A poll to gauge interest in possible tournament

[Roger Brown]

There are far too many improvised "rating lists". Have a look at the tournament forum: almost every week a new one is created...

It's quality and consistency we need, not quantity. A proper website that attracts a large audience, and maintains a serious and well conceived rating list.

There is already CCRL, and Graham's awesome amateur divisions tournament. If you want to do another similar thing, it needs something extra to be relevant and/or interesting. For example:
* A website
* Strict and fair testing procedure, the likes of IPON.
* No clones. In fact only open source engines, that way it is easy to enforce and spot the cheaters. Closing the source is what allows clones to thrive.

CEGT has become rather messy and dispersed (too many lists at different tc with or without pondering).

Hello Lucas,

WBEC and ChessWar were not primarily rating lists. Of course, it is inevitable that persons will rate the "Premier Division" and do some correlation across other tournaments to arrive at a rating but there would not be sufficient games to create a rating list of any rigorous statistical meaning.

WBEC was one of the longest running chess engine tournaments that I know of and one that I followed keenly. There is also RWBC and George Lyapko's tournament.

These tournaments generated excitement for authors and fans who would see their engines battle it out in an attempt to win promotion to the next league pretty much like a English Premier league setup.

Games were discussed and ChessWar had a chat feature which made it possible for the spectators to share their opinions, analysis etc.

I have no objection to your preferences either way but excluding closed source engines would mean no commercial engines and quite a few free ones.

No clones is going to open up a can of worms as what is going to be the ultimate determinant of that standard? Perhaps one such engine could represent the family?

I have no idea how to solve that problem but that genie is well and truly out of the bottle...

What would be the constituents of a proper website in your opinion? I would like Adam's project to succeed and I think that if a demanding mind such as yours could be satisfied then he would be more than halfway there.

Later.

[Roger Brown]

I voted no. Apart from a quick glance now and then I did not follow WBEC, ChessWar and TCEC either. I run my own tournaments and that satisfies me as far as engines are concerned, also I do not have spare time to follow these tournaments. Anyway, I prefer to watch human tournaments where I have a little bit more chance to understand the ideas behind moves, also there are blunders that make them more interesting. And there is the rooting factor, I can root for a human but never for an engine.

Cheers,
Gábor

Hello Gabor,

I can only admire persons who run tournaments, as I cannot. So I guess I had to get my fix by following these tournaments.

Blunders? I have seen many, particularly in the lower divisions of the WBEC.

Rooting? To my shame, I have enthusiastically rooted for engines over the years. Engines that stand out include the Baron, Gaviota, Shredder, Crafty, Fruit, Queen and Horizon. Rooted. As in following every victory, draw and loss.

Just showing the other side of the discussion. Of course the decision is Adam's but all opinions should contend.

Later.

[jdart]

I like "own book" tournaments, preferably at longer time controls. There are relatively few of them though, as you say.

--Jon

[mar]

Yes, absolutely.
I remember the last ChessWar, I even remember a programmer sending updates to Olivier on daily basis
CW was a lot of fun (well for me at least) while meeting some awesome people.
So yes (probably ponder on because many authors found pondering bugs that way), plus live broadcasts.
Graham does live broadcasts too but not many people connect for some reason, I haven't figured out why yet

[Ferdy]

When WBEC and ChessWar both ended in 2012, IMO the computer chess community lost two important proving grounds for chess authors. To be sure, there still exist some great tournaments such as TCEC, Graham's Amateur series, Geert's Country Chess, and Gsei's Web tournament to name a few. However, of those mentioned only Gsei's Web tournament uses own books, learning, multiple cores, and pondering. However, at the present time the Gsei tournament has a limited field. WBEC and ChessWar were expansive tournaments, running over 100 engines with each edition. Each of these tournaments allowed many engines to be run in competitive conditions and provided valuable feedback and enjoyment to the authors.

I do not think that I can replace either one of these tournaments. And I am not trying to compete with any existing tournament. However, I am interested in conducting competitive tournaments involving engines of all levels of strength, using everything built into each engine to play chess. I would like to gauge how interested the community is in my proposal. So please vote in the poll, and feel free to express your opinion in this thread.

A tour with ponder on, own book, learning, everything the engine is capable. No update of book and learning are allowed from the author and other persons, once the book is used the engine should update itself same with learnings. The engine is allowed some time to update itself after every game. A medium TC where spectators will not get bored , probably TC 20 minutes for whole game, no inc, no move control, there is excitement to this TC as engines are somewhat pressured to deliver a consistent move accuracy without being time pressured, everybody will improve their sloppy time management . Learning will be encouraged, an important subject that has been forgotten.

[Henk]

If it would be a real sport tournament perhaps you would see programmers live working on their engines or watching the games, you would have sponsors and large prices. Programmers updating their engines continuously and fighting for the win. Perhaps also some experts giving live comments on the games.

[RolandoFurioso]

How about running a tournament with tablebases off *and* without employing tablebases for adjudication? That is, to play the games until the bitter (or sweet) end, thus testing the endgame capabilities of the engines? This should be very entertaining. Of course, one should employ a fixed time limit - something like 30 minutes each for *all* moves, no per-move increment.

Roland

[hgm]

IMO ChessWar was by far the best engine tournament ever held, and it is a real pity it was discontinued. Olivier really knew how to get the best from any engine. The live broadcasting and the chat were always very entertaining. It would be great if something similar could be revived.

[Henk]

Maybe it's an idea to make more categories.

- Engines developed by 1, 2-4, 5 or more programmers.
- Age of the engine, or the amount of time they spend on developing their engines including past engines, experience of the developer
- Engines based on open source or not
- Experimental engines (no alfa beta)

[michiguel]

Yes, absolutely.
I remember the last ChessWar, I even remember a programmer sending updates to Olivier on daily basis
CW was a lot of fun (well for me at least) while meeting some awesome people.
So yes (probably ponder on because many authors found pondering bugs that way), plus live broadcasts.
Graham does live broadcasts too but not many people connect for some reason, I haven't figured out why yet

I had too many problems with the viewer

Miguel