Web-Match

Broadcast eng-eng matches

live on the Internet

WEB-MATCH is a web utility to broadcast computer engine-engine matches live on the internet. With WEB-MATCH you can broadcast up to 4 comp-comp matches at same time live on the internet. Owners with a webspace plus a text editor and a minimum of HTML knowledge can setup such live matches easily. WEB-MATCH will work with interfaces that support the following 2 features as shown in the screenshot of Arena (Options -> Appearance -> PGN).

Arena PGN options

Click to enlarge


    O
ption that will save every move into the a PGN file.


Option that collects all games into a PGN file.

Arena offers both features.

We will use Arena as an example to guide you to through the installation and operation of the live system.

Arena version 3.0 will be used.

Download WEB-MATCH

Installation


Install the download in the root of your C-drive c:\ this is a must.


In the MATCH folder you will find the textfiles url.txt and password.txt. With a text editor open url.txt and replace top-5000.nl (the address of my webspace) with yours and save. Next open password.txt and replace password with the password that gives you FTP access to your webspace and save the file.


Then run setup, it will create the needed HTML and script files with the right information.

 

Then upload the folder pgn4web with FTP into the root directory of your webspace.


Installation finished.


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Operation


You are now ready to broadcast engine-engine matches with Arena live on the internet.


Start a match with Arena from the c:\match\arena1 folder.


Start live.exe from the c:\match\arena1 folder.


Start your browser with the URL - http://www.yourwebspace/pgn4web/live1.html and see if it works.


Repeat this procedure in case you run more matches e.g. start a second match from the c:\match\arena2 folder and live.exe also from the c:\match\arena2 folder, etc.


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Ranking and TPR


WEB-MATCH automatically can create a ranking table that is continually updated as the match(es) proceed. From the c:\match\arena1 folder start robin.exe that will create the ranking table of all running channels.


Besides a ranking table robin.exe also creates an ELO list using ORDO. Modify the files cent.elo and elo.txt in the c:\match\arena1 folder with the engines names and corresponding elo rating that are playing in your tournament in case you want reliable elo ratings. Using the established elo ratings from CCRL or CEGT are good indicators as one can conclude from the demo match ProDeo - Fruit.


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DEMO


The most simple way to get famiiliar with the live coverage system is to make use of the predefined shortcuts. From the  c:\match folder double click on the arena1 shortcut which will start the first Arena, press [F9] and click start which will start the demo match ProDeo 2.0 vs Fruit 2.1, then double click on the live1 shortcut that will start the communication with the internet. Then start your browser with the URL - http://www.yourwebspace/pgn4web/live1.html and see if it works. Repeat this procedure with the arena2, arena3 and arena4 shortcuts in case you want to start more matches.


To active the ranking and TPR features double click on the robin shortcut.


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License


The WEB-MATCH software is released under the Goodwill License. This means it's freeware for the benefit of the computer chess community in the hope that it will be further developped and that improvements will be shared with the community.


Acknowledgments to and exclusions from the license are:

PGN4WEB by Paolo Casaschi.

ResultTable by Norman Pollack.

ORDO by Miguel Ballicora.

Arena 3.0 by Martin Blume

Fruit 2.1 by Fabien Letouzey

Get the lastest ARENA inferface.

ARENA is copyrighted © by Martin Blume

and its distribution is limited to the

official ARENA website only.

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Parameters


live.exe 5 - is the number of seconds the program pauses before it will upload the current game to the server. Default is 1 second.


Robin.exe 400 4 - the first parameter (400) is the calculated number of games to play for display purposes, the second parameter (4) is the number of active channels. Default is 2 channels.


Robin.exe will pause 1 full minute before uploading the tournament PGN to the server as overloading the server may cause loss of games in the tournament PGN.

Download the source code live.c, robin.c and setup.c to improve or to port the system to other interfaces than Arena.

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News


July 28, 2017

Ferdinand Mosca, author of Deuterium made WEB-MATCH available for ChessGUI with a lot of nice additions. Go here.


System Requirements


WEB-MATCH is tested on Windows 7 using Microsoft's FTP.EXE in the system32 folder. Unsure if WEB-MATCH will run on later Windows versions.


WEB-MATCH is tested with Internet Explorer 11 and Firefox.