TCEC - Division 3 - Season 1 - Live! Discuss.

[Martin Thoresen]

TCEC - DIVISION 3 - SEASON 1

http://www.tcec-chess.org/division_3.php

STARTS SATURDAY DECEMBER 4TH @ 13:00 GMT

For live chat please visit http://chessbomb.com/
NB: Don't pay too much attention to their built-in computer analysis
since it's running multi pv which slows it down considerably.


Participants:
Scorpio 2.6
Daydreamer 1.75
Arasan 12.2
Hannibal 1.0a
Umko 1.1
Gaviota 0.8
Tornado 4.4
Jonny 4.0

Note: Engine updates are allowed only until the tournament starts.
For pairings please click the link on the live page.


Misc:
CPU: Intel Core i7 980x @ 4303 MHz
MB: Asus Rampage III Gene
RAM: 12 GB Corsair
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Tournament length: 56 games (double round robin).
Openings: Randomly selected - each engine pair will play both black & white of the same opening.

Note: The "new" 3-1-0 scoring system is used, meaning 3 points for a victory, 1 point for a draw and 0 points for a loss.

Promotion: The top 3 finishers gain promotion to Division 2 next Season.
Demotion: The bottom 3 finishers are out of TCEC for the next Season.
They might return in a later Season though if the engines have been updated until then.


Time Control:
40 moves in 100 minutes, the next 20 moves in 50 minutes, then finally
20 minutes for the rest plus 10 seconds added per move at this last time
control.


Graphical User Interface:
Type: ChessGUI
Resign: +/- 5.25 eval for 3 moves in a row (both engines)
Draw: An eval of +0.05/-0.05 for 5 moves in a row (both engines - only possible at move 30 or later)
If there is a pawn advance, or a capture by any kind, this draw counter will reset
Ponder: Off
Hash: Max 4096 MB per engine
Nalimov tablebases: 3-4-5 men
Gaviota tablebasses: 3-4-5 men
Scorpio bitbases: 3-4-5 men
Cache: 256 MB

For complete information on the rules and hardware, see the Rules page.


Info:
The first TCEC Season starts off with Division 3, which will be followed by Division 2, Division 1 and finally the Elite Match.

For news and updates check the News page regularly.

Note: I have not received a confirmation that ChessBomb will relay Division 3.

[BB+]

Did you go with ponder off in the end? I recall VR saying once that playing (as opposed to testing) with ponder off was quite arbitrary, almost like saying "no qsearch" or something.

[Martin Thoresen]

Did you go with ponder off in the end? I recall VR saying once that playing (as opposed to testing) with ponder off was quite arbitrary, almost like saying "no qsearch" or something.

BB,

Actually I made up my mind to keep things as they are, but then afterwards I got doubts again.

ChessGUI had some problems displaying the correct kn/s when ponder was used, I've already reported this to Matthias.
So perhaps he can fix this before the Division is scheduled to start. If not I will go ahead with ponder off.

Personally I feel that ponder on gives a more "authentic" feel. Engines gets 3 cores to play with, which is
much less than 6 but on the other hand the SMP scaling tends to get worse the more threads there are.

[ernest]

Engines gets 3 cores to play with, which is
much less than 6 but on the other hand the SMP scaling tends to get worse the more threads there are.

I think it's about equivalent:
going from 3 to 6 cores gives you approx. +60% efficiency
pondering also gives you approx. +60% efficiency (if 60% of the opponent's moves are guessed)

[Martin Thoresen]

Ponder will stay OFF for now.

I have gotten confirmation from ChessBomb that all TCEC Divisions will be relayed at their site, so I invite everyone to stop by for a chat.

http://www.chessbomb.com

[Martin Thoresen]

A small change of rules:

The top 2 engines in a Division get promoted, and the bottom 2
engines get demoted. Instead of top/bottom 3 as originally stated.

This applies to all Divisions.

[Martin Thoresen]

Ponder will stay OFF for now.

Correction: I am leaning towards Ponder ON (most likely at the moment).

[kingliveson]

Ponder will stay OFF for now.

Correction: I am leaning towards Ponder ON (most likely at the moment).

I worry at times when you play Ponder-On games on the same machine...

[Martin Thoresen]

I worry at times when you play Ponder-On games on the same machine...

Why is that?

The total CPU usage is still 100%, if that is 6 cores from 1 engine or 3 cores from 2 engines.

Anyway, there are some issues with ChessGUI with Ponder ON making it crash during saving of livepgn, so I will not use ponder on.

[Richard Vida]

I worry at times when you play Ponder-On games on the same machine...

Why is that?

The total CPU usage is still 100%, if that is 6 cores from 1 engine or 3 cores from 2 engines.

In theory pondering indeed may cause undesired side effects.

Multi CORE (but single CPU) systems do share their last level cache between cores. Now imagine program A with very small memory footprint that can entirely fit its data in CPU cache. At the same time on other core program B ponders and is very memory intensive. In a worst-case scenario it will constantly displace cache lines with program A's data from the L3 cache and the poor program A will see unusually high cache-miss ratio and will run much slower.

On multi CPU configurations though this is not an issue.

Just my 2 cents

Richard