My gift to the community – a much better cutechessGUI

[pohl4711]

I find the best solution is switching scales, I can live with that. Fortunately the desktop icons return to their original places when I switch back to 125 %.

So, my first ever tournament under Cute Chess is running! Thanks a lot!

Fine, but "I can live with that" is of course, not the goal, Patrick and me wanted to achieve...

As I mentioned, Patrick is working on improvements. But please be a little bit patient. He his a student and in Germany, it is soon time to write some exams, so Patrick has to do some learning for this, now...

[pohl4711]

If any DT is bigger than that, the move was hard to find for the engine.

Or there is a second move as good as this hard to find move and the switch was just random.

Correct, but in a huge database, these switches will be statistically evenly distributed, so, DT-percentage-results of different engines will not be affected.

And Decision Time offers more opportunities, this is just what comes to my mind right now:
Engine authors can measure, if and how good a new pruning idea works.
Openings can be sort by DT (sharpness, complexity)

And this is definitly not the end.

So, I still strongly believe, Decision Time is a very exciting new feature, and it will never be removed from my & Patricks cutechess. Never.

[pohl4711]

A known issue of cutechess is that it runs into time trouble leading to time forfeits by collecting too many data in its pgns at least when running many concurrent games. This was the main reason for developing fastchess iirc.
And collecting even more information won't make it better.

My testruns are 26 games running simultaneously, so, if this leads to problems, we will see that soon...
Right now, there is still a small bug in cutechess-cli - some warnings are printed out, Patrick forgot to remove a debug-tool. When this is fixed, I will try it out and I will report.

[pohl4711]

Thanks Stefan! You have invested a lot for computer chess. I have used 0€ for hardware or software in last 5 years .

Money is not important - only passion is.

[Gabor Szots]

I stopped my tournament for the night and restarted it in the morning. It continued with the game it interrupted but after concluding that game it froze.
Up to this point 99 games have been played. At the time of the freeze the players were Soomi 1.2.0 and Kiwi 0.6d. This was the debug at that point (only the last few lines):

<Soomi 1.2.0 64-bit(0): info depth 22 score cp 0 nodes 7636983 time 1294 nps 5898926 pv e3d1
<Soomi 1.2.0 64-bit(0): bestmove e3d1
>Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): ping 30
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): pong 30
>Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): time 210
otim 1797
>Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): usermove e3d1
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 3 0 0 26 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 4 0 0 76 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 5 0 0 153 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 6 0 0 280 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 7 0 0 392 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 8 0 0 546 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 9 0 0 734 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 10 0 0 997 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 11 0 0 1276 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 12 0 0 1576 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 13 0 0 1925 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 14 0 0 2274 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 15 0 0 3083 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 16 0 1 7891 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 17 0 1 19481 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 18 0 1 52448 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 19 0 3 143360 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 20 0 7 395861 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 21 0 21 1285903 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 22 0 57 3547559 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 22 0 57 3547559 Kd5
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): move d6d5
>Soomi 1.2.0 64-bit(0): position startpos moves g2g3 d7d5 f1g2 e7e5 d2d3 g8f6 c1g5 b8c6 g5f6 g7f6 e2e3 c8e6 a2a3 d8d7 b1c3 e8c8 g1f3 f8h6 e1g1 c8b8 f3d2 d5d4 e3d4 c6d4 d2e4 d7e7 d1h5 h6g7 a1c1 h7h6 e4d2 e7d7 h2h3 d7d6 d2c4 d6a6 c4e3 a6b6 c1b1 h8g8 g3g4 c7c6 g1h1 g7f8 c3e4 f8e7 e4c3 f6f5 e3f5 d4f5 g4f5 g8g5 h5h6 g5f5 h6e3 e7c5 e3e2 c5f2 c3e4 f2d4 f1f5 e6f5 e2f1 f5g6 f1f6 b6c7 b2b4 b8a8 b1f1 c7d7 h3h4 d7c7 g2h3 d4b2 h3f5 g6f5 f1f5 b2a3 h4h5 a3b4 h5h6 c7c8 h6h7 d8h8 f6g7 c8f8 g7f8 b4f8 f5f7 a7a5 e4f6 a5a4 f6d7 f8b4 d7b6 a8a7 b6a4 a7a6 a4b2 b7b5 b2d1 b4e1 h1g2 a6b6 g2f3 b6c5 f3e2 e1h4 f7d7 c5b4 e2e3 h4g3 e3e4 b4a3 d7g7 g3h2 d1e3 a3b2 e3f5 h2f4 d3d4 f4d2 d4e5 b2c2 f5d4 c2b2 d4c6 b5b4 c6e7 b2c2 e7g6 h8h7 g7h7 b4b3 h7c7 d2c3 e5e6 b3b2 c7b7 c3f6 g6e5 b2b1q b7b1 c2b1 e4f5 f6h4 e5g6 h4d8 f5e4 b1c2 g6e5 c2c3 e4d5 d8e7 e5g6 e7f6 g6f4 f6e7 f4e2 c3d3 e2g3 e7f6 g3f5 d3c3 f5d6 c3d3 d6e4 f6e7 e4c5 d3c3 c5a6 e7f6 a6c7 f6e7 c7e8 c3d3 e8g7 e7f6 g7h5 f6e7 d5e5 d3c4 h5g3 c4c5 g3f5 e7d8 f5h6 d8e7 h6g8 e7d6 e5e4 d6f8 g8f6 c5d6 e4f5 f8e7 f6g4 d6d5 g4h6 d5d6 h6f7 d6d5 f7e5 e7g5 e5c6 d5d6 c6b4 g5d8 b4d3 d6d5 d3f4 d5d6 f4e2 d6d5 e2c3 d5d6 c3e4 d6d5 e4f6 d5d6 f6d7 d6d5 d7b6 d5c5 b6a4 c5d5 a4b2 d8e7 b2d1 e7d8 d1e3 d5d6 e3d1 d6d5 d1e3 d5d6 e3d1 d6d5
>Soomi 1.2.0 64-bit(0): isready
>Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): force
>Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): result 1/2-1/2 {Draw by 3-fold repetition}
>Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): ping 30
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): 1/2-1/2 {draw by repetition}
<Soomi 1.2.0 64-bit(0): readyok
<Kiwi 0.6d 64-bit(1): pong 30

