Autoplayer mode

With the help of the Autoplayer two chess programs, which support this protocol, may play fully automatic against each other. Both chess programs should run thereby on two identical computers. The two computers are connected by a cable via the serial interface (COM port).

In principle it is also possible to operate the auto-player on one computer only. The cable must connect the ports COM1 and COM2.

Therefore it is possible to run the Pirat-engine against an engine which is not an UCI- or Winboard-engine.

In the following example Pirat does play an auto-player game against the famous chess program Fritz of the company Chessbase. Within the chessbase GUI Fritz was defined as master and got COM1-port assigned.

Per definition one chess program is always the master, the other one the slave. The master, in below example Fritz controls the game. The slave must be started first. Pirat waits thus for commands of Fritz.

In above window you find the game progress. Both chess programs got approximately the same processor time assigned by the operating system. After the end of the game Fritz would change colors and start a new game.

Note :

Both chess programs should get the same opening library assigned, for example the Nunn book or the pirat-book turnier.pgn. If each engine would use its own library, then it can happen that games were won due to the better opening library only. Thus one would test not the play strength of the Engines, but the quality of the opening libraries. Also the learning mechanism of the engines should be switched off. If Engine1 wins a game against Engine2, then Engine1 would always play the same variant. In case Engine2 misses the learning feature, then the Engine2 would lose one game after the other. If you look at those games, then you would probably be surprised that the games played are most likely identical. You tested not the actual play strength of the engines, but the learning mechanism, which for sure was not your intention.

Summary:

You probably notice that the designer of Pirat don’t think high of the auto-player mode.

The auto-player mode is useful only, in case the other engine/GUI allows turning off book-learning and usage of opening-library. Otherwise you may run into problems when one engine don’t support book-learning and opening-libraries

Only for the sake of the completeness the auto-player protocol was implemented and is supported. The designers of Pirat do not find the Swedish ranking list meaningful, since apart from the strength of an engine the opening library and the learning factor of the engines has a substantial influence on the outcome of a game. An engine could be thus better than another, although it would loose one game after the other worst case.

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Last update: 03. März 2010