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Subject: Re: Leiden depressions

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 11:51:13 11/05/01

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On November 05, 2001 at 01:30:40, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On November 04, 2001 at 00:06:14, Thomas Mayer wrote:
>
>>Hi Bas,
>>
>>> Against Diep Winboard's clock was slightly out of sync with the real clock.
>>> Don't ever let that happen! Amazing how fast the difference grows and you
>>> CAN'T adjust the clock in Winboard. A couple of minutes difference is
>>> *deadly*. And, though it is allowed to adjust the engine clock, apparently it
>>> is not allowed to restart Winboard+engine with a corrected time. Vincent was
>>> the first to point that out to the tournament directors. "Not allowed! If I
>>> can't restart my engine for table bases, HE can't bla bla bla..." (Tao +0.90
>>> Diep +0.001 but drawish IMO). Whatever I would have done in this situation,
>>> *not* this pityful "no no, not allowed!". The 30 nullmoves from Diep that
>>> followed to push Tao through the flag I can forgive, but not the "nono".
>>
>>That's why I do it a little bit different for tournaments in Quark.
>>Tournamenttimecontrols in Quark are hard coded, but need anyway the time
>>information of Winboard.
>>
>>That's how it work:
>>I set Winboard always to the full time, e.g. in Leiden to 90 minutes (if there
>>is a cut somewhere, it is hardcoded, that Quark must play the first 40 moves in
>>xx minutes)
>>Now what is Quark doing ? There is a setable variable in its ini file, called
>>operatortime - a good value for this is 12. Internally it had a correction time,
>>this grows each move (move, not half move) about this value.
>>When it gets the winboard-time, it substracts the correction time from the
>>winboard-time and has now a prediction about what is on the clock.
>>Before every move, the engine writes something to the the .debug - file: Time
>>from Winboard, Correction time, Time it thinks must be on the clock. I check the
>>.debug file through game with the tail-utility. (Works fine under NT/2000/XP)
>>Because the opening moves are played without clock you get initially a quite
>>nice bonus which you can add later - there are 2 commands in Quark to correct
>>the internal correction time by a value, so when Quark thinks it has to much
>>time on clock then I must add something to the correction time, else I can
>>substract something. If the game will be very long, you must change the
>>operatortime later in the game... (But thats only interesting, when you have
>>much over 100 moves) - a quite playable value is 6-8 seconds if your
>>concentration is high enough.
>>With that system I was so far NEVER in time troubles, and I have always an
>>overview what Quark thinks what is on the real clock, so it's easy to correct.
>>Oh, only once I had a time problem - Vincent did not tell me, that he has moved
>>already and my clock runs for about 10 minutes without that I know it... But I
>>correct internal time and didn't miss the cut at all - I spent one minute on the
>>idea to miss the cut anyway, because I was very unhappy about the game, but that
>>wouldn't be very sportsmanlike... a "no, no" is also not very sportsmanlike... I
>>would understand this from commercial programs - they fight for every point and
>>every point is money - but from amateurs ? Well... How about pushing the
>>reset-button by accident to have a crash ??? :)
>
>
>
>I have never seen a commercial programmer behave in the way you describe. Can
>you mention one?
>
>It's not about being commercial anyway, it's about being a gentleman.
>
>
>
>    Christophe


Jan Louman




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