THE BIG REBEL CENTURY ENGINE CONTEST

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THE BIG REBEL CENTURY ENGINE CONTEST

Every chess program is released with its "default settings" which according to the programmer are the best settings he is aware off. But are these "default settings" really the strongest ones? This is unlikely as chess (and programming chess) is much too complicated to say that for sure!

The more likely truth is that there are maybe easy elo gains the programmer isn't aware off. The "Pilz" settings of Chessmaster are famous for that.

REBEL CENTURY's new "flexible engine concept" allows easy and powerful tweaks (tuning) of the engine by the user and it is expected to get an elo improvement of 30-50 points by finding REBEL's ideal default settings.

The challenge for you the end-user is to find REBEL's ideal default settings!

CATEGORY I (playing games)

$1000 for the best improvement based on 40/40 games (category 1a)

$400 for the second best improvement based on 40/40 games (category 1a)

$250 for the best blitz improvement based on 10/all games (category 1b)

CATEGORY II (testing positions)

$200 for the best tactical improvement (a key testset is provided)

$100 for the second best tactical improvement.

$50 for the third best tactical improvement.

Thus if you are really good and are the best in all 3 categories you can even win $1450.

CATEGORY I (playing games)

Starting point is playing automatic games either on 1 or 2 Pc's. If your created personality scores better than Rebel Century's default settings then you perhaps have made Rebel stronger!

In this case contribute your personality you might win the jackpot of $1000.

Automatic games on 1 PC

Base is Rebel Century's build-in autoplayer (see menu's WHITE and BLACK), do as follows:

Set the time-level (menu LEVEL), see below for the rules.

Create a new empty database (menu DATA), all games will be automatically stored in this database.

Go to the WHITE menu, pick "Load Personality" from the menu and load REBEL.ENG. This will load Rebel Century default settings as player-one.

Go to the BLACK menu, pick "Load Personality" from the menu and the load the personality you have created using "Define Personality" (menu EXTRA). This will load the chess engine you have created as the second player.

Go to the WHITE menu and set "Allow double games" to OFF. Double games are of no value if you want to test 2 chess engines on strength, actually you will get misleading results in case you leave this option on.

All things are ready now to start the autoplayer. Go to the WHITE menu and pick "Autoplay Series" from the menu.

During the games Rebel Century will display the match score on your screen. All games are automatically saved in the database. If you want to see the match score afterwards then go to the database (ALT_L), then go to "Overviews" (F4) and pick "Complete Overview" from the menu. The match score will be displayed. The autoplayer swaps colors after each game.

HINT: Go to the CONFIG menu and set the option "Resign" to the -5.00 value. All games will be terminated in case the Rebel score will go up to 5 pawns. This will typically speed-up your testing with 30-40%. The game will be stored in the database with the right game-score and a new game automatically is started.

ABOUT TIME CONTROL

To ensure consistent results (and user-entries) on all possible PC platforms use the following table to set the time control for either the 40/40 games or for the 10/all blitz games. As a base a PC running on 333 Mhz is chosen.
Machine Time control 40/40 Time control blitz ------- ------------------ ------------------ Pentium 90 4:00 40/all Pentium 133 3:00 30/all Pentium 166 2:30 20/all Pentium 200 2:00 17/all Pentium 233 1:35 15/all Pentium 266 1:25 13/all Pentium 300 1:10 12/all Pentium 333 1:00 10/all <-- base Pentium 400 0:52 8/all Pentium 450 0:48 7/all Pentium 500 0:44 6/all Pentium 550 0:40 6/all Pentium 600 0:36 5/all Pentium 650 0:32 5/all
The table is based on the results from the Rebel Bench Page

ABOUT OPENING BOOKS

For accurate testing: is MY_ENGINE stronger than Rebel Century ?? it is not such as a good idea to use opening books. Opening books play random from book for variability, also for the very same reason an opening book will not always play the strongest move but will play reasonable alternative moves as well. As a result match results may differ because of this randomness.

