Rules of the 6th Lichess Bots Championship

We've done that in the past and it was also pretty much a lottery at that point (after that many draws the engines are basically of equal strength), so I wanted to try something different (you're right that this doesn't reflect the true skills of the engines, only long time controls with normal rules do). You could prepare for this and make your engine play certain openings that will make the game last long (which is a bit of an accomplishment when you play black because you were able to dodge lines that white can choose to get a threefold repetition, but winning the game is a much bigger and more relevant accomplishment of course). Playing until someone loses could be nice, but it makes it more likely that the match doesn't finish in a week.

Week 1 is almost coming to an end. Bots that have already finished their matches are allowed to also play their matches of later weeks as long as their opponents agree (the opponents may have planned the matches for certain weeks). This can speed up the tournament, but bots are still allowed to take the same amount of time to finish their matches so if you're playing matches that were planned for weeks later, you might have to wait longer for your next match. This is also in general how the tournament often works (when I receive questions): if both players agree, I'm fine with it.

@Ajile I think you should make step 5 1+0 or something since engines have higher chance of winning because less thinking time

In the past we used to start with longer time controls and we ended with shorter time controls. The longer time controls better reflect the strength of the bots, but the strongest ones always drew. The shorter time controls have a higher chance of becoming a win, but they sometimes seem quite random (and it's more often because one of the engines stopped working or made a mistake it wouldn't normally make). I haven't found a perfect solution, so I just tried this (where I like the look of it going from 8+8 to 4+4 to 2+2 to 1+1), but we can try some new things in future bots championships.

In future bot championships after 1+1 you should do 1+0 as engines have a significantly higher chance of making mistakes, whereas in increment time modes they know they have infinite time so they calculate casually

@EmptikGod said in #35:
> In future bot championships after 1+1 you should do 1+0 as engines have a significantly higher chance of making mistakes, whereas in increment time modes they know they have infinite time so they calculate casually

Agreed!

Our Bots Should Play Bullet It Will Be Faster And They Can Still Play Chess

Will Farming Bots Be Alowed?

If you mean bots that farm then yes

@EmptikGod said in #37:
> If you mean bots that farm then yes

Thats Not Fair Though

What do you mean? If there are bots that farm rating by playing lower-rated bots, they are still allowed in the tounrnament @HeckerIGH. How is it not fair? Also, 1+1 is bullet... Bots that farm rating by playing lower-rated bots just have a higher visible rating, but their actual engine rating is still the same...

Oh Srry.