FACE Tournament

Here is why the FACE tournament works the way it does:

• The starting order of Edition 1 was the result of former tournaments (mostly with blitz 2 + 4) which were not published. Some people have requested results and games, but all records were lost in a data-crash when the hardware system was changed. Recovery attempts were made - see here: … Prehistoric

• When the tournament was reduced to free available engines only, the new divisions became sparse, because all commercial and private engines were gone. Engines needed to be advanced to close the gaps. Because an Edition 1 starting order needed to be established, playoff games in the first edition caused direct promotions. This quickly established the new divisions for the 40/5 time control.

What is a free available chess engine? (self-defining)

• its an engine which can be downloaded for free all around over the world, without request to the author

Modus

• not a fully league-system
• the higher division waits for the promoted engines to fill up its participants.
• tournaments start with lowest division then climb up to next higher division, and so on… up to Division 1

Number of participants

• each Division has 16 engines
• 4 RR are played for all Divisions

Promoters and Demoters

• up to maximum 4 engines in each division - minimum is 2 engines

Joker entries

• when edition is already started new engines also can be set as a joker in a fitting division

Which GUI is used?

• engine must run stable under Arena-GUI 1.10
• stable means no illegal moves and not more than 3 timeforfeits in first 10 rounds

How much engine per author take part?

• only one engine is allowed per author

Do legal derivates take part here?

• when engine is >100 elo higher than its roots it get a regular place

Clone-engines?

• when there is a real proof by several experts the clone is taken out
• in case of doubts handling is adapted to “CEGT”

“retreated engines”

• from Edition 10 “retreated engines” according to Ron´s list are taken out
  • see here: http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:chess_engine_list#retreated_engine_list

“oldness of engines”

• Ron's list with “dead engines” (http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:chess_engine_list#dead_engine_list) is not used for Division 1 to Division 8 (TOP 100) but in following Divisions engines are taken out if older than 5 years

• in TOP 100 the older free-engines and also the last free-engines which have gone commericial such as Ktulu 4.20, List 5.12, Naum 2.00, Ruffian 1.05, Sjeng 12.13, SmarThink 0.17a, Zappa 1.10 … - should stay as a milestone for interest in devolopment until fall out cause of being weak in comparison to others or being not available for download any more