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Achilles

GerdIsenberg — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 10:09:35 GMT

Home * Engines * Achilles

		Achilles, a parallel chess system by Vladan Vučković based on his Axon 3 engine. In July 2007, at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Niš, Achilles won a four game match versus Grandmaster Igor Miladinović with 3½ - ½, running on a cluster of 12 AMD x64, 1.8 GHz with an own written UDP cluster chess operating system. Game was two hours per side ^[1] . Đorđe Vidanović was responsible for the opening book ^[2] .
Triumphant Achilles ^[3]

Forum Posts

GM Igor Miladinovic (elo 2606) vs Achilles live by Đorđe Vidanović, CCC, July 05, 2007
Achilles 3.5, GM 0.5 by Fernando Villegas, CCC, July 06, 2007
Achilles' games vs other progs, figure out its ELO by Đorđe Vidanović, CCC, July 18, 2007
Cluster chess : not only Grid but also Achilles by Marc Lacrosse, CCC, August 28, 2007
Re: Achilles ... by Frank Quisinsky, CCC, January 07, 2010 » Doch

External Links

Chess Engine

Achilles Home

Misc

References

^ Achilles Home
^ GM Igor Miladinovic (elo 2606) vs Achilles live by Đorđe Vidanović, CCC, July 05, 2007
^ Franz von Matsch, 1892, Triumphant Achilles: Achilles dragging the dead body of Hector in front of the gates of Troy, The original painting is a fresco on the upper level of the main hall of the Achilleion at Corfu, Greece

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Achilles	Dec 31, 2015
Axon	Jul 14, 2013
Cheiron	Jan 7, 2016
Chiron	Sep 24, 2017
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Fernando Villegas	Aug 15, 2016
Hector	Nov 11, 2016
Hector for Chess	Jan 7, 2016
Nibble	Jan 25, 2015
Ulysses	Nov 1, 2016
Vladan Vučković	Feb 10, 2016
Who's Who	Sep 6, 2017
Đorđe Vidanović	Feb 20, 2017

Up one level

Alfil

GerdIsenberg — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 21:10:22 GMT

Home * Engines * Alfil

		AlfilChess, (Alfil Chess, Alfil) a chess program by Enrique Sánchez Acosta, written in C++, first incorporated as chess engine of TotalChess 2000, and subsequently since 2001 commercially released as Alfil Chess I and Alfil Chess 2.2 by Hollywood Publishing ^[1]. Alfil has become a free engine under Windows, compliant with UCI, and under Linux, compliant with the Chess Engine Communication Protocol. More recent versions have a parallel search with multiple threads and are able to probe Nalimov Tablebases ^[2], and were ported to Android ^[3].
Alfil for Android ^[4]

C# Engine Project

The C# Engine Project, at first dubbed Alfil 15 and released as open source in 2015, started from Stockfish v5 and various C# ports such as Portfish, and over the time incorporated ideas and knowledge gained from over 10 years of Alfil development, and from other open source engines ^[5]. Alfil 15 was registered for TCEC Season 8, when it was disqualified after its first game versus Pedone, since it could not disable its internal book, not complying with the TCEC rules ^[6]. After that incident, and due to discussions on Alfil's 15 origins in computer chess forums ^[7], the author made these more explicit on September 02, 2015, renamed the program, and invited everyone to collaborate ^[8].

Selected Games

TCEC - Stage 1 - Season 5, Alfil 13.1 - Arasan 16 ^[9]

[Event "TCEC - Stage 1 - Season 5"]
[Site "http://www.tcec-chess.net"]
[Date "2013.09.05"]
[Round "4.16"]
[White "Alfil 13.1"]
[Black "Arasan 16"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
 
1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nc3 d6 4.f4 Nf6 5.Nf3 O-O 6.Bd3 Na6 7.e5 dxe5 8.fxe5
Nd7 9.Na4 c5 10.c3 Rb8 11.Bf4 b5 12.e6 bxa4 13.exd7 Qxd7 14.Bxb8 Nxb8
15.O-O cxd4 16.Nxd4 Bxd4+ 17.cxd4 Qxd4+ 18.Kh1 Be6 19.Rc1 Qxb2 20.Bc4
Bxc4 21.Rxc4 Qxa2 22.Rxa4 Qe6 23.Re1 Qf6 24.Rxa7 Nc6 25.Rc7 Rd8 26.Qf3
Ne5 27.Qxf6 exf6 28.Rc2 Kg7 29.g3 Rd5 30.Kg2 f5 31.Ree2 g5 32.Red2 Rb5
33.Ra2 h6 34.Ra7 f4 35.gxf4 gxf4 36.Ra4 f3+ 37.Kf2 Rb3 38.Rad4 h5 39.h3
Kg6 40.Rd5 Kf5 41.Rd1 f6 42.R5d2 Rb4 43.Rd4 Rb7 44.Rg1 Rb2+ 45.Kg3 Kg5
46.h4+ Kg6 47.Rf4 Rb3 48.Re4 Ng4 49.Rxg4+ hxg4 50.Kxg4 f2 51.Rf1 f5+
52.Kf4 Rb4+ 53.Kf3 Rxh4 54.Rxf2 1/2-1/2

Forum Posts

2007 ...

Alfil 7.5 : 2293 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, May 20, 2007
Alfil 8 beta 0.4 : 2472 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, November 01, 2007
Alfil 8.1 : 2464 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, January 21, 2008
Alfil 8.1.1 SIMD by Tony Thomas, CCC, February 25, 2008

2010 ...

Alfil 11 MT by esacosta, CCC, November 29, 2011
Alfil on FICS by esacosta, CCC, December 15, 2011

2015 ...

Alfil 15.4 C# (beta 17) by Enrique Sánchez, CCC, April 21, 2015
Alfil 15.7 by Enrique Sánchez, CCC, July 12, 2015
Has Alfil 15.8 been withdrawn? by Gabor Szots, CCC, August 29, 2015

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

Alfil - Wikipedia.es (Spanish)
Alfil (chess) from Wikipedia

References

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Alfil	Sep 3, 2015
Engine releases	Apr 23, 2018
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Enrique Sánchez Acosta	Apr 22, 2015
TCEC Season 5	Jun 2, 2014
TCEC Season 6	Dec 2, 2014
TCEC Season 7	Jan 23, 2015

Up one level

Andscacs

GerdIsenberg — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 10:28:17 GMT

Home * Engines * Andscacs

		Andscacs, an UCI compliant chess engine by Daniel José Queraltó. Its development started in September 2013, and the first release was published in February 2014 ^[1]. Andscacs soon evolved to a top engine, becoming runner-up at the IGWT III losing the final from Chiron with the narrowest margin of 4½ - 5½, but taking revenge one year later at the IGWT IV, this time with 6½ - 5½ to its favour. At the Tenth Annual ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championship 2016, Andscacs emphasized its ambitions, and became runner-up without losing a single game, but 12 wins and 3 draws, and thus the only program preventing later winner Komodo from a 100% score.
Andscacs Logo ^[2]

Description

Being a bitboard engine, Andscacs determines sliding piece attacks ray-wise, quite similar to the classical approach ^[3]. Since version 0.70, Andscacs uses magic bitboards to speed the attack calculations ^[4].