Rebel Century offers an accurate way to avoid the randomness of the opening book. In the root directory of your installed Rebel Century directory (ie C:\CENTURY) you will find a USER-BOOK called "50-POS.RBM". This opening book contains 50 carefully chosen pre-programmed opening lines made by Jeroen Noomen the opening specialist of Rebel.

If you use this option the Rebel autoplayer will play all these pre-programmed opening lines one by one and with reserved colors too. So in the end you will have 100 games based on FIXED opening lines which is a perfect base to compare your work!

To activate this special option do:

Go to the WHITE menu, pick "Load User book from the menu and load AUTO232.RBM, next set "Opening Book" and "Tournament Book" to OFF.

Do the very same from black thus, Go to the BLACK menu, pick "Load User book from the menu and load AUTO232.RBM, next set "Opening Book" and "Tournament Book" to OFF.

The Rebel Autoplayer will now play all the opening lines from the "50-POS.RBM" user opening book one by one.

HINT: Feel free to create your own pre-programmed opening lines. You can easily modify the pre-programmed "50-POS" userbook yourself using Rebel's build-in book editor (see menu BOOKS). Doing that the Rebel Autoplayer will follow the opening lines you made.

Automatic games on 2 PC's

Rebel Century is equipped with an external driver called AUTO232 which allows you to play automatic games against other chess programs. For that you need 2 Pc's and the AUTO232 software (about $75) which can be obtained from your chess dealer.

For accurate testing:is MY_ENGINE stronger than Rebel Century ?? AUTO232 isn't the best tool as too many aspects have to be taken into consideration. Besides the already mentioned randomness of opening books you also have to take into account "Book-learning" and "Position-learning" of chess programs (Rebel as well).

To avoid disappointments we advice you to stick to the following rules:

Make sure that "double games" are not allowed. Rebel Century offers you this possibility, see menu WHITE.

Make sure that opponent programs do not have any learning active. From experience we know that the only good way to do this is to restore (copy) the original book from cdrom. Note that this isn't necessary for Rebel.

HINT: Try to convert the "50-POS.RBM" opening book to the format of the other computer opponent and run your matches with this (small) opening book.

How do I know?

How do I know if MY_ENGINE is stronger than Rebel Century's default settings?

Good question!

Here is some (general) advice:

Play at least 50 games on a time level of 15 seconds average.

Play at least 50 games on a time level of 30 seconds average.

Play at least 50 games on a time level of 60 seconds average.

If the results of the 3 matches are reasonable CONSISTENT (and of course better than Rebel Century's default settings) you have a very strong indicator you have found an improvement for Rebel!

In the end make sure you have played at least play 50 games on the obliged time control for your PC as 50 games is the absolute minimum for a contribution.

Rule of thumb: the more games you will play the more reliable your results will be.

How does Rebel Company know?

How do we know if your created engine is stronger than Rebel Century's default settings?

Another good question!

Here are some guidelines how we will judge your work:

Your created engine will be tested on our own PC's using a special database of about 200 positions. For every position the engine can gain 1 to 10 points. Thus the maximum number of points your created engine can score is 2000 points.

Second step is to autoplay some automatic games using Rebel's build-in autoplayer and AUTO232 that should confirm your results on our PC's.

From this information we will select the winners.

How do I contribute?

You can contribute your REBEL CENTURY improvement by email or on floppy disk. In case you contribute by normal mail the address is:

EXAMPLE of a contribution:


ENTRY FORM CATEGORY-Ia (playing 40/40 games)



Your Name                   ...............................

Address                     ...............................

City                        ...............................

ZIP-code                    ..........

Country                     ...............................



Email                       ...............................



Serial number               ..........  (as found on your quick guide)



MY_ENGINE (personality)     ..........  (your created ".ENG" file(s) must be

                                         included as attachment or on a 

                                         floppy disk)

My Other Settings (if applicable)

anti-GM      = ...     (ON or OFF)

System Tiger = ...

Combination  = ...



