new creative championship begins (best engines tourney)

I came up with a creative idea from which I got the idea of starting a new kind of tourney


in light of this custom made, handmade matches which are not traditional
https://www.chess2u.com/t7618-stockfish-sep-28-3250-vs-stockfish-sep-7-3250-new-kind


this new tourney I'm starting is in line with the above "new kinds" of matches

this new tourney is akin to the above "new kinds" of custom made matches; but this new tourney is not analogous to the above "new kinds" of matches in many ways







like the above illustration shows
it's gonna be a holistically discrepent but profound tourney that is subtle in nuance in terms of the searching and calculation of engines


let me delve into the tourney setting and elaborate what kind of new tourney I'm starting

I read everything and all the words in this stockfish dev page:
http://abrok.eu/stockfish/


and I heard many important things about chess programming

if I reminisce about what I can remember from reading many chess related articles

programming for bishop is a lot more complicated than programming for rook or knight cuz bishops move diagonally and that's not easy to write a code for


***


thus, from the above picture
we can see 2 chessboards

the above board is the traditional chessmen set up

but the below board set up is custom made and non-traditional


I'll start a new tourney with that below board set up

the purpose of this tourney is to have fun and to know which engine can do the adroit bishop tactics and strategies


***


but here is some subtle thing

since there is no such an opening book for this kind of handcrafted positions
I can't run hundreds of matches let alone dozens of matches
so I'll only include 4 best engines from my rating list


***


the roster is as follows: (in alphabetical order)

critter 1.6a
gull 2.2
houdini 3 pro
stockfish Sep 28


the 4 engines will have a knockdown type tournament

I just put them in this kind of group
I just thought houdini can win the 1st round
and stockfish can win the 1st round
then houdini and stockfish can have the 2nd round that is the grand final

houdini 3 pro
critter 1.6a

stockfish Sep 28
gull 2.2


***


but here is something important
and that is of importance and fun

since we don't have such opening books for that kind of handcrafted starting positions
I can't even run dozens of matches
so the engines will only have a few matches!

and that's the point of this tourney







so, in (left) round 1

engine A and B will have 2 matches

and in (right side) round 1

engines C and D will have 2 matches


so the 2 winners of the tourney will proceed to the grand final
and at the final, the engines will have 2 matches again to have the champion


***


and yes! having only a few matches is the key point that is quintessential and rudimentary for this new tourney

cuz if two engines only have 2 matches with one another
the result is totally unpredictable and precarious

of course, the stronger engine will have higher chance to win the round but still we can't postulate or guess which engine will win the round since the elo fluctuation and the elo gap are too big when engines only have 2 matches

it is almost impossible to predict which engine will win

so the purpose of this championship is to give a chance for all four engines


all four engines can have similar amount of winning chance

(cuz if an engine with 2600 and an engine with 2500 only have 2 mathces
it is possible for 2500 to win with the score of 2 wins and 0 loss!)


***


so, the purpose of this tourney is
- to have fun
- to give a fair chance of winning to all entries
- to have a tourney whose result is precarious (it is like a raffle or a lottery)
- but most of all, to see which engine is adroit at handling bishop and pawn combination
since bishop and pawn can have combinational moves
and it's not easy to make a good code for bishop


by the way, from the stockfish dev website aforementioned,
stockfish's bishop and pawn combo moves are very well tuned
and got a lot of careful attention and updates
so stockfish will have a good chance to win this whole tourney


***


later other members or I can do this kind of tourney with different starting positions!
(such as 8 pawns & 7 knights are included)
(or 8 pawns & 7 rooks are included or many other starting positions are possible)

update #1:


running this kind of new tourney is harder than I first imagined!!!

there is more to than meets the eye!


I tested with gull and stockfish
and they are working perfectly well with such random starting position

starting handcrafted position:
bbbbkbbb/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/BBBBKBBB w - - 0 1


so the following can enter the tourney:
- gull
- stockfish


***


but critter 1.6a and houdini 3 pro showed up an error
they can't have a match with that kind of random positions
so new engines (which can have random position matches) will replace them


***


I'm manually checking what engines can handle such randomly generated positions

and I'll opt for the 2 new engines (strongest ones) that will be the replacement


***


update #2:


also there is another big problem in terms of the tourney rule

since knights and bishops have peculiar idiosyncracies,
even if one engine is winning over another engine in the ending
by a huge score and margin
the engine can't win sometimes

I saw situations like this...

in one ending
engine A has
king / 3 bishops / some pawns

engine B has
king / 1 bishop / some pawns

but engine A didn't win even if it is leading the match by a big score

engine A and B just moved around their bishops for no effect
until the match became a draw by 50 move rule (I use 25 move rule instead of 50 anyway)


***


so, in this tourney with many bishops
we will see so many draws...
so here is the rule
if one match becomes a draw
I'll adjudicate just before the match can becomes a draw
I'll make the winning engine (from the engine calculation and evaluation pane output) winning
so there will be user-adjudication

so when a match is about to become a draw
cuz of 50 move rule or other reasons
I'll adjudicate to the winning side
so the winning engine will have a win!!!
(otherwise there will mostly be draws and no wins or losses...)


***







update #3:


I tested many engines that are the strongest and I found some more engines which can have random position matches without any error!!!

Bouquet 1.8
PanChess 00.537
ivanhoe v67 (a super strong ivanhoe)

I'll include the following:
Bouquet 1.8
ivanhoe v67 (a super strong ivanhoe)
for the substitution


***


update #4:


so the newest participants are as follows:

stockfish Sep 28
gull 2.2
Bouquet 1.8
ivanhoe v67


I just put them in two groups randomly

group A:
- stockfish Sep 28
- Bouquet 1.8

group B:
- gull 2.2
- ivanhoe v67

the winners of each group will face off one on one in the grand final!!!  

round #1:


group A:
- stockfish Sep 28
- Bouquet 1.8

group B:
- gull 2.2
- ivanhoe v67


***


these 2 engines won the first round!!!
(both engines were weaker engines...)
(but they did better in multi-bishop match-ups)


grand final
- Bouquet 1.8
- ivanhoe v67


***


Bouquet 1.8 won the tourney!
Bouquet 1.8 is very strong at bishop match up!


gold medal
- Bouquet 1.8

silver medal
- ivanhoe v67

bronze medals
- stockfish Sep 28
- gull 2.2


full pgn match download:   
mediafire.com ?4nhf09vxrn08u2h

Stockfish Sep 28 !