The pause between tournament games

[vickalan]

In Winboard when you run a tournament you can add a pause after each game (specified in ms). But when each game is finished, the diagram is cleared and then it pauses. What's the purpose of that? You can't see any info on how the game ended.

Wouldn't it be better if the image is maintained (letting you see the diagram and result), then after the pause everything is cleared, and then the next game starts?

What else is the pause used for? Does it let the cpu cool down between games?

This is just a minor detail, but I thought I would ask anyway. I like everything else about Fairy-Max and Winboard.

[H.G.Muller]

The pause feature primarily exists because some older engines do not support the 'ping' synchronization command that WinBoard can use to distinguish moves that belong to a previous game from those that belong to the new game. Sometimes a game ends when an engine is already set thinking (e.g. because the opponent suddenly resigns), and then WinBoard starts the next game. But if the engine finishes its thinking, it might produce the move it was thinking on for the old game long after WinBoard sent the command to start the new game, and WinBoard might take it as the first move of the new game. By introducing a pause longer than the typical thinking time, this can be avoided.

Fairy-Max does support ping, so it doesn't really need a pause.

If you run a simple match, rather than defining a full-fledged tourney, WinBoard used to display the final position of the old game until the first move of the new game was made. Not sure why this no longer works. I agree that it is more convenient. Especially since the moves just before a checkmate are usually lightning fast.

[vickalan]

...Especially since the moves just before a checkmate are usually lightning fast.

Yes, I noticed that. The last 5-6 moves just flash by, and then you're into the next game. But it's fine - you can see the results as how the computations are finished. I just get the results from the tourney file.

Thanks!