Search

Andscacs applies a principal variation search with tranposition table inside an iterative deepening framework with aspiration windows ^[5]. Beside quiescence, selectivity is due to adaptive null move pruning, late move reductions, check extensions, singular extensions, razoring and futility pruning. Move ordering is further improved by the killer heuristic, IID and static exchange evaluation, the latter also used to prune bad captures in quiescence and futile moves near the horizon. Since version 0.70, a hash move is tried in quiescence search even if it’s a quiet move. Trying only captures and promotions was clearly weaker ^[6]. Version 0.80 in Apil 2015 introduced a threaded parallel search ^[7], a Lazy SMP approach ^[8].

Evaluation

The evaluation considers material imbalances, and has piece-square tables for middlegame and endgame, piece values adapted by type of positions (open, closed), different types of piece mobility, king safety and sophisticated pawn structure evaluation with focus on passed pawns, most features smoothed out between game phases by a tapered eval. Since version 0.62u, evaluation scores are cached with a small evaluation hash table ^[9].

Tuning

The about 200 evaluation features were tuned with 750.000 positions to minimize the standard deviation of Stockfish's and Andscacs' static evaluation, which initially added a nice Elo boost to Andscacs ^[10], without playing too similar.

Forum Posts

2014

New engine - Andscacs by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, February 06, 2014
Andscacs - New version by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, February 09, 2014
Andscacs - New version by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, March 03, 2014
Andscacs - New version 0.62w by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, April 10, 2014
Andscacs - New version 0.62x by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, May 05, 2014
Andscacs - New version 0.64 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, June 07, 2014
Andscacs - New version 0.70 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, November 05, 2014
Changes in Andscacs 0.70 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, November 08, 2014
Andscacs - New version 0.71 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, December 17, 2014
Changes in Andscacs 0.71 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, December 19, 2014

2015

Andscacs - New version 0.72 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, February 01, 2015
Andscacs - Test version 74024 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, April 09, 2015
Trying to improve lazy smp by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, April 11, 2015 » Lazy SMP
Empirical results with Lazy SMP, YBWC, DTS by Kai Laskos, CCC, April 16, 2015 » Lazy SMP, YBWC, DTS
Andscacs - New version 0.80 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, April 17, 2015
Andscacs - New version 0.81 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, June 20, 2015
Andscacs - New version 0.81 - Detailed changes by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, June 20, 2015
Andscacs - New version 0.82 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, August 16, 2015
Andscacs - New version 0.83 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, November 10, 2015
Andscacs - New version 0.84 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, December 07, 2015
Re: Why computing K that minimizes the sigmoid func. value? by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, December 07, 2015 » Texel's Tuning Method

2016

Andscacs - New version 0.85 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, January 22, 2016
Andscacs - New version 0.86 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, March 24, 2016
Singular extension by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, June 11, 2016 » Singular Extensions
Andscacs 0.86.196 BMI2 is available ... by Frank Quisinsky, June 15, 2016 » BMI2
Andscacs - New version 0.87 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, June 19, 2016
Andscacs - New version 0.872 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, July 23, 2016
Detailed changes in Andscacs from 0.86 to 0.872 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, July 25, 2016
Andscacs, developing version by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, October 22, 2016
Andscacs - New version 0.88 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, October 28, 2016

2017

Andscacs - New version 0.90 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, March 25, 2017
Andscacs - New version 0.91 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, May 09, 2017
Andscacs new PH feature: first impressions by Rodolfo Leoni, CCC, July 08, 2017 » Persistent Hash Table
Andscacs - New version 0.92 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, September 17, 2017
Andscacs - New version 0.921 with source by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, November 04, 2017
Re: Andscacs - New version 0.921 with source by Jon Dart, CCC, November 09, 2017 » TCEC Season 10
Re: Andscacs - New version 0.921 with source by Ronald de Man, CCC, November 11, 2017
Andscacs, test version by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, December 31, 2017

2018

Andscacs - New version 0.93 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, January 14, 2018

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

Jorge Retamoza Cuarteto - La Cachila, Andorra Jazz Hivern Fest 2013, YouTube Video
Claudio Constantini, Alejandro Di Costanzo, Hernán Hock, Jorge Retamoza

References

^ New engine - Andscacs by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, February 06, 2014
^ Andscacs Logo with Flag of Andorra, Andscacs Homepage
^ Re: Andscacs - New version by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, March 03, 2014
^ Andscacs - New version 0.70 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, November 05, 2014
^ New engine - Andscacs by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, February 06, 2014
^ Changes in Andscacs 0.70 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, November 08, 2014
^ Andscacs - New version 0.80 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, April 17, 2015
^ Trying to improve lazy smp by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, April 11, 2015
^ Andscacs Homepage
^ Re: New engine - Andscacs by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, February 06, 2014

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Andscacs	Jan 16, 2018
Daniel José Queraltó	Dec 31, 2017
Engine releases	Apr 23, 2018
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
IGT 2017	Oct 2, 2017
IGWT III	May 15, 2017
IGWT IV	May 17, 2017
Italian Computer Chess Championship	Sep 24, 2017
Komodo	Mar 6, 2018
Lazy SMP	Jan 4, 2018
Persistent Hash Table	Dec 31, 2017
Shield	May 17, 2017
Singular Extensions	Jan 9, 2018
TCEC Season 10	Jan 3, 2018
TCEC Season 11	Apr 18, 2018
TCEC Season 9	Nov 6, 2017
Texel's Tuning Method	Dec 2, 2017
WCRCC 2016	Jun 27, 2017

Up one level

Arasan

GerdIsenberg — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 18:38:18 GMT

Home * Engines * Arasan

அரசன்		Arasan, an open source engine written by Jon Dart in C++. Arasan's development started in the early 90s, the first version, released in 1994 was a 16-bit program running under Windows 3.1 using an 8x8 Board, incremental updated attack tables and its own GUI, evolving to a portable 32-bit and later 64-bit program, utilizing bitboards to determine its sliding piece attacks with rotated bitboard lookups. In 2008, rotated were replaced by Magic bitboards, which gave Arasan about a 20-25% speedup ^[1]. Despite its own GUI, Arasan early supported the Chess Engine Communication Protocol and later UCI as well, to run under Windows, Linux and Mac OS ^[2]. The latest version of Arasan and all major versions, including Version 1.0 from March 1994, are available as source code from the Arasan.org site ^[3] . Jon's change logs, bug fix reports and tournament reports over the time are available from forum archives, as well the recent ones from the Arasan blog ^[4]
அரசன் ^[5] (Arasan) , King in Tamil language ^[6]

Bitboard Trials

Jon Dart, May 1996 ^[7]

Lately I've been working on a new major release of Arasan. I have spent the last few months working on the search engine, trying to improve speed and performance. I tried some experiments with a bitboard move representation, but I have backed off on that for now.