[pohl4711]

I stopped my tournament for the night and restarted it in the morning. It continued with the game it interrupted but after concluding that game it froze.

There is a bug in cutechessGUI, terminating correctly. Will be fixed (hopefully...).

Right now, just reboot your machine before resuming a tournament. For me, that helps.

I will give Patrick your output here, perhaps another problem?

[Gabor Szots]

I stopped my tournament for the night and restarted it in the morning. It continued with the game it interrupted but after concluding that game it froze.

There is a bug in cutechessGUI, terminating correctly. Will be fixed (hopefully...).

Right now, just reboot your machine before resuming a tournament. For me, that helps.

I will give Patrick your output here, perhaps another problem?

Some additional information:

After stopping the tournament I switched off my computer completely.
This is a Soomi gauntlet, Soomi plays 9 opponents. The last game was its 11th game against Kiwi.

When I noticed the tournament froze, I exited Cute Chess and reloaded the tournament again. Again a Kiwi game was played although I could see in the PGN that it was finished normally. Then I exited, restarted and again Soomi played Kiwi. So in the PGN there were a couple of Kiwi games. It seems Cute Chess lost track and wanted to play Kiwi all the time.

I reloaded the tournament, it plays Kiwi again and I have just noticed that the Stop under Tournament is greyed out. I can exit Cute Chess and reload but it repeats the above. And the round counter remains at 11. I have now a few Kiwi games in the PGN, all are marked as round 11 games.

I don't know if that helps.

I may send you or Patrick my tournament file in case that might help.

[Andres Valverde]

Hello,

First of all thanks for your initiative. Really appreciated!

I have found two minor glitches so far :

1) Setting time control in Tools>Setting>Games>Time Control, the minutes and seconds fields are not easy to change entering new values with the keyboard, if you enter a new number it is appended to the old one instead of replacing it

2) Only first move of PV is shown for Winboard engines (I tested EveAnn, Myrddin, Dirty)

Using Windows 11

[BrendanJNorman]

Because Patrick Leonhardt, the young author of the great engine PlentyChess, was looking for a student job, I offered him, to make a better cutechess for the community, payed by me.
CutechessGUI is already great, but has some flaws and room for improvements.

As I expected, Patrick did a fantastic job – I could not be more satisfied - and improved cutechess as I wanted.

https://github.com/Yoshie2000/cutechess ... ag/qol-1.0

Whats new?

The biggest improvement is, that engine-tournaments in the cutechessGUI can now be aborted and resumed – a save file is written after each finished game. So, even after a crash, an engine-tournament always can be resumed.

A complete new feature is introduced: Decision Time. DT means the time, the engine needed to find (and hold) the move, which is finally played on the board. The DT is not only displayed in the engine-windows of cutechessGUI, but also stored by cutechess-cli in the pgn-comments. IMHO, DT is a very interesting information (how hard to find was the played move?), which is just thrown away by all other GUIs (stupid !).

CutechessGUI is now „standalone“: No installation required, it can now run from an USB-Stick, like Arena, because all files needed, are stored in the cutechess-folder (and its subfolders). Including the engine.json file.

Above the chessboard of cutechessGUI, there are 3 new outputs:
100 plies rule (50 moves draw rule) counter, the material balance (-1 means, for example, that black has 1 pawn more) and the overall number of pieces on the board (max. 32)

2 new board color sets: Green and Blue

A darkmode (can be switched on/off)

The yellow triangle to point out the last move on the board is back (from V1.2), it replaces the (in my eyes) ugly arrow of the newer versions.

A larger font for the PV-line output and the first ply of each PV-line now includes the movenumber.

Great gesture.

I had a quick look at it and it looks much improved.

Is there any way we can pool funds together and have Patrick keep working on it?

GoFundMe or something?

I'd be happy to throw in a few bucks here and there and Im sure others feel the same.

And we all get a great GUI in return.

[Aleks Peshkov]

cutechess: error while loading shared libraries: libQt6Concurrent.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory