Programmer poll: TCEC-like competition for draughts engines

[jj]

Many of you may know the Top Chess Engine Championship (TCEC), see https://tcec-chess.com/. This is a chess engine competition where the tournaments are fully automated and broadcast online, using an engine protocol such as Universal Chess Interface (UCI), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Chess_Interface, and a separate GUI/Tournament Manager.

This poll is to see if something similar can be done for draughts engines. This requires
1. agreement on an engine protocol
2. implementation of this protocol in all engines
3. implementation of the GUI/Tournament Manager
4. agreement on the rules
5. hardware, web hosting and operators
6. sponsoring, crowdfunding

Ad 1. The DamExchange Protocol (DXP) does not seem suitable. A version 0 proposal could be the Scan 3 hub protocol.
Ad 2. It would be nice to also have implementations for the legacy engines Truus and Flits, for which already DXP servers exist.
Ad 4. Such as time control, game end, number of games, superfinal.

For draughts there could be competitions for regular, killer, breakthrough and Frisian (for example). If we have four variants then an annual tournament for each variant gives one tournament per three months. Other board sizes are also a possibility.

If you are a draughts programmer or otherwise interested please take the time to answer the poll.

Jan-Jaap

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

I invite programmers to participate in the survey. For my part, I would like to inform you that I will provide a server and equipment for playing programs. I cordially invite all programmers to this joint work. Let's create something beautiful for draughts.

[BertTuyt]

I started (for some years) with a Tournament Manager in the Damage GUI, based upon the previous (old) Hub protocol.
If many developers would implement the latest Hub protocol , than I could further work on this.
And all can give input for functionality.

Bert

[jj]

Bert, that would be great. I think we can start with a few engines and a test tournament. Then hopefully more programmers will follow into the 21st century.
It also depends on how long Krzysztof is prepared to play tournaments and matches manually.

Jan-Jaap

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

I will write it like this. This is my big dream that arose for the draughts.

[Ed Gilbert]

I am working on a version of kingsrow that uses the hub interface, and I expect to have a completely functional prototype soon. Is anyone else working to adapt their engine to hub, or working on (or at least thinking about) a hub tournament manager?

I am trying to run hub 2.1 with scan 3.1 but so far have been unsuccessful. Hub throws a CreateProcess error when it tries to run scan. Has anyone successfully run this combination on Windows?

-- Ed

[BertTuyt]

Ed, to answer your questions:
- Im changing the Damage Engine to work on the Hub protocol (but in my case with TCP-IP, and not pipes).
- Last year I tested the previous version of Scan 2.x to work (with Pipes) with the Damage GUI, and HUB (old version)
- I also played a Tournament (as I started with an embryonic TM in the Damage GUI), between 3 versions of Scan.
- They were basically all the same with a different name, and it worked fully automatically.
- I even started another thread which was the referee which had access to your DBs to adjudicate the games (if needed).

I never tested things with 3.1, but I can redo.

Hope to be able to prepare the Damage Engine for the AMD ThreadRipper.
I found a bug, the max number of threads now allowed was 16, but the Threadripper communicates 32 cores (Hyperthreading).
So that might be the reason for the crash....

Bert

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Hope to be able to prepare the Damage Engine for the AMD ThreadRipper.
I found a bug, the max number of threads now allowed was 16, but the Threadripper communicates 32 cores (Hyperthreading).
So that might be the reason for the crash....

Bert

This is probably because the engine refused to run under the AMD processor.

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

I am working on a version of kingsrow that uses the hub interface, and I expect to have a completely functional prototype soon. Is anyone else working to adapt their engine to hub, or working on (or at least thinking about) a hub tournament manager?

I am trying to run hub 2.1 with scan 3.1 but so far have been unsuccessful. Hub throws a CreateProcess error when it tries to run scan. Has anyone successfully run this combination on Windows?

-- Ed

Thank you Ed for your work on your own engine.

[Ed Gilbert]

Bert, thanks, good to hear that you have made some progress with hub in damage and also with a tournament manager. I think the protocol has changed in the newer version of hub so you may need to update your TM at some point before it can run kingsrow and scan 3.1, and hopefully a damage version with stdin/stdout hub 2.1.

I downloaded the old versions of hub and scan, and tried to run hub, but I get the same CreateProcess error. I have tried it on two different computers with the same result. Very puzzling.

-- Ed

[BertTuyt]

Ed, at least Scan 3.1 connect to the Damage GUI see attached.

Bert

Scan31.png (34.22 KiB) Viewed 15557 times

[Yves]

Hello Bert
Please tell me how to configure the ini file to launch Scan31 in Damage2016.
Sincerely, Yves

[jj]

I am trying to run hub 2.1 with scan 3.1 but so far have been unsuccessful. Hub throws a CreateProcess error when it tries to run scan. Has anyone successfully run this combination on Windows?

I have no trouble running hub 2.1 with scan 3.1 on Windows 7.

Jan-Jaap

[BertTuyt]

Yves, it only works embryonic on my recent Damage 2020 GUI, which is still in experimental phase.

Bert

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Many of you may know the Top Chess Engine Championship (TCEC), see https://tcec-chess.com/. This is a chess engine competition where the tournaments are fully automated and broadcast online, using an engine protocol such as Universal Chess Interface (UCI), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Chess_Interface, and a separate GUI/Tournament Manager.

This poll is to see if something similar can be done for draughts engines. This requires
1. agreement on an engine protocol
2. implementation of this protocol in all engines
3. implementation of the GUI/Tournament Manager
4. agreement on the rules
5. hardware, web hosting and operators
6. sponsoring, crowdfunding

Ad 1. The DamExchange Protocol (DXP) does not seem suitable. A version 0 proposal could be the Scan 3 hub protocol.
Ad 2. It would be nice to also have implementations for the legacy engines Truus and Flits, for which already DXP servers exist.
Ad 4. Such as time control, game end, number of games, superfinal.

For draughts there could be competitions for regular, killer, breakthrough and Frisian (for example). If we have four variants then an annual tournament for each variant gives one tournament per three months. Other board sizes are also a possibility.

If you are a draughts programmer or otherwise interested please take the time to answer the poll.

Jan-Jaap

Sorry, I didn't quite understand that. I mean that all programs use such a tournament manager. And not just programs that have dxp and can use
hub. Because it may be that some of the best programs will use and the rest of the programs will not.