With bitboards, I got a nice reduction in tree size (bitboards allow a more accurate swap-down analysis than I had before, and this improves move ordering and allows better "culling" of losing captures in the quiescence search).

However, currently the program relies pretty heavily on incrementally generated attack information, and I didn't have that implemented to work with bitboards, so I had to compute attacks as needed. Unfortunately, the current program "needs" to do this much more often than Crafty does, so the loss from computing attacks more than balanced out the gains from bitboards. This is fixable, I'm sure, but I've put off further work on it for now.

Magic Bitboards

Jon Dart, August 2008 ^[8] :

The main change has been to re-work the code to use "magic" bitboard logic instead of rotated bitboards. This has given about a 20-25% speedup. I have also had to re-write the evaluation function to take advantage of bitboard attack functions for king safety and mobility.

PEXT/PDEP Bitboards

Arasan 20.3, released in November 2017, performs PEXT/PDEP Bitboards if compiled for the BMI2 instruction set ^[9] to replace Fancy Magic Bitboards in looking up sliding piece attacks ^[10]

Automated Tuning

Arasan 19.2, released in November 2016, now applies Texel's Tuning Method by default and supports the Adam gradient descent algorithm ^[11] ^[12].

Tournament Play

Arasan went online in December, 1996 ^[13] , and played almost all major online computer chess tournaments, such as CCT Tournaments, ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championship, ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championship, TCEC, and International Gsei Web Tournaments. Arasan 15.1 ^[14] won the ACCA 2012 ^[15] , Arasan 16.0 the WCRCC 2013 ^[16] . Over the board, Arasan is active at the CSVN Programmers Tournaments operated by Tessa Pijl. Arasan was runner-up behind The Baron in May 2014 at the PT 46 one point behind, as well in June 2015 at the PT 48 with the same score according to the tiebreak rules ^[17].

Photos & Games

PT 48, Two Kings fighting, Johan de Koning and Tessa Pijl in Arasan vs. The King ^[18]

[Event "PT 48"]
[Site "Leiden, NL"]
[Date "2015.06.14"]
[Round "7"]
[White "Arasan"]
[Black "The King"]
[Result "1-0"]
 
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.e3 Nbd7 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4 b5 8.Bd3 a6 
9.a4 b4 10.Ne4 c5 11.Nxf6+ Nxf6 12.dxc5 Bxc5 13.e4 Bb7 14.Qe2 O-O 15.O-O e5 
16.Bg5 h6 17.Bh4 Qd6 18.Bg3 Rfe8 19.Rfd1 Re7 20.Bh4 Qc6 21.Rac1 Rc8 22.Rc4 Re6 
23.Bxf6 Rxf6 24.Rdc1 Qb6 25.Kh1 a5 26.Qc2 b3 27.Qe2 Qd6 28.R4c3 Rf4 29.g3 Rf6 
30.Bc4 Rb8 31.Rxb3 Bb4 32.Rd3 Qc7 33.Kg2 Rf8 34.Rdd1 Rc6 35.b3 Re8 36.Kg1 Rc8 
37.Rd5 Re6 38.Rd3 Rf6 39.Rcd1 Re8 40.Nh4 Qb6 41.Nf5 Rf8 42.Rf3 Kh8 43.Nh4 Kg8 
44.Rd7 Bc8 45.Rd5 Rd6 46.Rxd6 Qxd6 47.Rd3 Qc7 48.Qh5 Kh7 49.Nf3 f6 50.Nh4 Bd7 
51.Bf7 Bc8 52.Bg6+ Kg8 53.Bf5 Qc2 54.Qf3 Re8 55.Kg2 Rf8 56.Rd5 Bc5 57.Bxc8 Rxc8 
58.Rd7 Bf8 59.Qg4 h5 60.Qg6 Qe2 61.Nf3 Qc2 62.Qf7+ Kh8 63.Qxh5+ Kg8 64.Nd2 Rb8 
65.g4 Rc8 66.Qf7+ Kh8 67.Qh5+ Kg8 68.Qg6 Kh8 69.Qf5 Kg8 70.g5 fxg5 71.Nf3 Qc6 
72.Nxg5 Qh6 73.Rd3 Rc7 74.Rf3 Bb4 75.Rh3 Bf8 76.Rxh6 1-0

Forum Posts

1995 ...

Arasan 2.0 (Windows chess program) available via ftp by Jon Dart, rec.games.chess, July 4, 1995
Arasan 2.1 (Windows chess program) available via ftp by Jon Dart, rec.games.chess.misc, October 23, 1995
Arasan 2.2 (Windows chess program) available via ftp by Jon Dart, rec.games.chess.misc, December 10, 1995
Arasan progress report by Jon Dart, rgcc, May 23, 1996
Arasan 3.0 (Windows chess program) available by Jon Dart, rgcc, July 8, 1996
Arasan goes online by Jon Dart, rgcc, January 6, 1997
Arasan 4.0 is available by Jon Dart, rgcc, July 15, 1997
Arasan 5.0 released by Jon Dart, CCC, January 13, 1999

2000 ...

Arasan 5.4 released by Jon Dart, CCC, May 25, 2000
Arasan vs. IM Paunovic by Jon Dart, CCC, June 16, 2000
Arasan now under Linux by Jon Dart, CCC, September 02, 2000
A few notes from Arasan's games in CCT2 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 05, 2000 » CCT2
CCT4 notes - Arasan by Jon Dart, CCC, January 20, 2002 » CCT4
Arasan 6.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, September 24, 2002
Arasan 6.3 by Jon Dart, CCC, January 26, 2003
Arasan 7.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, August 09, 2003
Arasan 7.4 by Jon Dart, CCC, February 28, 2004
Arasan 7.4 64-bit Speedup by Slater Wold, CCC, March 30, 2004
Arasan 8.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, August 22, 2004
Arasan 8.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 26, 2004

2005 ...

Arasan 8.4 by Jon Dart, CCC, February 26, 2005
Arasan in CCT8 by Jon Dart, CCC, February 26, 2006 » CCT8
Arasan @ WCRCC tournament by Jon Dart, CCC, July 23, 2007 » WCRCC 2007
Arasan 10.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, September 02, 2007
Arasan 10.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, February 16, 2008
Arasan 10.4 by Jon Dart, CCC, June 27, 2008
Arasan 11.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 28, 2008
Arasan 11.3 by Jon Dart, CCC, March 24, 2009
Arasan 11.4 by Jon Dart, CCC, June 20, 2009
Arasan 11.5 by Jon Dart, CCC, September 05, 2009
Arasan 11.6 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 18, 2009

2010 ...

