LittleBlitzer is a Windows tournament manager program for UCI based chess engines. It was created to enable
playing thousands of very fast games using multiple threads for chess engine testing purposes. It creates a
PGN file designed to be used by Bayeselo or Elostat to give a final rating for each engine.

Download LittleBlitzer from http://www.kimiensoftware.com
Contact me at nathanthom@gmail.com


Instructions
------------
1. Create a Engines.lbe file with a list of UCI engines to use. Do not put spaces either side of the =.
   Blank lines are fine, UCI parameters should appear after the relevant Engine line, so in the following
   example "Time Buffer" is only set for t20090922.exe and "Hash=128" is only set for Hamsters.exe. You can 
   use the special variable LB_Name to override the default engine name used in the results file.

		Engine=C:\Projects\LittleThought\Release\LittleThought 1.06.54.exe
		NumThreads=2
		TraceLevel=1
		LB_Name=LT 1.06.54
		
		Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\Twisted\twisted20090922\t20090922.exe
		Time Buffer=100
		
		Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\AnMon\AnMon_5.75.exe
		
		Engine=C:\Downloads\Engines\Hamsters_0.0.6_Win32\Hamsters.exe
		Hash=128


2. Clck the Load Engines button

3. Click the Load Tournament Settings button. This will load settings from the specified Tournament.lbt
   file if it exists, otherwise uses defaults. Make whatever changes are required and OK to save.

Num Total Rounds: Number of games to play (split across Num Parallel Tournaments). Note that because of the
                  multithreaded nature of LittleBlitzer, the actual number may be slightly higher.
Num Parallel Tournaments: Number of tournaments to run in parallel. E.g. if using 4cores, use no more than 
                  4 threads for optimal performance.
Hash: Size of Hash tables for all engines (MB) (UCI parameter = Hash)
Ponder: TBD
Own Book: Tell each engine to use their own book if they have one (UCI parameter = OwnBook).

Type:
   Gauntlet: 1st engine vs all others repeatedly. 1st engine plays many more games than other engines.
   Round-Robin: 1vs2, 1vs3, 2vs1, 2vs3, 3vs1, 3vs2 etc. All engines play the same number of games.

Variant: 
   Standard
   Chess960 (FRC)

Adjudications:
   Mate Score/Mate Moves: If one engine thinks it is winning by at least this score (+ve, centi-pawns) and 
                          the other engine thinks its losing by at least this score, and this situation has
                          held for the specified number of moves, LittleBlitzer will terminate the game as 
                          a win/loss.
   Draw Moves: If a game goes for this many moves it is declared a draw, regardless of score/time.

Time Control:
   Fixed Time/Move: This time (in ms) will be used for every move - useful if the engines get lots of time 
                    losses on other time controls.
   Blitz: Uses a total base time and an increment which is added to the base time after making each move.
   Tournament: Specify a time in which the specified number of moves must be made. When the moves have been
               made, the clock/moves left are reset to the starting values, repeatedly.

Starting Positions:
   Opening: Always use a standard opening (or randomised opening for Chess960 variant).
   FEN: Specify a single position via a FEN string.
   EPD: Load starting positions from an EPD file. Positions are used sequentially and fairly - i.e. each
        engine plays both white and black against each opponent.
   PGN: Load starting positions from a PGN file. If it sees [FEN] tags it will load that position. If not, 
        it will play through all moves shown in the game and the resulting position will form the starting
        position.
   Randomize: Randomly selects a game from the loaded opening positions. Note that this means engines A and B
        will not necessarily play the same opening against each other as different colours. However, over
        enough games this potential advantage should not cause a problem.


4. Click the Start New button. If the results.pgn file specified already exists, you will be asked to append
   or overwrite.

5. Use the Pause/Resume/+/- buttons to control the number of threads while its running. Try to minimise how
   often you do this, as it can affect the total number of games played. Specifically, the first engine
   will tend to get more games each time additional threads are added.

