Scan - new version

[Rein Halbersma]

I don't understand your paragraph, but I can comment on the "play to the end" part. It is customary in other games, and chess in particular, to always play the game to the end. Tournament directors use special rules to shorten boring endgames, like king+rook vs king+rook (similar to king vs king in draughts). lidraughts for instance stops king vs king after 4 plies, since the longest possible win in this endgame is 3 plies (move the kings into opposite corners). This is not an official rule (except in Frisian draughts, I think), but it makes games much more pleasant.

Unfortunately, I don't think that playing to the end is possible in draughts. For some reason, the tradition seems to be to stop the game after a fixed number of moves. The problem is, what to do after that? It seems that you need a way to adjudicate the game; using endgame tables from another program would make sense. We can't play to the end, because old programs will refuse to continue the game I guess (or run out of time if they did, since it's not clear whether new time will be added).

Official game rules:

6. The draw

6.1. A game is considered a draw when the same position occurs for the third time, with the same player having to move.
6.2. If during 25 successive moves, only the kings have moved, without any man moving or without any capture, the game is considered drawn.
6.3. If only three kings remain, two king plus a man, one king and two men, against one king, the game shall be considered a draw when the players have each played another sixteen moves maximum.
6.4. The end game with two kings, one king and a man, or one king against one king will be considered a draw when the players have each played another five moves maximum.

Seems not too hard to implement this for the tournament software / arbiter as well. Agreed that an engine should not be concerned with it.

[Sidiki]

Krzysztof,
Before doing all these sentences for draw adjucating, try Scan vs Scan or Mobydam vs Mobydam, you will see that they will play until, if it's win or draw, the human that you are will be convinced of the result. I know that Kingsrow stop the game even with 4 or more pieces on the board, Just to say that, if you pretend to be a draughts player, you must be able to evaluate the poor position left.
In the case that you clame, you must worry about the draw adjucating of Kingsrow, because it don't leave the game until the end.

You will justify it by the fact that Kingsrow has the biggest and more perfect endgame.
So all result it will show it's enough for you.

I understood that your level in draughts, it's no high, no for Hurt you.

Friendly, Sidiki

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Krzysztof,
Before doing all these sentences for draw adjucating, try Scan vs Scan or Mobydam vs Mobydam, you will see that they will play until, if it's win or draw, the human that you are will be convinced of the result. I know that Kingsrow stop the game even with 4 or more pieces on the board, Just to say that, if you pretend to be a draughts player, you must be able to evaluate the poor position left.
In the case that you clame, you must worry about the draw adjucating of Kingsrow, because it don't leave the game until the end.

You will justify it by the fact that Kingsrow has the biggest and more perfect endgame.
So all result it will show it's enough for you.

I understood that your level in draughts, it's no high, no for Hurt you.

Friendly, Sidiki

It doesn't really matter what the human level is in draughts. What I need to know is that I know. Is it a grandmaster or an ordinary person. The tournament is played by programs, not by humans. And they are about. As for the Kingsrow program, there is also a mistake, but I will not write about it anymore.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

I am finishing the topic. I leave the decisions to Fabian. Fabian will do what he thinks is right.

[Sidiki]

I think that all it's clear now, because, excepted if it's a bug.
if no if you set 3min/75 moves, any program excepted Damage 15.3 will respect it

[pontel]

I think that all it's clear now, because, excepted if it's a bug.
if no if you set 3min/75 moves, any program excepted Damage 15.3 will respect it

In order not to have unknown results in my DXP matches, I usually set the time for 99 moves instead of 75. If the game does not end in 99 moves, it is certain to have drawn.

[Sidiki]

I wonder how the user of the Scan 3.1 program is informed that the same position has occurred three times.

Scan 3.1 hasn't this feature. I think that the only way to know it, it's to look at the game. Or with the score to see that it's a draw, because, if i don't wrong, you want to speak of a draw position.

Friendly, Sidiki.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Hi Fabien,
I have a request for you. And can you write me all the values of the tt-size option. From lowest to highest. It's about Scan 3.1.

[Joost Buijs]

For draughts engines it seems to be common practice to enter the size of the transposition-table in powers of 2, either being it in bytes or entries. I think Scan does this in entries of 16 bytes each.

When you enter 24 (the default it seems) the total size would be 2^24 x 16 = 268.435.456 bytes or 256 megabytes.
So you can easily calculate this yourself, 25 would be 512 MB, 26 would be 1 GB, etc.

Ares does this in bytes, in this case you'll have to enter 30 to get a 1 GB transposition-table.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

For draughts engines it seems to be common practice to enter the size of the transposition-table in powers of 2, either being it in bytes or entries. I think Scan does this in entries of 16 bytes each.

When you enter 24 (the default it seems) the total size would be 2^24 x 16 = 268.435.456 bytes or 256 megabytes.
So you can easily calculate this yourself, 25 would be 512 MB, 26 would be 1 GB, etc.

Ares does this in bytes, in this case you'll have to enter 30 to get a 1 GB transposition-table.

Thank you for your response Joost.