On-line engine blitz tournament August

[Joost Buijs]

The monthly on-line engine blitz tournament for August will take place on:

Saturday the 22th of August, 2:00 PM EST (Boston time) 20:00 CET (Amsterdam time)

To connect, use the following command:

winboard -zp -ics -icshost nightmare-chess.nl -icshelper timeseal -fcp ENGINE.exe -fd ENGINEFOLDER -autoKibitz -keepAlive 30
(For UCI engines, add -fUCI)

If you don’t have an account, please submit a request to admin@nightmare-chess.nl.

Our tournament manager will be Eendje (Lisebeth @ ICC).

The format will be Swiss system, 4/1 time control, 11 rounds.

Lisebeth prefers to start the tournament on top of the hour, so please log in 15 minutes early. Late entries are not supported.

[Bart Weststrate]

Ah nice. I will be there with a new engine: Selate.

This is based on the Powerbasic engine Single Malt coverted to C (by Claude ) and added NNUE (self generated, NO Strong Malt there) .

It is at the moment not as strong as we wish but it is gaining strength every day.

[Joost Buijs]

The tournament went fine, not a single problem.

PlentychessRB ended on top. Nightmare was for a very long time on top, but the draw against Myrrdin in the last round took away the top spot.

Two weeks ago I discovered that Nightmare has been playing for several months with a broken Nalimov driver, it did not only hurt the end-game but also the mid-game.

Code: Select all

:Tourney Players: Round 11 of 11 
:
:     Name              Rating Score Perfrm Upset  Results 
:     ----------------- ------ ----- ------ ------ ------- 
:  1 +PlentyChessRB     [2876]   8.5  [2899] [   0] +12b +06w =02b =05w =03w +09b =04w =07b +08w +10b +11w 
:  2 +NightmareX        [2849]   8.5  [2884] [  24] +11w +08b =01w =03b =05w =04w +06b +09w +13b +07w =10b 
:  3 +WaspX             [2812]   7.5  [2816] [  80] =14b +07w =05b =02w =01b =08w +09w =06b =04w +12b +13w 
:  4 +Selate            [2709]   7.5  [2737] [ 312] =16w +14w =09b =08b +11w =02b =01b =05w =03b +13w +12w 
:  5 +ArasanX           [2872]   7.0  [2785] [   2] +10w =09b =03w =01b =02b +06w =07w =04b =11w =08b +14w 
:  6 -Samoza            [2756]   7.0  [2611] [  28] +17w -01b =11w +16w +10b -05b -02w =03w +14b +15b +18w 
:  7 +Goldbar           [2761]   6.5  [2635] [ 112] +18w -03b =10w =09w =08b +13w =05b =01w +16b -02b +15w 
:  8 -Cheng             [2726]   6.5  [2645] [ 133] +15b -02w +17b =04w =07w =03b =10b +11w -01b =05w +16b
:  9 -Marvin            [2748]   6.0  [2612] [  68] +13b =05w =04w =07b +12w -01w -03b -02b =15w +18b +17b 
: 10 -Myrddin           [2418]   5.5  [2591] [ 553] -05b +13w =07b +14b -06w =12b =08w +17w =18b -01w =02w 
: 11 -Isa               [2403]   5.0  [2521] [ 430] -02b +15w =06b =12w -04b +18w +16w -08b =05b =17w -01b 
: 12 -WaDuuttie         [2444]   4.5  [2405] [   0] -01w +16b =14w =11b -09b =10w -15b +18w +17b -03w -04b 
: 13 +Euwe              [2252]   4.0  [2398] [ 142] -09w -10b +15w +17b =16w -07b +18b =14w -02w -04b -03b 
: 14 -Arminius          [2386]   3.5  [2324] [ 242] =03w -04b =12b -10w =18b =15w -17b =13b -06w +16w -05b 
: 15 -Knightx           [2186]   3.5  [2326] [ 742] -08w -11b -13b =18w =17w =14b +12w =16b =09b -06w -07b 
: 16 +Gyatso            [2140]   3.5  [2327] [ 662] =04b -12w +18w -06b =13b +17w -11b =15w -07w -14b -08w
: 17 +jackychess        [2272]   3.0  [2251] [ 214] -06b +18b -08w -13w =15b -16b +14w -10b -12w =11b -09w 
: 18 +Orion             [2307]   1.5  [2142] [  94] -07b -17w -16b =15b =14w -11b -13w -12b =10w -09w -06b 
:
:     Average Rating    2550.9

I hope to see you all next time! Have fun.

