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        Arimaa >> Bot Development >> 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
        
(Message started by: omar on Feb 1^st, 2010, 8:38am)

Title: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by omar on Feb 1^st, 2010, 8:38am

Between September 24th to October 2nd 2010 the 15th Computer Olympiad is being held in Kanazawa, Japan.

http://www.jaist.ac.jp/ICGA-events-2010/english/olympiad/

Only problem is that I think you have to physically go there with your program to participate.

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by fotland on Mar 1^st, 2010, 11:38pm

I'll be there for computer go, so if there an arimaa tournament I could enter that as well.

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by Janzert on Mar 3^rd, 2010, 11:44am

I may be remembering a different tournament but I believe in the past they've allowed go programs to participate by having local volunteer "representatives" run programs whose authors could not make it to the site. If an Arimaa tournament does take place (or maybe just a demonstration of some sort) I would certainly be willing to send opfor to someone if they were wanted to run it.

Janzert

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by omar on Mar 3^rd, 2010, 11:50am

I think having a local volunteer to run the program sounds like the best option for organizing an Arimaa tournament at the Computer Olympiad. I don't see anything on their site that mentions something like this though.

David do you have any contact info for the organizers. I can't seem to find it on their site.

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by Janzert on Mar 3^rd, 2010, 1:35pm

I'm seem to recall, although I'm not 100% positive, that Remi Coulom (http://remi.coulom.free.fr/) has taken over organizing the Olympiad and other ICGA events. For sure he sends the various announcements to the computer-go list.

Janzert

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by omar on Jun 19^th, 2010, 5:31am

Would anyone be interested in submitting their bot to play at the Olympiad if someone there could operate it for them.

If there is interest I'll see if something can be organized.

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by Janzert on Jun 21^st, 2010, 1:08pm

Certainly I'm still willing to send OpFor if wanted.

I think this would be a great way to promote Arimaa among programmers that are likely to take an interest in it. But I do have a couple reservations. The one social and the other technical.

First I think for it to be successful socially in drawing interest to Arimaa there needs to be at least one programmer on site to advocate for Arimaa. While I'm sure David Fotland is more than capable, I think it would be unfair to ask him/put him in this position since the go competition needs to be his primary focus.

Second I'm not quite sure how the actual games would be played. For computer chess I think the standard method is for the operators to manually enter and play moves over a physical board and local interface to the programs. For computer go it seems that there is more of a mix with any of three methods used. A physical board and manual local interface as is used with chess, a local tournament server controlling the games or a regular internet server (e.g. kgs (http://www.gokgs.com/)). I don't recall and at the moment I'm unable to find which method is used at the Olympiad. At this point I think the only tournament ready method for Arimaa is probably to play through the arimaa.com server. It wouldn't be too difficult to develop the AEI implementation into something that could be used as a tournament server although I'm not sure I could have it "production quality" by this Olympiad. I think at the moment Bomb is the only program with an interface that would be appropriate for "playing over the board" and it also brings in the problem of a suitable timer for normal Arimaa time controls.

Has the location and date for next year's Olympiad been determined yet? That may be a more suitable target to aim for.

Janzert

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by rbarreira on Jun 21^st, 2010, 1:16pm

If it's as simple as sending an AEI-compatible binary I'm in. briareus can serve as some sort of cannon fodder.

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by Fritzlein on Jun 21^st, 2010, 1:57pm

on 06/21/10 at 13:08:44, Janzert wrote:

Second I'm not quite sure how the actual games would be played. For computer chess I think the standard method is for the operators to manually enter and play moves over a physical board and local interface to the programs.

Really? How bizarre. I'm pretty sure that the shogi computer championships are 100% networked via a standardized protocol.

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by Janzert on Jun 21^st, 2010, 7:30pm

on 06/21/10 at 13:57:57, Fritzlein wrote:

Really? How bizarre. I'm pretty sure that the shogi computer championships are 100% networked via a standardized protocol.

Yep, while I've never personally attended any that seems to be what they are doing in all the pictures I've seen. Also the rules for the 18th World Computer Chess championship held in conjunction with the Olympiad seem to confirm this (found here (http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/files/rules-2010.pdf), under general rules #6 "Each game is played on a chessboard with a chess clock provided by the Tournament Committee").

I always thought it was a little strange too.

Janzert

Title: Re: 15th Computer Olympiad 2010
Post by omar on Jun 26^th, 2010, 5:20am

Quote:

First I think for it to be successful socially in drawing interest to Arimaa there needs to be at least one programmer on site to advocate for Arimaa. While I'm sure David Fotland is more than capable, I think it would be unfair to ask him/put him in this position since the go competition needs to be his primary focus.

Yes, I agree. So maybe we should hold off on this until more bot developers are able to attend.