RULES:

Site: The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS)
Tournament Director: Peter Skinner (Iwonone on FICS)
Date: January 29-30, 2011
Registration Deadlines: January 26, 2011

Time controls: 50 + 3
Rounds: 7 Round Swiss.
Round Times: 09:00 11:00 13:00 15:00* (*Saturday Only)
(Above times are EST – Eastern Standard Time)
Please be sure to check for time zone differences!

All games to be played in one weekend:
4 games on Saturday
3 games on Sunday

Blitz Tournament to follow regular event

In the event of a tie situation: There will be co-winners awarded.

Registration:

1. FICS has agreed to facilitate computer accounts for the CCT tournament. Authors should sign up a human account first, then contact the Tournament Director with their desired engine account name to register their program account. The Tournament Director will then get the account registered, and an email will be dispatched to the participating author with their account password. This usually will take no longer than 24 hours. (Registration form will handle the above if properly filled out)

1a. It is preferred that your computer account name be the same as your engine name. If this is not possible, please contact the Tournament Director.

2. Only the original author, Operator or a team member of the original program may enter and operate. The definition of a team member is as follows:

An individual who has internal knowledge of the program and is recognized by the author as a member of the development team.. i.e. Developer, book maker. This person must have advanced knowledge of the program, such as how the program is designed, hashing schemes, book making procedures..

2a. Operators will only be allowed under the following conditions:

i. The author must be online during the tournament to participate in discussions in channel 64, and in the event there is an issue with their program they can provide real time support to their operator.
ii. The operator must use the account that the author has signed up. No exceptions will be made.
iii. No operator can operate more than one program. No exceptions will be made.
iv. In the event the author can not attend the event, but has a reliable operator, the Tournament Director may allow the program to participate.

*** This rule was added under the premise that we would rather have the program participate than not at all. There was sufficient support prior to CCT12 for the inclusion of this rule. ***

3. Book authors will be required to enter with only one team. Two teams (entrants) will not be able to use the same book author. Books can be as unique as a chess program, thus should follow the same rules as one program per author.

4. To enter, you need to be an established author. This means that a program of yours must have a track record in some public environment such as previous official tournaments participation. If your program has not competed in a previous CCT tournament, or in live events like the WCCC, IPCCC, Leiden, then you must take one of the steps below before registration will be accepted.

4a. Ways to establish yourself as a recognized author are:

i. If Private, your engine should have an history of official tournament participation (WCCC, ACCA, CCT, Chesswar, Paderborn etc)
ii. If private, send the engine to the testing team to get their approval or release of the engine to the public.
iii. Send your engine to be tested with the CCRL.
**All new engine authors undergo this screening test, so this is normal.

Clone/Derivatives Rules

1. Each participant (engine) must be an original work. No entry can contain code from another program, or be a “clone” of another program. This includes any “personality” settings of an originating program. This includes opening books.

2. Any engine that is found to be “clone” of another program or close to it (e.g. engine output, pondering information, analysis of positions) will be declared void by the Tournament Director after seeking advice from notable sources. The notable sources will be individuals that have no active standing in other projects, and are respected within the computer chess community.

3. The Tournament Director can ask for the compiled executable and corresponding source to the participating version of an engine to let it be examined by the previous mentioned notable sources. If the author of the engine that is suspect were to refuse to confirm the originality of his own work, the engine and the author will be disqualified from the CCT, and will no longer be able to participate in future events.

Rules:

1. Registration will be limited to one entry per author. The registrant engine must also have a verifiable author. If an author has two programs, they must choose which one to enter. This is now extended to book authors, which must decide to enter with one team only. There will be no exceptions.

2. No manually operated programs, and all programs must kibitz their evaluation, and book moves/TB hits if possible. Providing as much information as possible for the viewers and participants is key. It should also be noted that 1-3 lines of text is sufficient. Whispering is not the same as kibitzing, as the opponent can not see your evaluation. If your program is found to be whispering instead of kibitzing, you will be asked to correct the issue. For this reason, you may need to disconnect and return. One disconnection towards rule 5 will be counted, whether you need to disconnect or not.

3. Participants can use any hardware they can attain. Participants choosing to use remotely located hardware are recommended to have a suitable back up solution in the event of an uncorrectable malfunction.

4. In the event that there is a late withdrawal or uneven amounts of players, the TD can substitute a program in place of the departing entrant to keep the numbered entries the same. And to avoid a bye round.

5. In the event that the wrong colors are played, the programs will have 5 minutes to make the correction, or the program that issued the match request will forfeit the game.

Disconnection/Forfeit Rules

1. In the event of a disconnection, the party will be given 10 minutes to return to complete the game; and no more than 2 disconnections per game will be allowed. On the third time, the game will be a forfeit. This is absolute.

1a. The Tournament Director will keep track of disconnections, and responsibility is his alone to enforce this rule. The opponent will not have the ability to choose to continue or to claim the win. The Tournament Director’s decision will be final.

2. In the event that a program can not continue a game due to interface or program issues, it will forfeit the game. Under no circumstances will a new game be formed or the game restarted.

3. If a program is not open for matches or arrives late for a scheduled round, after 20 minutes the game will be considered a forfeit. This is common to all games such as these including in an online casino and is instituted in order to eliminate one game holding up the tournament.

Seeding Criteria

1. Seeding will be based on the FICS Standard rating, as there is no way of manually seeding.