A workaround for an uci2wb bug?

[Volker Pittlik]

Geschrieben von: / Posted by: Volker Pittlik at 20 January 2004 11:19:32:

I'm just playing a tournament including Shredder. To use it with winboard
and to have a book it is using Bokthinker and the uci2wb adapter.
There is a bug in that adapter. The moves from Bookthinker aren't counted
and Shredder is getting in timetrouble after the first time control.
I use 60 moves in 30 minutes and (for example) if Shredder got 10 moves from
Bookthinker it thinks there are 30 minutes left for the next 10 moves and is
playing to slow. After this 10 moves it is playing to fast, because it has
to play 60 moves in the remaining time.
To avoid this problem I'm going to test the following. MPS will be set
so high that the game most likely will be finished in that number of
moves (for example 240). By increasing the TC by the same factor I hope
the engines will move at the same speed as before (~30 seconds per move).
So I'm going to test a time control of 240 moves in 2 hours.
All comments would be appreciated,
Volker

[Dave]

Geschrieben von: / Posted by: Dave at 20 January 2004 16:34:06:
Als Antwort auf: / In reply to: A workaround for an uci2wb bug? geschrieben von: / posted by: Volker Pittlik at 20 January 2004 11:19:32:

I'm just playing a tournament including Shredder. To use it with winboard
and to have a book it is using Bokthinker and the uci2wb adapter.
There is a bug in that adapter. The moves from Bookthinker aren't counted
and Shredder is getting in timetrouble after the first time control.
I use 60 moves in 30 minutes and (for example) if Shredder got 10 moves from
Bookthinker it thinks there are 30 minutes left for the next 10 moves and is
playing to slow. After this 10 moves it is playing to fast, because it has
to play 60 moves in the remaining time.
To avoid this problem I'm going to test the following. MPS will be set
so high that the game most likely will be finished in that number of
moves (for example 240). By increasing the TC by the same factor I hope
the engines will move at the same speed as before (~30 seconds per move).
So I'm going to test a time control of 240 moves in 2 hours.
All comments would be appreciated,
Volker

I know this is the winboard forum and this is considered off topic here, but why not use the Arena interface? It works great with UCI and Winboard protocols, and there is no need to go through the uci2wb contortions.
Dave

[Volker Pittlik]

Geschrieben von: / Posted by: Volker Pittlik at 20 January 2004 17:26:20:
Als Antwort auf: / In reply to: Re: A workaround for an uci2wb bug? geschrieben von: / posted by: Dave at 20 January 2004 16:34:06:

...

I know this is the winboard forum and this is considered off topic here,
but why not use the Arena interface? It works great with UCI and Winboard protocols, and there is no need to go through the uci2wb contortions.

No.
That's true but the book problem is still not solved. I know there is a book option in Arena. I tested it and was not satisfied with the result.
In addition I use to broadcast the games. This is not possible with Arena yet. Sometimes I use to play very fast games and Arena needs a long time between the games and is extending the time for the tournament by doing so.
The best GUI for Shredder is a CB-GUI. But also DeepSjeng and Rebel are running best under their own GUIs. The same is true for TheKing. These engines are also playing in the tournament and I'm simply to lazy to do the whole tournament setup under four different GUIs. In additon I'm not familiar with tournament management under that GUIs and expect to run in trouble.
Live transmissions are only possible with WinBoard in combination with TLCV. Tournament management is done with Jori's WBTM and I'm very satisfied with that. Adding new participants after 5 rounds played is not a big problem for example. I have no idea how to do that in Arena or CP/CB/Chessmaster GUIs.
So to abstact: I prefer to solve a single problem and keep my environment.
Regards, Volker