New Engine vs. Engine tournament feature adopted from Uwe (see https://codeberg.org/scid/scid)

[whelanh]

Based on a user request there is now an engine vs. engine feature in v5.1.3.48 of scidCommunity that was adopted from Uwe's fork of Scid (link in title). The new feature is reached via the Game menu:

It first pulls up an tournament configuration window. Notice that multiple games can be run simultaneously (as long as you don't exceed your total thread and RAM capability!).

When you hit start, the games begin:

The games are saved in the currently open database. The tournament window features "1-0", "=", and "0-1" buttons for the user to manually adjudicate and end a game. Otherwise there could be a situation where two lone kings move forever!

Personally I would use cutechess if I were doing extensive engine vs. engine tournaments as it provides more controls for game termination (e.g., draw determinations, etc.). But this is a nice feature for a quick and dirty comparison of engines.

[daSilva65]

IMHO, this is the best automatic chess engine match and tournament feature since men started riding horses.

[daSilva65]

4 engines playing set at Elo 1600, no book, 1 minute + 2 seconds inc. And the Winner is Texel 1.12. GreKo 12.5 won the tournament playing like a 2000 Elo (in the 89 to 93% accuracy). Texel played the 3 games at 87.0%, 87,8%, 88,0%. Texel deserves the Trophy. Anyway, all of the chess engines were computer abusing each other because, according to Gemini, for a Elo of 1600, accuracy in % should vary in the 75% to 83% range.

[whelanh]

Very fun! Did you have to manually end any of the games? It would probably not be too hard to program "win" (score advantage of +1.5 for 5 moves) or "draw" (score advantage < 0.2 for 10 moves any time after move 20) rules that terminate games that would otherwise go on forever.

[daSilva65]

I just promoted a few games at low amateur levels with no opening books. Usually low rated amateurs draw a few games and without books draws would be almost by convenience only, not by the position.

Better option probably is to declare draw any game that exceeds let's say 150 moves.

Or both.

[daSilva65]

Patricia 5 against many, only won to Texel. All engines play set at 1600 Elo, no opening book, 1 minute + 2 sec. increment.

In the game Patricia won to Texel, Patricia did 88,5% accuracy and Texel 77,9%. Congrats to Texel, This is a credible player at 1600 Elo.

[whelanh]

In v5.1.3.50 I've added optional "cutechess"-style draw and adjudicated win options based on engine scores.

I've also added a "Repeat reverse" option if a user is using an opening .bin, .epd or polygot file. This will double the number of games (so 2 rounds = 4 games) as each engine has the opportunity to play White for every book opening (typically done in fairness).

For documentation, the "50 move rule" was already incorporated in the code (so 50 moves without a pawn move or capture is judged as a draw.

The new options are at the bottom of the config panel: