[zenpawn]

Hi HG, I'm going to try to participate. I downloaded the AA beta version of WinBoard. For the shortcut in the target field I have, "C:\Michael\Chess\WinBoard\WinBoard\winboard.exe -zp -ics -icshost -icshelper timeseal -fcp RomiChess.exe -fd RomiChess -autoKibitz"

When I start it up I get "Fatal Error". I assume that is because I'm way too early at the moment. The time here is 5:20 AM Mountain time. The error message is, "Could not connect to host -icshelper, port 5000: No such host is known.

Am I set up correctly? Or is something wrong?

Thanks!

You're missing the host. It should be -icshost winboard.nl

[hgm]

I just patched mamer to also support McMahon pairing. This is a form of Swiss where the participants already start with a number of points. By giving strong participants more initial points, you get more interesting pairings; in normal Swiss the first two rounds are wasted on dead certain wins of top players against tail players.

The disadvantage is of course that if your initial seeding is low, you don't stand a chance to win the tourney, even if you would win all your games, because players that got more initial free points would still end above you with fewer wins. So the system is only suitable for tourneys where the players are spread out over a huge Elo range. Like in this case.

I have implemented it such that for 9 rounds the top half (ratingwise) of the participants start with 5 points. Below that the number of points will decrease linearly to 0 for number last. For 40 participants that would mean number 21 and 22 get 4.5 free points, number 23 ad 24 4.0, etc. This will not distort the winning chances for the top half, but keeps their games concentrated mostly to within that group, and avoid them playing against the bottom 25%.

Shall we use this system tonight? I have tested it on a tourney with 14 participants and 6 rounds, and it seems to work fine there now.