On-line engine blitz tourney May

[ZirconiumX]

Dorpsgek lost connection after 7 rounds, and had to be forfeited.

XBoard segfaulted while I was asleep. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Henk]

Another huge improvement of LCZero or not.

By the way Slipper being a total disaster. But it did not play.

[pkumar]

@HGM
Thanks for the tournament. I experienced several disconnections. Each time I could reconnect and did not miss any game. Internet signal seemed to be on all the time. Is there any way to avoid disconnections?

Regards

[hgm]

Disconnections are unfortunately intrinsic to the internet. I think there is client software (ICSDrone?) which automatically reconnects an even resumes the game that was adjourned because of the disconnection. But even then a disconnect could occur when a round starts, and then the client would not be aware it is expected to play (and against whom). In a tourney like this you can of course hope the operator of the opponent is present and paying attention, so that he will start the game. But if everyone would rely on that it would never happen...

[Kotlov]

Bad idea online tourney.

[hgm]

Well, it is much cheaper than traveling there, so what can you expect...?

Some (most?) people would of course think that it is a bad idea to have computers play Chess in the first place.

[brianr]

Bad idea online tourney.

And yet more than 40 engine programmers were there.
Actually, it is quite a popular tournament, and has been for years.
Brian
(Tinker)

[Joost Buijs]

Another huge improvement of LCZero or not.

By the way Slipper being a total disaster. But it did not play.

It is difficult to tell from just a few games but I have the impression that it improved by ~150 Elo in 4 weeks time. The difference is that this time I used LC0-cuDNN which is at least 3 times faster than LCZero on my 1080ti, I don't know how much Elo the newer network contributes. They still have a long way to go if they want to reach stockfish level, at least 500 a 600 Elo, and as it seems now progress has stalled.

[MOBMAT]

does someone have a write up on how to configure an environment, etc. to be able to compete in these tourneys?

I rarely use Winboard, which is probably a big part of the problem.

[hgm]

Not sure what you mean by 'configuring an environment'. The announcing posting mentions the command necessary to connect; if you type that command at the command prompt while in the WinBoard folder (with the appropriate engine name) it should be sufficient. After starting WinBoard you can control the engine settings from the WinBoard menus once, just like in any GUI. This should mostly be self-evident.

The more tricky thing is that, once connected an logged in (by typing username an password as the ICS prompts you for those), you also have to operate the ICS. But the tourney in principle is automatic, all you have to do after mamer announces that the tourney is 'open', is type

mam join 1

(assuming the tourney number is 1, as it usually is). Apart from mishaps like disconnections, everything else would be automatic.