Arasan 11.7 by Jon Dart, CCC, February 07, 2010
Arasan 12.0 released by Jon Dart, CCC, August 07, 2010
Arasan 12.2 released by Jon Dart, CCC, November 11, 2010

2011

Arasan 12.3 released by Jon Dart, CCC, February 02, 2011
Arasan 13.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, August 18, 2011
Arasan 13.1 by Jon Dart, CCC, August 23, 2011
MORE about Arasan 13.1 by Fernando Villegas, CCC, August 26, 2011
Arasan 13.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, October 02, 2011
Arasan 13.3 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 14, 2011 » ACCA 2011
Arasan 13.4 by Jon Dart, CCC, December 07, 2011

2012

Arasan 14.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, March 04, 2012
Arasan 14.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, June 12, 2012
Arasan 14.3 by Jon Dart, CCC, July 18, 2012
Arasan 15.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, September 20, 2012
Arasan 15.1 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 19, 2012

2013

Arasan 15.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, February 26, 2013
Arasan 15.4 by Jon Dart, CCC, April 24, 2013
Arasan 15.6 by Jon Dart, CCC, May 21, 2013
Arasan on github by Jon Dart, CCC, May 22, 2013 ^[19]
Arasan games from WCRCC by Jon Dart, CCC, July 21, 2013 » WCRCC 2013
Arasan 16.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, July 24, 2013
Arasan 16.1 by Jon Dart, CCC, September 01, 2013
Arasan 16.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, October 25, 2013
Arasan 16.3 by Jon Dart, CCC, December 06, 2013

2014

test position: Rookie-Arasan by Jon Dart, CCC, January 27, 2014 » Rookie, Zugzwang
Arasan 17.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, March 27, 2014
Arasan GUI fixes by Jon Dart, CCC, April 02, 2014
Arasan 17.1 by Jon Dart, CCC, May 07, 2014
Arasan 17.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, May 30, 2014
Arasan 17.3 by Jon Dart, CCC, September 01, 2014
Arasan 17.4 by Jon Dart, CCC, October 08, 2014

2015 ...

Arasan 17.5 by Jon Dart, CCC, January 24, 2015
Experiments with eval tuning by Jon Dart, CCC, March 10, 2015 » Automated Tuning, Texel's Tuning Method
Arasan 18.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, July 30, 2015
Arasan 18.1 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 02, 2015
Arasan 18.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, December 03, 2015

2016

Arasan 18.3 by Jon Dart, CCC, February 02, 2016
Arasan Syzygy support (working with Windows, too) by Jon Dart, CCC, March 10, 2016 » Syzygy Bases
Arasan 19.0 + updated test suite by Jon Dart, CCC, April 29, 2016
Arasan 19.1 by Jon Dart, CCC, August 09, 2016
Arasan 19.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 03, 2016

2017

Arasan 20.0 by Jon Dart, CCC, January 31, 2017
building for Android by Jon Dart, CCC, April 19, 2017 » Android
Arasan 20.1 by Jon Dart, CCC, April 28, 2017
Arasan Programmer's Guide by Jon Dart, CCC, June 21, 2017
Arasan 20.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, July 15, 2017
Arasan 20.3 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 05, 2017

2018

Arasan 20.4 by Jon Dart, CCC, January 03, 2018
Arasan 20.4.1 by Jon Dart, CCC, January 05, 2018
Arasan 20.5 by Jon Dart, CCC, April 08, 2018

External Links

Chess Engine

Arasan Chess by Jon Dart
Arasan Programmer's Guide by Jon Dart ^[20]
Arasan Test Suite
Arasan 8.4 released, short interview with Jon Dart by Frank Quisinsky, March 01, 2005, Arena Chess GUI, Archive 5, 72
jdart1/arasan-chess · GitHub ^[21]
Arasan 17.0 64-bit in CCRL 40/40
Arasan 18.0 64-bit in CCRL 40/40

Misc

References

^ Arasan Blog - Aug 26, 2008
^ Arasan chess
^ Arasan Downloads
^ Arasan Tech Blog
^ Tamil script from Wikipedia
^ அரசன் (சதுரங்கம்) - தமிழ் விக்கிப்பீடியா
^ Arasan progress report by Jon Dart, rgcc, May 23, 1996
^ Arasan Blog - Aug 26, 2008
^ Arasan 20.3 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 05, 2017
^ arasan_source20.3.zip/src/attacks.h
^ Arasan 19.2 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 03, 2016
^ Diederik P. Kingma, Jimmy Lei Ba (2015). Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization. arXiv:1412.6980v8, ICLR 2015
^ Arasan goes online by Jon Dart, rgcc, January 6, 1997
^ Arasan 15.1 by Jon Dart, CCC, November 19, 2012
^ Seventh Annual ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships by Jon Dart, CCC, November 18, 2012
^ Arasan games from WCRCC by Jon Dart, CCC, July 21, 2013
^ Baron 1st, Arasan 2nd by Jon Dart, CCC, June 14, 2015
^ PT48 Round 7
^ jdart1/arasan-chess · GitHub
^ Arasan Programmer's Guide by Jon Dart, CCC, June 21, 2017
^ Arasan on github by Jon Dart, CCC, May 22, 2013

