Saturday, December 8, 2007

Pause In The Action

Just so all of the programmers know, Round 7 was completed. We are now at the "intermission", halfway through the tournament, and programmers are working on updating their programs. I have asked the Martillo programmer to send the games along with his results, which he has not done yet. (NOTE: He sent in some games with incorrect PGN moves in the move list, so I cannot show the games until he corrects this!) I also asked him to STOP running the tournament until these games have been sent in, and until the programmers have updated their software.

Games will resume 1 week from Tuesday with the round 8 pairings.

18 comments:

Smirf said...

Ok, then I will use this pause to replace my SMIRF. There merely have been some minor corrections. Now here is its new release MS-169g ready for a download at: http://www.10x8.net/down/SmirfEngine.dll for owners of a SMIRF key set. It still has no opening library. Nevertheless I continue hoping for a final outcome at this event as the second best engine ...

GothicChessInventor said...

OK, I'll have it ready for the resumption of the tournament.

H.G.Muller said...

Will the results of round 7 be kept secret until the tournament is resumed?

GothicChessInventor said...

I don't have the results either, I was just told he ran up to round 7. He hasn't sent me any of the games yet. I again asked him to do so if he wanted to get involved, and he promised to send them, but he must have been writing them down by hand and not using the software programs store the actual moves.

I can't believe someone smart enough to write a Gothic Chess program can't figure out an economical means to transmit the games in PGN-compliant formate!

Martillo Program said...

Ed and players,

so sorry again for delay but I hurt my leg and with crutkhes now. I did saves the games with each program so move list I can just writes down. Next times you can again make moves I think we all know Vortex is strong like you do say!!

Martillo Program said...

Ed and players,

so sorry again for delay but I hurt my leg and with crutkhes now. I did saves the games with each program so move list I can just writes down. Next times you can again make moves I think we all know Vortex is strong like you do say!!

H.G.Muller said...

We enormously appreciate the time and effort you put into this, and obviously there are things in life that are far more important than Chess games. I hope your leg is not hurt too badly, and will get better soon!

I am not sure what the problems with the PGN files are, but just in case: the way I always retrieve the PGN games from WinBoard is by using the "copy game to clipboard" command in the "File" menu, and then paste it into Notepad.

Btw, I would be entirely happy for now just to know the game results. The PGN is of secondary importance... I suppose the problems with the PGN are not so bad that there is any uncertainty about who beat who?

Martillo Program said...

Yes, problem was for me not sending PGNs properly for 3 tries, and Ed was mad! Somehows the paste I make from email to him were missing moves and so. I tell him who was winning and he said "no, send me the PGN and I will do the announce from that." It was easy to see who wins like Vortex crush Zillions in record short mate but Ed askes for replay possibility with games and this = 'must have PGN'. Sorry for my bad English, still learning.

GothicChessInventor said...

Manuel,

I was hoping you could have at least examined the PGN for some of the games you sent to me prior to sending. For example:

1. Nh3 d5
2. Nc3 d6
3. d4 d5

....contained very obvious errors! Or this game:

11. O-O b4
12. Kf1

First, castling was not legal in the position, and second, how could white move the king to f1 from i1 where it was castled?

I was concerned that you were writing down the moves by hand as you ran the event on more than one computer, and possibly wrote down the wrong moves to the wrong games on occasion.

Not to beat a dead horse, you also sent a move list that went from move 17 to move 29 with no moves in between!

What was upsetting to me was when I told you were there were problems in the move list, and you emailed me the same exact moves again, and yet again.

So, we have to pause the tournament here until you can send me the correct PGN games for each of the opponents, or how can I reliably know who really defeated who?

You mentioned that you had graduate students assisting you there at the university. I suggested before, and now again, that you have them help you with composing your emails if the strain of running the tournament becomes too much for you.

We do appreciate your efforts, as H.G. has mentioned, but many of the programmers are "on edge" waiting to see the results, myself included.

H.G.Muller said...

So what is the status now?

Are the games played for the 7th round to be considered irrevocably lost? Is anyone working on recovering them? Will the games be replayed?

I don't know if there were any problems with the games by fMax: if it played under WinBoard_F, and you used that to make the PGN, I cannot 100% exclude that there was no error due to WinBoard_F. It is a beta version, after all, and not too many people have tested making PGNs of Gothic games yet. (I play plenty of automatic Gothic engine-engine games, but I never save the PGN by hand.)

If there is anything I can do to alleviate the problems, let me know!

Smirf said...

Well, H.G.M. - we just have to ask one of those two people: "... Every week, the top boards will be played with a United States Chess Federation Certified Tournament Director in attendance, along with Gothic Chess Federation officials present. ..." They at least should know the results.

GothicChessInventor said...

Vortex crushed Zillions and Pulverizer crushed TSCP Gothic in Round 7. Those results were played in front of a USCF tournament director. The games were not "lost", the Martillo programmer just has to "get on the ball" and get me the correct PGNs! He saved all games in the native software programs and emailed me the attachments, but I refuse to go through the process of turning all of these files into their correct PGN when he had already agreed to do this for me!

H.G.Muller said...

Note that WinBoard_F might be a big help here. I don't know all the respective native formats, but the WinBoard PGN parser is extremely tolerant to what input you offer it.

E.g. if you offer it something like:

e2e4 e7e5 g1f3 b8c6 d2d4

with arbitrary white spacing or newlines between the moves, it eats it without complaint. All you would have to do is somehow select the text describing the moves and copy it to the clipboard by ctl-c (e.g. after reading the native game file into Notepad). Then you start WinBoard in game-viewer mode (tick 'just view or edit game files' in the startup dialog), switch it to Gothic (through the 'File -> New Variant...' menu), and then do 'File -> Paste game from clipboard' (or press alt+V).

WinBoard then should start playing the game in slow motion (which you can skip to the end by pressing the '>>' butten in the upper right of the window). After that you can do 'File -> Copy game to clipboard', and paste the PGN in Standard Algebraic Notation into any text you are editing (e.g. another Notepad window) with ctl-v.

This is just a few seconds work, provided the native format is not so crazy that WinBoard would choke on it. (Binary in stead of text formats would present a problem.)

Smirf said...

Again there has been time to replace my SMIRF. There merely have been some minor positional additions. Its new release MS-170b is ready for a download at the known place (for key owners only).

GothicChessInventor said...

I have the PGN now in a compliant format and I will be able to post the games once I convert them to the Javascript utility format, perhaps by Sunday evening.

I think this "break in the action" has been good for the new programmers. Some I think were "shell shocked" by the strength of the participants. Look at TSCP, the #2 program from 2004, far from being able to secure second place this year!

I am working on making Gothic Vortex "engine match" playable, even though not a Winboard engine yet. More on this as it developes.

H.G.Muller said...

It would also be nice to have the games of round 5 and 6 on-line. So far we have only seen the results for these games.

Smirf said...

Another week and again another SMIRF ... Some smaller bugs have been erased. The new release MS-170e should be used in the case the event will be continued. Thus it is ready for to be downloaded at the known place (for key owners only): http://www.10x8.net/down/SmirfEngine.dll

Smirf said...

SMIRF's internal zero resonator has been adjusted. This leads to version MS-170g.