computer chess competitions

Date: 13 Sep 2006 08:55:36
From:
Subject: computer chess competitions

Hello All,

I would like this group a question and hopefully I may get some leads.
I've been looking(obviously in all the wrong places:) to enter a
computer chess tournament. I am relatively new but have been working
on a chess program for about 6 yrs now. I think my program is ready to
enter a tournament. I've been playing w/a few chess masters who I know
and have given good advice over the yrs. My program is successfully
winning and winning with a few commercial programs. So I think I would
like to enter a tournament.

Could someone please point me in the direction of where I can enter
some tournaments? I know there were some in Iceland, Italy(2006) etc.
I find the locations after the tournament ends but how can I find them
before? I did try emailing people who hosted the tournaments but
haven't received any replies.

I would be very grateful if someone can help me and anyone in this
group who has entered some competitions can provide any advice as how
to start, prepare anything that they believe would be helpful as they
have already experienced mistakes. Anything that I can learn from.
Perhaps what they believe is a good way to start.

My program will work with xboard(not really well tested, I focused
mainly on performance and minimized all processes as much as possible).
My program though really works best on Linux not recommended to run
well on windows(it will but it's not tailored to it) also it runs best
on AMD processors not with the Intel(reason is I have a considerable
amount of assembly and use specific processor instructions for AMD. I
guess I am a little lazy rewriting parts of the code to compile and run
on Intel. Mainly because AMD was cheaper and x64 chips were great to
work with where as intels Itanium was too costly. So things just moved
towards AMD and Linux in the long run. Windows was too unstable and
too many processes running in the background---the OS messages bouncing
everywhere and the win OS general overhead--).

Thanks
Steve

Date: 14 Sep 2006 23:57:51
From:
Subject: Re: computer chess competitions

[email protected] wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I would like this group a question and hopefully I may get some leads.
> I've been looking(obviously in all the wrong places:) to enter a
> computer chess tournament. I am relatively new but have been working
> on a chess program for about 6 yrs now. I think my program is ready to
> enter a tournament. I've been playing w/a few chess masters who I know
> and have given good advice over the yrs. My program is successfully
> winning and winning with a few commercial programs. So I think I would
> like to enter a tournament.
>
> Could someone please point me in the direction of where I can enter
> some tournaments? I know there were some in Iceland, Italy(2006) etc.
> I find the locations after the tournament ends but how can I find them
> before? I did try emailing people who hosted the tournaments but
> haven't received any replies.
>
> I would be very grateful if someone can help me and anyone in this
> group who has entered some competitions can provide any advice as how
> to start, prepare anything that they believe would be helpful as they
> have already experienced mistakes. Anything that I can learn from.
> Perhaps what they believe is a good way to start.
>
> My program will work with xboard(not really well tested, I focused
> mainly on performance and minimized all processes as much as possible).
> My program though really works best on Linux not recommended to run
> well on windows(it will but it's not tailored to it) also it runs best
> on AMD processors not with the Intel(reason is I have a considerable
> amount of assembly and use specific processor instructions for AMD. I
> guess I am a little lazy rewriting parts of the code to compile and run
> on Intel. Mainly because AMD was cheaper and x64 chips were great to
> work with where as intels Itanium was too costly. So things just moved
> towards AMD and Linux in the long run. Windows was too unstable and
> too many processes running in the background---the OS messages bouncing
> everywhere and the win OS general overhead--).
>
> Thanks
> Steve

If you live in the Americas, try this:
http://www.taccl.org/AmericasClosed.html

Announcements are generally posted in:
http://216.25.93.108/forum/viewforum.php?f=7

You can also play online at ICC, FICS, playchess, etc.
just google for online chess.

Date: 13 Sep 2006 17:07:59
From: Gian-Carlo Pascutto
Subject: Re: computer chess competitions

[email protected] wrote:

> Could someone please point me in the direction of where I can enter
> some tournaments? I know there were some in Iceland, Italy(2006) etc.
> I find the locations after the tournament ends but how can I find them
> before? I did try emailing people who hosted the tournaments but
> haven't received any replies.

Official ICGA website:

http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/icga/news/

As far as I know, the location of the 2007 WCCC has not been announced yet.

The Dutch Computer Chess association

http://www.computerschaak.nl/

also holds 2 tournaments each year in Leiden, The Netherlands, which are
usually fairly well attended. (The website is mostly in Dutch but you
can find the announcements in English, too)

> I would be very grateful if someone can help me and anyone in this
> group who has entered some competitions can provide any advice as how
> to start, prepare anything that they believe would be helpful as they
> have already experienced mistakes. Anything that I can learn from.
> Perhaps what they believe is a good way to start.

http://wbforum.vpittlik.org/

has most of the active programmers, might want to take a look there.

--
GCP