     MATCH                   SCORE       MACHINE       TIME CONTROL  ENGINE NAME



MY_ENGINE - Century        28.5-21.5  Pentium 266 Mhz  1:25 average  my_engine

MY_ENGINE - AOCO (1)       26.5-23.5  AMD 333 Mhz      1:00 average  my_engine

MY_ENGINE - AOCO (2)       32.5-17.5  AMD 333 Mhz      1:00 average  my_engine

MY_ENGINE - AOCO (3)       23.5-26.5  AMD 333 Mhz      1:00 average  my_engine

AOCP means (A)ny (O)ther (commercial) (C)omputer (O)pponent.

That is all we need!




If you want to contribute a BLITZ personality then use the same form except:



ENTRY FORM CATEGORY-Ib (playing 10/all blitz games)



     MATCH                   SCORE       MACHINE       TIME CONTROL  ENGINE NAME



MY_BLITZ_ENGINE - Century  31.0-19.0  Pentium 450 Mhz      7/all     my_blitz   

MY_BLITZ_ENGINE - AOCO (*) 27.5-22.5  Pentium 166 Mhz     20/all     my_blitz

CATEGORY II (testing positions)

Provided is a 50 position tactical test set called TACTICS.EPD stored in the EPD sub-directory.

STEP-I:

Run the test set with Rebel Century's default settings first using "Analyze EPD" from the menu EXTRA. This will give the default Rebel Century a rating.

STEP-II:

Run the test set with your created Personality in the same way thus with "Analyze EPD" from the menu EXTRA. This will give your created tactical Personality a hopefully better rating.

To ensure consistent results (and user-entries) on all possible PC platforms use the following table to set the time control. As a base a PC running on 333 Mhz is chosen.
Machine Time control ------- ------------ Pentium 90 20:00 Pentium 133 15:00 Pentium 166 12:30 Pentium 200 10:00 Pentium 233 7:30 Pentium 266 6:30 Pentium 300 5:45 Pentium 333 5:00 <-- base Pentium 400 4:10 Pentium 450 3:45 Pentium 500 3:20 Pentium 550 3:00 Pentium 600 2:40 Pentium 650 2:20
IMPORTANT: from the menu LEVEL use the option FIXED TIME. This will ensure that Rebel will stick to the exact number of seconds for each position.

DO NOT FORGET: Analyze EPD will create a log-file (in this case) called TACTICS.TXT and in case you contribute you must include this file as proof.

If you have created an engine that gets a higher rating than Rebel Century's default setting then please contribute.

How do I contribute?

You can contribute your REBEL CENTURY improvement by email or on floppy disk. In case you contribute by normal mail the address is:

EXAMPLE of a contribution:


ENTRY FORM CATEGORY-II (testing positions)



Your Name                   ...............................

Address                     ...............................

City                        ...............................

ZIP-code                    ..........

Country                     ...............................



Email                       ...............................



Serial number               ..........  (as found on your quick guide)



MY_ENGINE (personality)     ..........  (your created ".ENG" file must be

                                         included as attachment or on a 

                                         floppy disk)

My Other Settings (if applicable)

anti-GM      = ...     (ON or OFF)

System Tiger = ...

Combination  = ...



   Engine             Rating        Machine           Time Control



Rebel Century          2630    Pentium-III 500 Mhz   3:20 fixed time

MY_ENGINE              2780    Pentium-III 500 Mhz   3:20 fixed time



.......... include here ............

........ the contents of the .......

........ logfile TACTICS.TXT .......

That is all we need!

Remaining Rules

The closing-date of the contest is set to the end of this century (December 31, 1999).

The winners will be announced latest March 31, 2000 although we will strive to do this earlier (end of January) but it will strongly depend on the number and quality of your contributions!

The created personalities of the winners will be offered for download so you perhaps will get an even stronger Rebel Century for free!

Although it is unlikely there is always the small possibility nobody will find an improvement for Rebel Century. If this is the case Rebel company of course reserves the right that no prize money will be paid.

Rebel company wishes you many days (weeks) (months?) of happy testing!