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
1st CSVN OIT	May 18, 2014
Abrok	Nov 28, 2014
ACCA 2006	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2007	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2008	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2009	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2010	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2011	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2012	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championship	Nov 20, 2014
ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championship	Jun 27, 2017
Alaric	Mar 4, 2014
Alfil	Sep 3, 2015
Android	Jan 9, 2018
Arasan	Apr 8, 2018
Automated Tuning	Feb 27, 2018
CCT10	May 5, 2013
CCT11	Feb 17, 2015
CCT13	Dec 6, 2013
CCT14	Aug 23, 2012
CCT15	Oct 21, 2014
CCT16	May 13, 2014
CCT2	Sep 7, 2012
CCT3	Feb 14, 2013
CCT4	Apr 22, 2013
CCT5	Feb 22, 2013
CCT6	May 29, 2014
CCT7	Dec 16, 2017
CCT8	Apr 6, 2013
CCT9	Aug 25, 2013
DGT Pi	Oct 22, 2017
Donna	Aug 17, 2017
Eigenmann Endgame Test	Jun 1, 2017
Engine releases	Apr 23, 2018
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Fernando Villegas	Aug 15, 2016
Hossa	Jan 7, 2016
IGT 2017	Oct 2, 2017
IGWT 2013	Jun 23, 2014
IGWT 2014	Feb 2, 2016
IGWT III	May 15, 2017
IGWT IV	May 17, 2017
Jon Dart	Dec 17, 2017
King	Feb 26, 2013
Leila	May 8, 2017
Magic Bitboards	Apr 13, 2018
MessChess	Mar 6, 2014
Neural Networks	Mar 12, 2018
Nightmare NL	Dec 12, 2016
Pepito	Nov 27, 2014
PicoChess	Mar 12, 2018
Pseudorandom number generator	May 11, 2017
PT 46	Dec 9, 2014
PT 47	Dec 1, 2014
PT 48	Oct 15, 2015
PuppetMaster	Sep 17, 2015
Recommended Reading	Nov 17, 2017
RomiChess	Jan 2, 2018
Rookie	Jan 7, 2016
RuyTune	Jun 8, 2017
Syzygy Bases	Apr 19, 2018
TCEC Season 10	Jan 3, 2018
TCEC Season 11	Apr 18, 2018
TCEC Season 5	Jun 2, 2014
TCEC Season 6	Dec 2, 2014
TCEC Season 7	Jan 23, 2015
TCEC Season 8	Nov 30, 2015
TCEC Season 9	Nov 6, 2017
Terra	Feb 11, 2015
Tessa Pijl	Oct 28, 2017
Test-Positions	Feb 25, 2018
Texel's Tuning Method	Dec 2, 2017
WCRCC 2007	Nov 21, 2016
WCRCC 2008	Nov 21, 2016
WCRCC 2010	Jul 14, 2014
WCRCC 2012	Jul 14, 2014
WCRCC 2013	Jul 14, 2014
WCRCC 2014	Jul 27, 2014
WCRCC 2015	Jul 19, 2015
WCRCC 2016	Jun 27, 2017
WCRCC 2017	Jun 27, 2017
Witchess	Apr 22, 2015
Zugzwang	Dec 8, 2017

Up one Level

Arminius

GerdIsenberg — Sat, 05 Aug 2017 19:36:14 GMT

Home * Engines * Arminius

		Arminius, a chess engine by Volker Annuss, which is a complete restructured successor of Hermann ^[1] . Both engines, Hermann and Arminius use a neural network to calculate a probability how likely it is in iterative deepening that the best move will change when searching one ply deeper. They both use properties of the position and results from previous iterations that are correlated with a change in the best move in the next iteration. Arminius also considers relative node counts ^[2]. Arminius' tournament debut was the DOCCC 2011. Arminius 2017, the version that won the third place at PT 51, is using its own format of 6-men WDL endgame bitbases ^[3]. In August 2017, Arminius started to practice Black Magic ^[4]
Arminius Source ^[5]

Forum Posts

Re: Programmers: what's the story behind the name of your engine by Volker Annuss, CCC, June 21, 2011 » Hermann
Re: "panic time" and "easy moves" by Volker Annuss, CCC, February 17, 2013 » Time Management, Neural Networks
The effect of dual channel RAM by Volker Annuss, CCC, March 01, 2015 » Memory
Arminius 2015-08-06 by Volker Annuss, CCC, August 06, 2015
Another way of evaluating material imbalances by Volker Annuss, CCC, January 01, 2017 » Material
Arminius 2017-01-01 released by Volker Annuss, CCC, January 01, 2017
Black magic bitboards by Volker Annuss, CCC, August 03, 2017
Re: Black magic bitboards by Volker Annuss, CCC, August 04, 2017

External Links

Chess Engine

Arminius in CCRL 40/40

Misc

Arminius from Wikipedia
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest from Wikipedia
Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811), Die Hermannsschlacht (1808)
Category:Arminius - Wikimedia Commons
Arminia from Wikipedia.de (German)
Arminia Bielefeld from Wikipedia
Slayer - Black Magic, Wacken 2014, YouTube Video

References

^ Pandix wins Dutch Open, CSVN site, October 22, 2011
^ Re: "panic time" and "easy moves" by Volker Annuss, CCC, February 17, 2013
^ editor's personal communication with Volker Annuss at PT 51, April 30, 2017
^ Re: Black magic bitboards by Volker Annuss, CCC, August 04, 2017
^ Arminius spring near the Lippe spring and Arminiuspark, Bad Lippspringe, Image by Gmoeller, 2005, CC BY 1.0, Römer-Lippe-Route – Reiseführer auf Wikivoyage, Wikimedia Commons

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Arminius	Aug 5, 2017
DOCCC 2011	Dec 1, 2013
Engine releases	Apr 23, 2018
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Hermann	Dec 7, 2017
ICT 2013	Dec 1, 2013
Magic Bitboards	Apr 13, 2018
Material	Mar 31, 2018
Memory	Dec 8, 2017
Neural Networks	Mar 12, 2018
PT 45	May 19, 2014
PT 48	Oct 15, 2015
PT 49	Oct 22, 2015
PT 50	May 3, 2017
PT 51	Oct 5, 2017
PT 52	Nov 14, 2017
TCEC Season 5	Jun 2, 2014
TCEC Season 6	Dec 2, 2014
TCEC Season 7	Jan 23, 2015
Volker Annuss	Aug 3, 2017

Up one Level

BBChess (SI)

GerdIsenberg — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 21:08:34 GMT

Differential Evolution

Home * Engines * BBChess (SI)

BBChess,
a free open source engine licensed under the GNU General Public License, written in ANSI C by Borko Bošković starting in 2005. BBChess is Chess Engine Communication Protocol compatible and can be compiled for Linux and Windows. It performs a parallel search using threads, PVS, and determines sliding piece attacks with magic bitboards.

Differential Evolution

BBChess' was further object of research in genetic programming at Computer Architecture and Languages Laboratory ^[1], Institute of Computer Science ^[2] at University of Maribor, its evaluation was tuned by Differential Evolution (DE), also topic of Bošković's Ph.D. thesis ^[3] ^[4]:

The DE algorithm employs mutation and cross-over operations to generate new individuals and selection operation to select individuals that will survive into next generation. Before selection operation is employed, individuals have to be evaluated. In our case individuals are evaluated according to the games they have played. Therefore individuals play a specific number of games in each generation and individuals with greater efficiency survive into the next generation...

With the proposed tuning approach, we tuned the chess evaluation function of BBChess chess program. Tuning was done with and without expert knowledge. When we tuned the parameters without expert knowledge, because the search space was huge, we tuned only a few parameters. After 500 generations of the evolutionary process, the value of parameters convergence to the values that relationship were approximately equal as known from the chess theory. When we tuned the parameter values with expert knowledge, the tuning intervals of parameter values were set around the approximate values and the number of tuned parameters was 190. The obtained results show that, our approach was successful.