6. When done, set the threads to zero and wait for it to finish. Then run the Results.pgn file 
   through Bayeselo, using commands something like:

   readpgn results1.pgn
   readpgn results2.pgn
   readpgn results3.pgn
   elo
   mm
   covariance
   ratings
   x



Notes
-----
- Enabling FRC via Variant=1 will automatically set each engine's UCI_Chess960 parameter to true.
- Parameters specified within the engines file will override any tournament settings, e.g. Hash size.
- For EPD opening suites, each position will get played 2*(numengines-1) times, so best to have number
  of Rounds a multiple of this but also evenly divisible by the number of parallel tournaments.
- For mate adjudication, both engines must agree on the score e.g. engine1 > 900 and engine2 < -900


Result Columns
--------------
After the engine names, there will be 5 groups of columns with data.

For example:
 1.  LittleThought v1.06.72   	11989.0/23644	11023-10689-1932  	(L: m=5083 t=198 i=0 a=5408)	(D: r=1018 i=511 f=225 s=87 a=91)	(tpm=112.4 d=10.2 nps=827951)

1. Score (points/games played)
     e.g. score of 11989 over 23644 games
2. Score Breakdown (wins-losses-draws)
     e.g. 11023 wins, 10689 losses, 1932 draws
3. Loss reasons (m = mated, t = timed out, i = illegal moves, a = adjudication)
     e.g. 5083 mated, 198 timeouts, 0 illegal moves, 5408 adjudicated losses
4. Draw reasons (r = repetition, i = insufficient material, f = 50 moves, s = stalemate, a = adjudication)
     e.g. 1018 repetitions, 511 insufficient material, 225 50-moves, 87 stalemates, 91 adjudicated draws
5. Engine stats (tpm = avg time per move, d = avg depth, nps = avg nps)
     e.g. 112.4 ms/move, 10.2 ply, 827951 nps



Version History
---------------
v2.75 24/10/2013
- Increased max threads from 16 to 128.

v2.74 06/06/2012
- Added extra digit of precision to the avg depth per engine output.

v2.73 21/05/2012
- Forced all moves output to lower case to handle engines that output upper case moves and engines that
  cannot handle them as input.

v2.72 20/04/2011
- Fixed output of some empty PGN games.

v2.71 10/04/2011
- Fixed calculation of adjudication by score loss.
- PGN and EPD files used for opening positions may now have spaces in their paths.
- Fixed ambiguity in algebraic notation used (e.g. Rdd4 instead of R3d4).
- Added number of opening positions to results display.
- Fixed output of first move as white.

v2.7 25/03/2011
- Added option to output full PGN of games. Testing shows no measurable slowdown.
- Can read starting positions from PGN files.

v2.6 22/02/2011
- Fixed parsing of FEN starting postitions
- Fixed bug with identifying mate and stalemate positions

v2.5 10/11/2010
- Fixed number of games played in total and per engine. Will now always play the exact number asked.
- Fixed reporting of illegal move when it should have been a repetition draw.
- Each illegal move now generates a new file with a random suffix.
- Some GUI tweaking.
- Improved logging output.
- Reduced LB overheads and more accurate measurement of real time taken by engines.

v2.4 23/08/2010
- Added Adjudication parameters to help speed up games
- Added additional time controls (fixed time per move + tournament x moves in y secs)
- Added dialog to edit tournament settings
- Some general polishing to make it more user friendly

v2.3 08/08/2010
- Can now specify starting positions via the Position parameter (fixed or EPD of positions)
- Fixed some illegal move reporting problems
- Modified engines file format, now accepts UCI parameters

v2.2 04/08/2010
- Added Chess960 support (Variant = 1)
- Added some error checking when loading engines and support for path names with spaces
- Enhanced illegal move dump file
- Can now log the first engine's communications (best used with single tournaments)
- Now works on old XP installations without the VC redist
- Increased max threads to 16

v2.1 15/03/2010 (First public release)
- Supports Gauntlet or Round Robin tournaments
- Supports up to 4 parallel tournaments
- Designed to play extremely fast, e.g. all moves in 1 sec
- Pondering is not enabled yet