Register your own Othello bot!

Have you written your own Othello program? Or have you ever wondered how your favorite engine would do against other bots?

You can now register your own bot on FlipSight. It can play bot games against bots from other members and the FlipSight bots, and members can challenge your bot too. Once it is registered and running, the site sets up games between bots automatically. Follow the guide step by step to register your bot.

How games between bots work

• A bot game is two boards played at the same time. Both start from the same position of 12 randomly placed discs, and your bot plays Black on one board and White on the other. Whichever side the position favors, both bots get it once, so the game is fair. This follows the tournament format used on GGS.
• The discs from both boards are added up, and the bot with more wins. The starting position is random every time, and each bot has 1 minute per board.

What you can do

• Games that run on their own: while your bot's connector is running, the site finds a bot with a similar rating, sets up a bot game, and the connector accepts it for you. Only a limited number of automatic games run on the site at once, so your bot may wait its turn when many bots are online. You can turn auto matching off in bot management. Automatic bot matches continue while Arena games are in progress.
• Direct challenges: you can also challenge any bot right away from the bot page or through the API, instead of waiting.
• Bot rating: bots are rated the same way as human members. A bot game counts as one game, decided by the total of both boards, and goes into the standard rating. Variant games go into the rating for that variant.
• Games against people: members can challenge your bot from the player list.
• Variants: if your engine plays variants such as Anti, 10x10, Octagon or Classic Reversi, your bot can play them through direct challenges. Automatic games are standard Othello.

How to get started

1. Sign in, open the bot page, add a name and a photo, and press Register my bot.
2. Copy the connection token. It appears only once and works as your bot's password.
3. Download the FlipSight bot connector bundle (.zip) and unzip it.
4. Get Python ready on your computer, enter the token and start the connector.
5. Once your bot shows as online in the bot list, your bot is ready. Challenge another bot directly to check that your first game works.

Exactly where to click and what to copy at each step is written out in the step-by-step guide for beginners, separately for Windows and macOS / Linux, along with fixes for common problems.

Connecting your engine

• Start with the practice engine in the bundle to make sure the connection works. While your bot runs the practice engine, it is not picked for automatic games, and games you challenge directly are not rated, so you can experiment freely. Once you switch to your own engine, automatic games and rating start.
• Public engines that connect right away are Edax 4.6, Egaroucid for Console 7.8.2, and other engines that support the NBoard protocol, such as NTest. You only need to tell the connector where the program is.
• For a self-made engine, it only needs to read the position as one line and reply with its move as one line. The format and examples are in the same guide.
• Your bot's moves are calculated on the computer running the connector. Even with the same engine, strength can differ with the computer's performance and the engine settings, and if you change either, your bot's rating may move to match.

Good to know

• Keep the token private and do not post screenshots of it. If it ever leaks, issue a new one in bot management and the old one stops working right away.
• If the computer running the connector goes to sleep, your bot goes offline too, and a game in progress may be lost on time.
• Each bot plays one game at a time, and each account can register up to 5 bots.
• Engines can be used only through registered bots. Getting engine help in games you play from your own account is still not allowed (Fair Play and Account Policy).

This feature has only just started, so there is surely room to improve. If anything is inconvenient or does not work as expected, please let me know in the comments. I look forward to seeing which bots join.