Simulated chessboards at tournaments

Running Chess Tournaments
1

In another conversation, Jorge Garcia proposed:

“On another note, would it be so terrible to allow OTB rated events to use peer-to-peer software to simulate the chessboard and clock? I have more PCs than boards and clocks so this would help my club a lot!”

Jorge, how has this worked with your unrated tournaments? It’s an extremely interesting idea, but I’m trying to envision it.

If you run your events in a computer lab, do you simply assign a workstation to each player, so that your opponent is somewhere else in the room, or perhaps even in a different room? Do you get to meet your opponent in person before the game, or is he just a faceless name?

Or, does the opponent still sit across from you, at a double-sided workstation, with two computer screens, one facing each player?

As I said, this sounds like an EXTREMELY interesting idea, but I’d like to nail down my image of it before proceeding any further with the discussion.

Bill Smythe

2

Yes, this does work very well when you’re trying to expand a club and have limited resources for tons of boards and clocks. Also, most of my events are G/10, so scoring is not required, but its nice to have a score of each game anyway as the computer records every move!

OK, see if you can envision this. I have a lab with 24 etworked student PCs (Dell Pentium IVs). I have them arranged in 6 “islands” facing the board thusly (each X is a PC, each group of 4 PCs is an island):

Marker Board (front wall of room)
XXXX XXXX
XXXX XXXX
XXXX XXXX

This works well in class as I have a 25th station in the back of the room where I can project what I do on my screen to the marker board in front (so all the students face front when working at a PC) and I can see all their monitor screens from my seat to make sure they are on task at all times.

Anyway, we started using this room for the chess club after school just when uschesslive was starting up. I had all my students get free accounts on there. Every Monday afternoon we would all log-on to uschesslive and run unrated quads, octos and tornados in this lab. At first, I assigned each kid to a specific PC and each quad to a specific island. Now, the students are so comfortable with this arrangement, they all log-in the minute they walk into a club meeting and they can sit anywhere.

Everyone knows everyone else. There are no faceless opponents. Everyone plays together in the same room. Well, once in a while we do add a faceless opponent, but these are club members that had graduated the year before and asked in advance to be included in a few events via the internet. These graduates would then play, real-time, with my students from their dorm rooms in college. Also, once in a while we’d set-up a competition with my son’s chess team at a different high school.

Now we started to have a bit of a problem near the middle of last school year. That was when uschesslive cancelled all the free accounts. In other words, you could only play on uschesslive if you were a USCF member. Many of my students are either not interested in joining the USCF yet are cannot afford to. So we tried some free internet chess severs using xboard (we use Linux in our lab). This became a problem too as you could not get an account on, say, FICS unless you had a “real” email address like aol.com. Many of my students used yahoo or hotmail so they were left out!

BTW, it seems to me that the uschesslive server software must be based on one of these free linux servers, they are very similar.

Now I am trying out some peer-to-peer programs that will run in our lab. I find that using eboard looks and feels very much like uschesslive except we don’t have to log-in to a chess server, we will just set-up games from PC to PC over our LAN.

HTH,
AJG

3

By “peer to peer programs” I assume you mean software that will run on your network, without being connected to an online service such as U.S. Chess Live.

I would think that, if you can find and run such software, running a rated tournament using it would be a real possibility.

There would, however, be a lot of pitfalls. For one thing, can you set up extra tables in the room on which players could play, using a standard board, pieces, and clock?

To avoid problems, if you wanted to run such a tournament, I think you should announce, in all pre-tournament publicity, certain procedures, such as:

  1. Games will be played on the peer-to-peer software only if BOTH players agree, OR if neither player furnishes a standard board, pieces, and clock.

  2. Scorekeeping is not required in games using the software, because the software will keep score for you and print a copy for each player after the game is over.

  3. Claims of time forfeit, triple occurrence of position, and the 50-move rule MAY be made based on the score being kept by the software.

I should mention that this idea is somewhat similar to another idea that has been kicked around from time to time – the concept of the sensory board. Such a board is a standard (or nearly so) chessboard with standard (or nearly so) pieces, which can detect the moves as they are played by the players, keep score, rule on draw claims, etc. Sensory boards were also touted because the games could be easily (and immediately) displayed on large monitors in the front of the room and/or broadcast on network TV.

Sensory boards, however, turned out to be full of technical problems. Sometimes they couldn’t quite pick up the moves accurately, and there were obvious j’adoube problems, etc.

So your idea sounds like a big improvement, technically – and it would enable all the same advantages, in practice, that a sensory board would have, in theory, over a conventional board.