Namesake

BBchess by Bernard Brioit

Publications

Borko Bošković, Sašo Greiner, Janez Brest, Viljem Žumer (2006). A Differential Evolution for the Tuning of a Chess Evaluation Function. IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, 2006
Borko Bošković, Sašo Greiner, Janez Brest, Viljem Žumer (2007). Uglaševanje šahovskega programa BBChess z uporabo algoritma diferencialne evolucije. Zbornik šestnajste mednarodne Elektrotehniške in računalniške konference ERK (Slovenian)
Borko Bošković, Sašo Greiner, Janez Brest, Aleš Zamuda, Viljem Žumer (2008). An Adaptive Differential Evolution Algorithm with Opposition-Based Mechanisms, Applied to the Tuning of a Chess Program. Advances in Differential Evolution, Studies in Computational Intelligence, ISBN: 978-3-540-68827-3
Borko Bošković (2010). Differential Evolution for the Tuning of a Chess Evaluation Function. Ph.D. thesis, University of Maribor
Borko Bošković, Janez Brest (2011). Tuning Chess Evaluation Function Parameters using Differential Evolution. Algorithm. Informatica, 35, No. 2, pdf
Borko Bošković, Janez Brest, Aleš Zamuda, Sašo Greiner, Viljem Žumer (2011). History mechanism supported differential evolution for chess evaluation function tuning. Soft Computing, Vol. 15, No. 4

Forum Posts

BBChess 1.2 : 2296 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, September 21, 2007
BBChess 1.2a : 2287 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, October 10, 2007
BBChess 1.3a : 2309 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, March 02, 2008
BBChess 1.3b : 2384 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, Januray 17, 2009

External Links

Chess program BBChess - Computer Architecture and Languages Laboratory, University of Maribor
BBChess 1.3b in CCRL 40/40
BBChess 1.3b 64-bit 2CPU in CCRL 40/4
Black Stone Raiders - live at Festival Lent, Maribor, June 26, 2011, YouTube Video
Jean-Paul Bourelly, Darryl Jones, Will Calhoun

References

^ Computer Architecture and Languages Laboratory
^ Institute of Computer Science
^ Borko Bošković (2010). Differential Evolution for the Tuning of a Chess Evaluation Function. Ph.D. thesis, University of Maribor
^ Borko Bošković, Janez Brest (2011). Tuning Chess Evaluation Function Parameters using Differential Evolution. Algorithm. Informatica, 35, No. 2, pdf

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
BB	Jan 8, 2016
BBchess	Oct 30, 2011
BBChess (SI)	Jan 12, 2015
Borko Bošković	May 23, 2016
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Genetic Programming	Dec 26, 2017
MinkoChess	Sep 5, 2013
University of Maribor	Nov 10, 2016

Up one Level

BlackMamba

GerdIsenberg — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 20:37:27 GMT

Home * Engines * BlackMamba

		BlackMamba, a free UCI compliant chess engine by Matteo D'Annibale supported by Maurizio Platino ^[1], with Windows and Mac OS executables available. BlackMamba, a single core engine, apparently utilizing bitboards, features detection of pawn blockages and runtime detection of SSE42 population count and large page support ^[2]. The Italian Computer Chess Association - G 6 considers BlackMamba as "free" engine ^[3], which includes both derivative engines and engines whose teams do not accept examinations accordant to the current regulation of the G 6 for original engines ^[4].
Black mamba ^[5]

Forum Posts

Blackmamba 1.0 by Gabriel Leperlier, CCC, April 11, 2012
Blackmamba 1.2 by Matteo D'Annibale, CCC, December 28, 2012
Blackmamba 1.2 by Matteo D'Annibale, OpenChess Forum, December 28, 2012
BlackMamba 1.2c by Matteo D'Annibale, CCC, January 20, 2013
BlackMamba 1.4 - new release by Matteo D'Annibale, CCC, April 20, 2013
BlackMamba 2.0 by Matteo D'Annibale, CCC, February 08, 2014

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

References

^ Le pagine dei chess engines italiani « G 6
^ BlackMamba chess engine
^ Black Mamba « G 6
^ Le pagine dei chess engines italiani « G 6 (Italian)
^ Black mamba in defensive posture, photo taken by Bill Love, Blue Chameleon Ventures, January 05, 2012

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
BlackMamba	Nov 26, 2016
Engine releases	Apr 23, 2018
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Matteo D'Annibale	Feb 8, 2014

Up one Level

Bouquet

GerdIsenberg — Tue, 17 May 2016 09:44:15 GMT

Home * Engines * Bouquet

		Bouquet, an UCI compliant Ippolit derivative served as closed source by Jose Mº Velasco ^[1] . Bouquet was first released in May 2012 ^[2] , and requires MSVC++ 2010 dlls ^[3] . 32- and 64-bit executables for respective Windows versions are available. Bouquet 1.8 has a parallel search which supports up to 16 threads, and uses runtime-detection whether the x86 or x86-64 population count instruction is available or not ^[4] .
Lubin Baugin: Still-life with Chessboard ^[5]

Selected Games

TCEC Season 5, Stage 3, Bouquet 1.8b - Stockfish 151013 ^[6]

[Event "TCEC - Stage 3 - Season 5"]
[Site "http://www.tcec-chess.net"]
[Date "2013.10.24"]
[Round "5.4"]
[White "Bouquet 1.8b"]
[Black "Stockfish 151013"]
[Result "1-0"]
 
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Qa5 7.Bd2 Ne7 8.Qg4 O-O
9.Bd3 Nbc6 10.Nf3 Ng6 11.a4 Bd7 12.h4 f5 13.exf6 Rxf6 14.h5 Nge7 15.h6 g6
16.Qg3 c4 17.Be2 Raf8 18.O-O R6f7 19.Qh2 Bc8 20.Rfb1 a6 21.Re1 Nf5 22.Red1
Nfe7 23.Rf1 Rf6 24.Rfe1 R6f7 25.Reb1 Rf6 26.Ra3 Rf5 27.Be3 Qd8 28.Rba1 Kh8
29.Re1 Kg8 30.Bg5 Qb6 31.Ra2 Qa5 32.Qd6 R5f7 33.Bd2 Rf6 34.Qg3 Rf5 35.Raa1
R5f6 36.Red1 R6f7 37.Qh2 Rf5 38.Qd6 R5f7 39.Rf1 Nf5 40.Qh2 Bd7 41.Bd1 Bc8
42.g4 Nfe7 43.Qg3 Rf6 44.Ra2 Qb6 45.Be2 Qa5 46.Kg2 b5 47.Rfa1 bxa4 48.Rxa4
Qb6 49.Kh1 R6f7 50.Be3 Qd8 51.R4a2 Bb7 52.Rb1 Qd7 53.Kg1 Rf6 54.Bc1 Bc8
55.Bg5 R6f7 56.Be3 Rf6 57.Rf1 Qb7 58.Bg5 R6f7 59.Kg2 Qd7 60.Bc1 Rf6 61.Ra1
Re8 62.Bf4 Bb7 63.Rfb1 Bc8 64.Ng5 Ref8 65.Nh3 a5 66.Qe3 Qd8 67.Bg3 Qd7
68.Ng5 Re8 69.f3 Rff8 70.Rb6 Qd8 71.Rb5 Bd7 72.Rc5 Rf6 73.Rb1 Ref8 74.Be5
a4 75.Bxf6 Rxf6 76.Ra1 Qa8 77.Rb5 Qa7 78.Rb4 a3 79.Rb2 Bc8 80.Rba2 Qd7
81.Rxa3 Qd6 82.Bxc4 dxc4 83.Ne4 Qf4 84.Nxf6+ Qxf6 85.Ra8 Kf7 86.Rb1 Nd5
87.Qe4 Bd7 88.Rb7 Ke7 89.Rg8 Kd6 90.Rg7 Be8 91.Rxh7 Qg5 92.Rh8 Bd7 93.h7
Qd2+ 94.Kg3 g5 95.Rxd7+ Kxd7 96.Rc8 Qc1 97.Kf2 Kxc8 98.h8=Q+ Kd7 99.Qg7+
1-0

