Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

Discussion of chess software programming and technical issues.

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CThinker
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Re: Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

Post by CThinker »

hgm wrote: I think that to resume a game, you simply have to match the opponent with which you had an adjourned game. The adjourned game than takes precedence over any new game you were trying to start.
Yes you can do that. But the beauty of the 'resume' command is that it issues a continuation request for "all" the unfinished games. It is quite tedious to have to first figure out what your unfinished games are, and then issue a 'match' for each one.

This is especially useful for hosted engines (bots). I is very difficult for the bot to get the list of unfinished games. It is easier to just issue one command (regardless of how many unfinished games there are).
hgm wrote: Abort requires both players to abort the game, and WinBoard does not automatically reciprocate an abort proposal. So when playing against a bot, abort does not work.
As Matthew has said, in FICS and ICC, when you send an abort command and there are very few moves in the game, the other player does not have to agree. The game gets canceled.

This is very useful for situations where you make a mistake in accepting a game. You thought you were playing against Anand, when it was AnandX (a computer account).

Without this auto-cancel behavior, one ends-up with tons of unfinished games.
hgm wrote: The "seek f" thing sounds as a genuine Lasker-2.2.3 bug. I am not sure if I will be able to fix such bugs; I have only looked at about 10% of the code, only the part involving the actual game (parsing moves and checking their legality).
Btw, I'm not expecting you to fix any of these. I'm just giving feedback.

Cheers...
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hgm
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Re: Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

Post by hgm »

Well, in the end I would like to fix such things, so the feedback is very welcome. The long-term goal is that this server code will be used to set up an ICS for the Chess-variant community, as it seems that FICS is not very forthcoming in supporting real variants (such as Gothic Chess, Xiangqi or Shogi). And then it is imporant that it should function smoothly.

A nice spin-off is the ability to organize tournaments like we are doing now without being dependent on big servers like FICS or ICC, or in fact on anyone.
TonyJH
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Re: Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

Post by TonyJH »

hgm wrote: For an engine without piece list, like Fairy-Max, the King-facing rule could easily become expensive to implement. Fortuntely, I have found trick for it now to make its cost bearable: During move generation I scan the board for own pieces by file (i.e. in practice I rotated the board 90 degrees), and remember the last encountered piece. If I encounter a King when the last-encountered piece was also a King, I can take beta cutoff with a King-capture score. 8-)
To me, the king-facing rule is just another way a king can be in check, not really any different from being in check from a rook.
The thing that gave me more trouble was adapting SEE to handle cannons.
And in shogi, the pawn drop mate rule.
Richard Allbert
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Re: Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

Post by Richard Allbert »

Sorry, I came across this too late!

See you next week in Holland.

Richard (Lime)
Marc Lacrosse
Posts: 511
Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 10:05 pm

On-Line Blitz Tourney : any news ?

Post by Marc Lacrosse »

Any news?

Unfortunately I just had a job call (I am a doctor) when the tournament was due to begin 2.5 hours ago.
So I could not join in time.
Now I am back and tried to connect to HGM's server but could not log in.
Is the tournament running (or finished yet) ?
Is the server down ?

Marc
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hgm
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Re: On-Line Blitz Tourney : any news ?

Post by hgm »

The tournament is at 9 o'clock tonight, Central European Time.
Marc Lacrosse
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Re: On-Line Blitz Tourney : any news ?

Post by Marc Lacrosse »

sorry : confusion between 3 pm EST and 3 pm CET.

I will do my best to be there !

Marc
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hgm
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Re: Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

Post by hgm »

OK, I brought up the server early, as I wanted to try some stuff under Linux anyway.

So from now until the tourney it will be available for testing.
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Greg Strong
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Re: Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

Post by Greg Strong »

Ok, this is a stupid question, I know. My program has no built-in opening book support. Can I get either the Winboard or the PolyGlot to do that for me? And where can I get a compatable book?

Thanks!
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Greg Strong
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Re: Final Announcement On-Line Blitz Tourney

Post by Greg Strong »

Nevermind, I got an answer ...