[Modern Times]

Yes that draw against Myrrdin was unexpected As the saying goes, it is not over until it is over. Anything can happen in these tournaments. NightmareX with a very strong book and strong hardware is a tough nut to crack !

[Joost Buijs]

I'm thinking about building a completely new version of the server software with the help of Codex or Claude. This is not very complicated when it is going to be used for standard chess only, basically a user database and a tourney manager, I can add an EGTB as arbiter too.

Codex can build these things in a few hours (or even faster), probably a few days are needed to debug, optimize and refine everything. The biggest challenge is to keep it backwards compatible with the communication structure of the ancient Lasker server software, and it has to be able to import the existing user-database. I think this is a serious proposition.

[Bart Weststrate]

I'm thinking about building a completely new version of the server software with the help of Codex or Claude. This is not very complicated when it is going to be used for standard chess only, basically a user database and a tourney manager, I can add an EGTB as arbiter too.

Codex can build these things in a few hours (or even faster), probably a few days are needed to debug, optimize and refine everything. The biggest challenge is to keep it backwards compatible with the communication structure of the ancient Lasker server software, and it has to be able to import the existing user-database. I think this is a serious proposition.

A new fresh modern client should also be interesting... I'll ask Claude:

Question: There is the ancient winboard software to interface with FICS compliant chess servers. I don't like the complex structures of that software.. Do you think you can build a new fresh modern interface? Maybe on top of open source chess GUI or what. Any ideas?

Skip building the ICS wire protocol from scratch if you can help it — that's the tedious part (FICS's style 12 board format, timeseal for lag compensation, seek/match parsing), and it's already solved reasonably well by Jin (open-source Java ICS client, purpose-built for FICS/ICC, much less clunky than WinBoard's ICS mode, still maintained-ish). If you want something genuinely fresh rather than adopting Jin, I'd build on python-chess for board/move logic plus a raw-socket client implementing FICS's style-12 protocol, with a lightweight Qt or web frontend — a few hundred lines of protocol code, well-documented, not a huge lift.

Main tradeoff: Jin gets you something working today with zero protocol work, but you inherit Java/Swing's dated look and limited hackability. A from-scratch python-chess build gives you exactly the UI you want and is easy to extend (e.g., piping games straight into your engines), at the cost of writing and testing the FICS wire protocol yourself. Given you're already comfortable in this kind of systems work, I'd lean toward the from-scratch route if you want it to feel modern — happy to sketch the protocol layer if that's the direction you want to go.


Claude made a fics_client.py in about 3 seconds. That was the hard part i guess.

I'll take a look if we can build something nice.

[Joost Buijs]

Claude or Codex can both generate something very fast, but that's largely copying somebody else's source code.

I would never use Java or Python to build something serious. Personally I would use C++ because I've been using that for at least 30 years, and Rust comes to mind as an alternative as well.

If you want to have Claude or Codex to build a serious application for you, you'll have to come up with a well thought out plan before even thinking about starting with it.

[Bart Weststrate]

Very promising. Selate engine is playing games now on the Joost server. Next thing: Claude builds a Gui with the look and feel of the new cutechess GUI for starters.

[Bart Weststrate]

Claude or Codex can both generate something very fast, but that's largely copying somebody else's source code.

I would never use Java or Python to build something serious. Personally I would use C++ because I've been using that for at least 30 years, and Rust comes to mind as an alternative as well.

If you want to have Claude or Codex to build a serious application for you, you'll have to come up with a well thought out plan before even thinking about starting with it.

Agree Joost. But i am just exploring the possibilities as we speak. Claude doesn't "steal" or borrow code if you tell him not to do so. The "inspiration" is always there i guess.

[Joost Buijs]

Everything is possible. I promised 'Bartman' to have Codex build a better GUI for him too. Currently I'm busy generating endgame table-bases for International-Draughts, when this is finished I will take a look at the chess thingies.