Double elimination chess tournament console vs console - ending in a draw?

halkun

So I'm planning on pitting some Gen 2 to Gen 5 consoles in a chess match against each other (Atari 2600 to PSX). I decided on a double elimination, and tried a round to see how it would fare. My first match between the Atari 2600 and the NES resulted in a draw. (threefold repetition). So.. how does that get counted? I need a loser for a bracket move. How is it done with chess in real life? Should I be using a different bracketing system?

I have 10 competitors,
Atari 2600
Game Gear
Gameboy
Gameboy Advanced
Genesis
Master System
N64
NES
PSX
SNES

I have no problems adding systems as long as a popular chess program was available for it.

Input on this?

tinwhiskers

Play an odd number of games, a win is worth 1 point to the winner, a draw is worth half a point to each. If it's tied after 7 games or w/e, most wins advances, otherwise I'd go with whichever played the more games as black, as that is a disadvantage.

BlindZenDriver

halkun wrote: »

So I'm planning on pitting some Gen 2 to Gen 5 consoles in a chess match against each other (Atari 2600 to PSX). <SNIP>

I have no problems adding systems as long as a popular chess program was available for it.

Input on this?

Fun project you have there.
Without having any real info to back it up I would not be surprised if you see a lot of close calls, since it isn't unlikely several of the programs could happen to be using the same chess engine.

As for possible extra contestants - what are you doing with the systems that may have more than one program available (If there is such a thing)?
You could also consider going beyond consoles. Like say chess programs for mobiles, chess programs found online and of course all the programs on PC and Mac. Some programs will be multi-platform and fx. I should think that Battle Chess is one of those.
Maybe more fair than going with PC and Mac programs which out to beat pretty much anything you could look at chess programs for vintage home computer ie. the systems form Atari, Commodore and so on - most of those you should be able to run with emulators so no need to actually find the hardware.

Sir Landshark

The way I believe tiebreakers are conducted in human chess championships is with more and more demanding blitz formats. Something like 5/0 then 3/0 then 1/0 (first number is amount of time on the clock, second is the amount of time you get back per move). So if you are just playing a single match to determine the winner and it draws, maybe have them play one additional match at 1/0 and see if you get a winner then.

Darkewolfe

You've actually hit on one of the major challenges facing non-live chess right now. Machine aided chess games are exponentially more likely to result in a draw. Chess grandmasters playing against each other will often enough draw with only a game or two actually being a victory, thereby showing a clear victor!

I would not be surprised if most of your machine vs machine games end in draws.

halkun

Chess on the early consoles do kind of share the same engine, or at least the math behind it. Many of the early chess systems assigned a "weight" to pieces and used that determine the aggressiveness of each player for each part and how much it should protect it's own. Different games could be created by altering the weights. Complex searches didn't come till later.

I picked the consoles and games based on popularity and accessibility. For example Atari's "video chess" is well known, while Intellivision and Colecovision chess are a little more obscure and not as fully featured. Keep in mind that in 1979, having a chess program that could castleing and en passant was something really amazing.

The programs were chosen Thusly:
Atari 2600 - Video Chess (1979)
Game Gear - Chessmaster (1990)
Gameboy - Chessmaster (1990)
Gameboy Advanced - Chessmaster (2002)
Genesis - Chess (1998)
Master System - Sega Chess (1991)
N64 - Virtual Chess 64 (1998)
NES - Chessmaster (1990)
PSX - Chessmaster 3D (1995) {Chessmaster 4000}
SNES - Chessmaster (1991)
PS2 - Chessmaster (2003) [new edition]

So yes, a lot of them is Chessmaster's minicomputer engine on different systems. I can replace the NES on with battlechess, but most of the "Game" will be on an an arena board with three PC engines grading the moves of each system. (And I don't know how strong battle chess is to chessmaster). I'll have the animations probably turned off if that were the case.

You can't really "Blitz" with a console either because they often select moves at predetermined time intervals. I still feel like I'm missing representatives of the earlier generations.

halkun

Hmm, just found the info I'm looking for - Chess often uses Swiss ladder, but with 11 players is 66 games that must be played. Yikes! That's great if you have more than one game going at a time, but terrible for one right after another.

Lepton

A couple of suggestions:

Instead of a double elimination tournament, have a 10 team round robin, where each system plays a game as white and black against every other system. You could either score 1 point for win, 0.5 for draw, and 0 for a loss, or you could reward winning by awarding 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, and 0 for a loss. This is the system used by many top level chess tournaments. If systems are tied at the end, then a tie-break round could be implemented.

If you're committed to the idea of a double elimination tournament, you could stipulate that in the event of a tie, black advances.