Forum Posts

Bouquet New Chess Engine by Jose Mº Velasco, CCC, May 15, 2012
Bouquet 1.2 Relased by Jose Mº Velasco, CCC, June 18, 2012
relase Bouquet 1.5 x32,x64,pop64(SSE4.2) by Jose Mº Velasco, CCC, September 18, 2012
Bouquet_1.6 relase by Jose Mº Velasco, CCC, November 29, 2012
Bouquet 1.8 relase by Jose Mº Velasco, CCC, September 07, 2013

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

References

^ Bouquet - Chess Bouquet-JukeBox
^ Bouquet New Chess Engine by Jose Mº Velasco, CCC, May 15, 2012
^ Chess Engine List from Ron Murawski's Computer-Chess Wiki
^ Bouquet1.8.7z \Bouquet1.8\Readme_Bouquet.1.8.txt
^ Lubin Baugin, The Five Senses - Still-life with Chessboard, oil on wood, 1630, Louvre
^ nTCEC - Stage 3

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Bouquet	May 17, 2016
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Jose Maria Velasco	Feb 27, 2014
TCEC Season 5	Jun 2, 2014

Up one level

Bright

GerdIsenberg — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 20:16:53 GMT

Home * Engines * Bright

		Bright (Brightchess), an UCI compatible chess engine by Allard Siemelink written in C++ based on the 0x88 board representation, running as 32-bit executable under Windows. Bright's complex evaluation considers things such as x-ray attacks on the king. Allard developed a statistical analysis tool to tune it for maximum concordance with human assessment of almost all evaluation aspects based on a large number of quality human games. Able to search in parallel, Bright basically applies a Young Brothers Wait Concept algorithm. Since splitting is a cheap operation in Bright, avoiding an expensive copy of the board and associated data, the search tree can be split at any depth, maximizing the use of the otherwise idle cores. Late Move Reductions as popularized by Fruit and Glaurung are used in Bright with different implementation details. The reductions are not history based, and all moves, except the first one, can be reduced by one ply depending on static criteria ^[1] . Bright played a strong CCT11 and became runner-up along with Fruit behind Rybka, and after Rybka's disqualification in 2011 co-champion ^[2] .
Decreasing brightness with depth ^[3]

Selected Games

^[4]

Thinker

CCT11, Round 2, Bright - Thinker

[Event "[Event "CCT11"]"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2009.03.21"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Bright"]
[Black "Thinker"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
 
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 c6 5.e3 Nbd7 6.Qc2 Bd6 7.Be2 O-O 8.O-O Qe7 
9.Rd1 dxc4 10.Bxc4 e5 11.Bb3 e4 12.Nd2 Re8 13.f3 exf3 14.Nxf3 Nf8 15.Rf1 c5 
16.Ng5 Be6 17.Bxe6 fxe6 18.Nge4 N8d7 19.Kh1 a6 20.a4 Rac8 21.Qb3 Rc6 22.Bd2 
Rb8 23.Be1 c4 24.Qc2 Nxe4 25.Qxe4 Nf6 26.Qf3 Rf8 27.Bh4 Qe8 28.Bxf6 Rxf6 
29.Qg4 Rg6 30.Qe2 Rh6 31.h3 Qh5 32.Qc2 Be7 33.Rf3 Rf6 34.Rxf6 Bxf6 35.Rf1 
Be7 36.Qe4 Qg6 37.Qxg6 hxg6 38.Rf2 Rb6 39.Rc2 Bh4 40.g4 Bg5 41.Re2 Kf8 42.Kg2
Rb4 43.Kg3 Be7 44.Kf4 Bf6 45.h4 Kf7 46.g5 Bd8 47.Rc2 Ba5 48.Kf3 Ke7 49.Kf4 
Kf7 50.e4 Bb6 51.Rd2 Ba5 52.Rf2 Ke7 53.e5 Rb3 54.Rc2 Kd7 55.Ne4 b6 56.Nd6 c3 
57.bxc3 Rxc3 58.Rxc3 Bxc3 59.Ke4 Be1 60.d5 Bxh4 61.Nf7 b5 62.axb5 exd5+ 
63.Kxd5 axb5 64.e6+ Ke7 65.Ne5 Bxg5 66.Nxg6+ Kf6 67.Ne5 Bc1 68.Nc6 Ba3 69.Nd4
b4 70.Nb3 Ke7 71.Nd4 g6 72.Nc2 g5 73.Nd4 Ke8 74.Nc2 g4 75.Ke4 Ke7 76.Nd4 Kf6 
77.Nc2 Kxe6 78.Nxb4 Bxb4 79.Kf4 Bf8 80.Kxg4 1/2-1/2

Fruit

CCT11, Round 3, Fruit - Bright

[Event "[Event "CCT11"]"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2009.03.21"]
[Round "3"]
[White "Fruit"]
[Black "Bright"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
 
