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        Arimaa >> Events >> Bot Qualification for Challenge
        
(Message started by: 99of9 on Dec 3^rd, 2003, 7:17am)

Title: Bot Qualification for Challenge
Post by 99of9 on Dec 3^rd, 2003, 7:17am

Quote:

Setting the game time to 3 minutes but having it play fast is not really the same thing. The intent was that the bots play to their full potential within that time limit against each other and humans.
How about instead of:

The program must have played at least 30 rated games against at least 6 different opponents using the 3/3/100/15/8 time control. At least 10 of those games must be played against at least 3 different human opponents.

we use this:

The program must have played at least 20 rated games against at least 4 different opponents using the 3/3/100/15/8 time control. Also the program must be available for humans to play against with the same time control for at least 20 days during December.

This way the bots can play other bots to get enough games and humans will also be able to play them if they want to.

Omar

Just thought I'd pick this up from the game comments and put it in the forum.

Unfortunately I am unable to do the 20 day thing, because I am away for most of December - so hopefully Gnobot's games are sufficient to be considered. Then again, it doesn't bother me that much, because I haven't had the time to work on Gnobot to my satisfaction, so it really does rate in the 1400's this year, but I hope it will be a better challenger next year. In a sense I would also prefer not to write an article about a far from complete robot with substandard performance either!

To be honest I'd prefer to see qualification for the challenge being a round robin between all interested bot developers, rather than limited to 4. But that would be a major change and isn't worth doing for this year. And no I'm not saying you need infinitely many computers either, just two, each with a directory for every bot.

This year 4 is probably sufficient however - as far as I've seen the only (authors best) bots definitely able to beat shallowblue are:

Bomb
Occam
Quantum Leapfrog
Gnobot

The possibles list that I've seen around are:

bot_Haizhi - might be being worked on hard since it's a term project? How are you doing with that haizhi?
Clueless - what's it up to jeff?

are there any others i've missed?

Title: Re: Bot Qualification for Challenge
Post by MrBrain on Dec 3^rd, 2003, 8:10am

Why not just do a double round robin with any robots that people want to enter, limit 1 robot per programmer? If you're worried about people entering stupid bots, just have a small entrance fee perhaps.

Title: Re: Bot Qualification for Challenge
Post by fotland on Dec 7^th, 2003, 1:41pm

Omar, can you tell us a little more about qualification?

I don't think occam has played any games at the required time control. Does this mean it will not qualify?

Speedy has enough opponents, but needs more total games. But it is not using the whole time available to it. If speedy qualifies, can I have it play using the full time available during the computer-computer tournament?

Bomb is identical to speedy but it uses all the available time. Do I have to have bomb qualify separately from speedy?

I'm just trying to avoid surprises.
-David

Title: Re: Bot Qualification for Challenge
Post by 99of9 on Dec 9^th, 2003, 7:36pm

on 12/07/03 at 13:41:43, fotland wrote:

Speedy has enough opponents, but needs more total games. But it is not using the whole time available to it. If speedy qualifies, can I have it play using the full time available during the computer-computer tournament?

Bomb is identical to speedy but it uses all the available time. Do I have to have bomb qualify separately from speedy?

My understanding is that since we have to set the bots up to run on special computers, the time adjustment will just be part of this set up.

Because the tourney computers are more than double the speed of my home computer I will definitely be searching more ply for example.

Yes, what is the status with occam??? I hope it qualifies, it is clearly 2nd best at the moment.

Title: Re: Bot Qualification for Challenge
Post by MrBrain on Dec 10^th, 2003, 3:55am

I frankly don't see much point in the qualification requirements. Why can't each programmer just enter one bot? The only drawback I see is if people enter bots that have virtually no chance of winning, it just wastes some of the organizer's time, but this seems like a minor concern. As far as the outcome of the tournament, I think there's little chance that the final wouldn't come down to the more established bots no matter what hoops the programmers have to go through.