Bill Smythe

4

Yes, peer-to-peer software obviates the server. At first I was trying to do this with xboard which only plays via server or against a computer opponent such as gnuchess. What I ended up doing was downloading, compiling and installing my own FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) for use just on my LAN. I did have a bit of success with this a few years ago, but FICS was a bit buggy so I gave up on that and stayed with the uschesslive idea as that was working out better at the time. I have been testing eboard all summer on my home office LAN and it seems to work like xboard but adds the peer-to-peer option.

Yes, I usually have 4 tounament sets and clocks out for a rated quad or octo. I use the PCs only for unrated club events. Given the latest USCF Rule Book, I did not think it would be allowed to use PCs instead of boards for rated events. Standard sets and clocks are requied for rated play, right? I wonder if this option could be added to the next edition of the rules. How do I go about petitioning such a change in the rules?

BTW, I’ve seen sensory boards used for TV as in the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue matches. I think that this is OK because these are not rated events and its match play whereby the opponents agree ahead of time as to the conditions of the match. I’ve used sensory boards when playing against a computer. I haven’t found them all that buggy.

Regards,
AJG

5

I don’t think you should petition for a change in the rules. Ideas like this require extensive testing first.

You can always announce a variation in the rules, provided that it does not affect the basic rules of chess, and provided that the variation is announced in all pre-tournament publicity.

In this case, as long as you give players the OPTION of playing on conventional boards with conventional clocks, you can’t very well go wrong. Only if both players agree would the peer-to-peer software be used.

You should, of course, make sure that the software works properly, i.e. recognizes all legal moves and ONLY legal moves, has some sort of parallel to the touch-move rule, etc. And you should allow players to abandon the software and transfer their games to standard boards if any hint of trouble develops.

Bill Smythe

6

So if the players agree to using eboard instead of a real set and clock ahead of time, I can run rated events via peer-to-peer software? I had no idea this would be allowed. OK, this is great, I think I’ll try it!

BTW, this computer lab is pretty big. I could actually accomodate up to 16 players OTB (if we had more sets) and 24 players via peer-to-peer for a total of 40 players. Also, if push came to shove, we have another computer room down the hall that I could set-up for 28 peer-to-peer boards and a conference room next to it where we could accomodate another 12 OTB players if need be. That’s an additional 40 players for a total of 80 (28 OTB and 52 peer-to-peer)! I know, I know, I can’t run more than 50 players as a Club TD…

However, we seldom have more than 4 USCF club members playing and sometimes another 4 USCF members from other schools nearby. We do have upwards of 24 players at the first meeting for a qualifier tournament to seed our club ladder board and at the end of the year for a club championship tournament. These two events traditionally start and end our school year and are not rated (and not announced in the TLAs).

Thanx,
AJG

7

Well, if you’re going to do it, be very VERY careful.

First, remember that BOTH players IN EACH GAME must agree, before you can do something like that in that game. It’s not sufficient just to have a vote at the start of the tournament, and if the majority votes yes, force it down everybody’s throat.

Second, you might want to give each player a chance to play a brief practice game (maybe 5 or 10 moves) first, if they haven’t used the software before, so they can familiarize themselves with it.

Third, watch out for quirks. For example, the software may declare the game drawn when there has been a triple occurrence of position, even if neither player claims it. You don’t want this! Or, the software may notify both players that there has been a triple occurrence, and that any draw claim made on this move will automatically be granted. This may not be so bad, but the players should know about quirks like this in advance.

Fourth, make sure the players know how the touch-move rule applies. Probably, once the hand has unclicked the mouse on its new legal square, that’s it, but the software may be different, requiring (perhaps) that the ENTER key be pressed after the piece is moved. Just make sure the players know.

Be prepared for some problems, the first time you try this!

Bill Smythe

8

Check, I gathered as much from your previous post.

Check, I was definitely thinking to do this as getting used to the software was an issue initially with my students.

eboard dosn’t impose a draw, but there is one quirk. When one of the clocks runs out, nothing happens! Would this be OK if its up to your opponent to, say, call a dropped flag?

Check, the touch move would work as you suggest when you drop a piece with your mouse, that’s it!

Thanx for all your suggestions, this is going to be very interesting!

Regards,
AJG

9

That’s the way it’s supposed to be in OTB play with conventional equipment, so I certainly see no problem here. In fact, if the opposite were true and the software announced a flag fall, this should probably be brought to the attention of the players at the start of the tournament.

Good luck with your idea! If enough organizers do it, this idea may eventually even help reverse the declining USCF membership of adult OTB players – because online players (who have been doing things your way for years) may now feel more at home.

Bill Smythe