Programmer poll: TCEC-like competition for draughts engines

jj · Post by jj » Sat Nov 02, 2019 12:55

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 · Post by **Krzysztof Grzelak** » Mon Nov 04, 2019 14:11

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 · Post by **BertTuyt** » Mon Nov 04, 2019 14:38

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 · Post by jj » Sat Nov 09, 2019 14:38

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 · Post by **Krzysztof Grzelak** » Sat Nov 09, 2019 16:03

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

World Draughts Forum