[Bug-XBoard] Re: Scid chess tournament (and xboard time control)

[Tim Mann]

Not really, but maybe the folks who are currently working on xboard
have more ideas. I'm copying this to the mailing list to see if they
have comments. You can also try asking on the WinBoard Forum at
http://www.open-aurec.com/wbforum/.

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 8:54 AM, Steven <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Tim,
>
> I've been working on a large computer chess tournament feature
> for my (forked) Scid project, http://scidvspc.sf.net.
>
> My latest release is in subversion if you're bored (below is a mail i just 
> posted to a few people). The project need Tcl-8.5,
> is tested mostly on Linux, but should also work fine on windows
> and Macs.
>
> Anyway, I have a question about setting time-per-move for old
> engines. Currently i use *both* these commands
>  st $seconds
>  time $seconds
> It seems to work for most xboard engines, but not all.
> Sjeng and Chen go super fast if played *against* each other,.
> Arasan and Spike also have issues.
>
> I'm pretty clueless about the xboard and UCI protocols,
> but my tournament feature is pretty good imho.
> Do you have any ideas about fine-tuning my xboard time
> controls ?
>
> regards Steven Atkinson
>
> ---------------------------------
>
>> Hi Guys,
>>
>> Re my new tournament feature ...
>> I've restructured the UCI and Xboard code into
>> something a little better, and am thinking of making a
>> release based around my subversion commit today.
>>
>> svn co https://scidvspc.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/scidvspc
>>
>> The widget is in "Play->Computer Tournament".
>> Everything's working great for me. Could you's please test
>> out
>> a few of your favourite engines in case there's some
>> glaring
>> bugs i've over-looked.
>>
>> You should be able to copy over the
>> ~/.scid/config/engines.dat
>> to
>> ~/.scidvspc/config/engines.dat
>> without any issues, though of course they are configurable
>>
>> from Scid vs. PC. For a parallel installation with SCID on
>> Linux (SCID installed in /usr/local), use :
>> ./configure BINDIR=/usr/bin/ SHAREDIR=/usr/share/scid/
>> && make install && /usr/bin/scid
>>
>> Time control seems good. It's still seconds-per-move,
>> but analysis is now totally continuous. Opening books are
>> disabled for UCI (which seems easiest and correct for
>> a computer tournament). Xboard engines will use books if
>> they are configured, but they need all the help they can get
>> imho,
>> and using "seconds-per-move" time control makes this a much
>> lesser issue too. For a proper tournament, you'll probably
>> want to increase the default "3 seconds" per move to 10 or
>> 20 or so.
>>
>> There's some extra info in the Contents->Computer
>> Tournaments
>> help widget, including a list of engines i've tried.
>> I even got Gnuchess 5.0 working... I could never beat that
>>
>> thing and it doesn't do too bad, registering a win over
>> Crafty.
>> In my testing, RobboLito just beats out Stockfish and
>> Shredder
>> Classic 4 for the strongest engine.
>>
>> Steven
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