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 O-O 8.c3 d6 
9.h3 Nb8 10.d4 Nbd7 11.Nbd2 Bb7 12.Bc2 Re8 13.a4 Bf8 14.Bd3 c6 15.Nf1 d5 
16.Bg5 dxe4 17.Rxe4 Be7 18.Re2 exd4 19.Nxd4 g6 20.axb5 cxb5 21.Qd2 Qc7 
22.Rae1 Bd6 23.Ng3 Rxe2 24.Rxe2 Rc8 25.Bh6 Be5 26.Qg5 Re8 27.Ngf5 Qa5 
28.Nc2 Qb6 29.Qh4 Nc5 30.Ng7 Re7 31.Nh5 Ncd7 32.Ne3 Qc5 33.Nf4 Re8 34.Bc2 
Qc6 35.f3 Bc7 36.Kf1 a5 37.Nf5 Rxe2 38.Nxe2 Qe6 39.Ned4 Qe5 40.f4 Qe8 
41.Bg5 Nd5 42.Nh6+ Kg7 43.Nhf5+ Kh8 44.Ne7 Bd6 45.Nxd5 Bxd5 46.f5 Kg8 
47.Bf4 Bc5 48.Bh6 Qe5 49.Qd8+ Nf8 50.Bd3 b4 51.Ne2 Be4 52.Bxe4 Qxe4 53.Qf6 
Qb1+ 54.Nc1 Qxf5+ 55.Qxf5 gxf5 56.Bd2 bxc3 57.Bxc3 a4 58.Ne2 Nd7 59.Ng3 f4 
60.Ne4 Bf8 61.Ke2 f5 62.Nf2 Nb6 63.Nd3 Nc4 64.Nxf4 Bg7 65.Kd3 Nxb2+ 66.Kc2 
Nc4 67.Nd5 Bxc3 68.Kxc3 a3 69.Kb3 Kf7 70.Nc3 Ne3 71.g3 Ke6 72.Kxa3 Ke5 
73.Kb2 Nc4+ 74.Kc2 Kd4 75.Ne2+ Ke3 76.Nf4 Nd6 77.Nd5+ Kf3 78.Nf6 h6 79.g4 
f4 80.h4 Ke2 81.g5 Nf5 82.gxh6 Nxh6 83.Nd5 f3 84.Nc3+ Ke1 85.Ne4 f2 86.Nxf2 
Kxf2 87.Kc3 Kf3 88.Kc2 Kf4 89.h5 Kg4 90.Kc3 Kg5 91.Kc2 Kf5 92.Kc3 Kg5 
1/2-1/2

Release Dates

Bright 0.1 : 2006-12-20 (private)
Bright 0.1a : 2006-12-31 (private)
Bright 0.1b : 2007-01-06 (private)
Bright 0.1c : 2007-01-24 (private)
Bright 0.1d : 2007-03-18 (private)
Bright 0.1de : 2007-04-19 (private)
Bright 0.1e : 2007-05-02 (private)
Bright 0.1f : 2007-05-20 (private)
Bright 0.2a : 2007-05-30 (private)
Bright 0.2b : 2007-08-23 (private)
Bright 0.2c : 2007-11-23 (public)
Bright 0.3a : 2008-01-25 (public)
Bright 0.3b : 2008-03-21 (private)
Bright 0.3c : 2008-06-15 (private)
Bright 0.3d : 2008-06-15 (private)
Bright 0.4a : 2008-10-02 (public)

Forum Posts

bright-0.2c released by Allard Siemelink, CCC, December 24, 2007
Bright 0.3a public version released by Allard Siemelink, CCC, March 22, 2008
Bright 0.4a, Winboard and ICC... by Swaminathan, CCC, January 26, 2009
bright 0.4a now public by Allard Siemelink, CCC, March 23, 2009
2009 WCRCC: Bright/Spark issue by Charles Roberson, CCC, August 13, 2009
Bright 0.4 A Fantastic, Agressive Games by Fernando Villegas, CCC, July 27, 2009
Bright 0.5c released by Allard Siemelink, CCC, January 11, 2010

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

References

^ Interview with Allard Siemelink by Frank Quisinsky, Schachwelt, January 10, 2010
^ CCT11: Bright by Allard Siemelink and Fruit by Fabien Letouzey are Co-Champions
^ Photo by Lars Lentz, Brightness from Wikipedia
^ CCT11: Bright by Allard Siemelink and Fruit by Fabien Letouzey are Co-Champions

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Allard Siemelink	May 5, 2011
Bright	Oct 25, 2016
CCT11	Feb 17, 2015
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Fernando Villegas	Aug 15, 2016
Fruit	Sep 27, 2016
Spark	Oct 19, 2017
Swaminathan Natarajan	Jun 17, 2015

Up one Level

Brutus NL

GerdIsenberg — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 15:30:26 GMT

Home * Engines * Brutus

		Brutus (Brutus Chess), a Chess Engine Communication Protocol compatible open source chess engine by Stephan Vermeire and Maurizio Platino, since Version 8 also UCI compliant. Brutus participated at the CPT 2008 and the CPT 2010, the over the board Chess Programmers Tournaments organized by Richard Pijl. Brutus is a bitboard engine, determines sliding piece attacks with magic bitboards, uses alpha-beta with transposition table and null-move pruning, and supports SMP search ^[1]. Brutus 8.05 is able to read ctg bookfiles ^[2].
Brutus Chess ^[3] ^[4] ^[5]

Namesake

Brutus, the FPGA program by Chrilly Donninger

Forum Posts

Brutus v8.01 available at new website by Stephan Vermeire, Winboard Forum, November 14, 2009
Brutus v8.5 released by Stephan Vermeire, Winboard Forum, January 25, 2010

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

References

^ Brutus' Homepage
^ Brutus v8.5 released by Stephan Vermeire, Winboard Forum, January 25, 2010
^ Brutus' Homepage
^ Asterix from Wikipedia
^ Albert Uderzo from Wikipedia

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Brutus	Dec 24, 2016
Brutus NL	Aug 22, 2016
CCC 2009	Apr 29, 2015
CPT 2008	Nov 6, 2014
CPT 2010	Jan 17, 2013
CTG	Aug 22, 2016
DayDreamer	Aug 22, 2016
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
IOCSC 2010	Jul 13, 2013
Stephan Vermeire	Mar 29, 2015

Up one Level

BugChess FR

GerdIsenberg — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 13:27:39 GMT

Home * Engines * BugChess FR

BugChess,
a family of chess programs written by programmer François Karr and chess expert Jean-Philippe Karr. The early Bugchess versions starting in 1996 running under MS-DOS ^[1] and Windows were compiled with Borland C++ ^[2] and had their own GUI.

Screenshot

BugChess GUI ^[3]

BugChess2

BugChess2 is a WinBoard compliant chess engine written in C++. It was a complete rewrite and has no code in common with BugChess, and features a parallel search to utilize multiple processors. BugChess2 was first released in May 2006 ^[4], and played a strong WCRCC 2008 Annual ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championship.

Selected Games

WCRCC 2008, round 14, BugChess2 - Rybka ^[5]

[Event "WCRCC 2008"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2008.06.22"]
[Round "14"]
[White "BugChess2"]
[Black "Rybka"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
 
1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 d6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e5 dxe5 5.Nxe5 a6 6.a4 Qc7 7.d4 e6 8.Be3 Nbd7 
9.Nc4 cxd4 10.Qxd4 Bc5 11.Qf4 Qxf4 12.Bxf4 Nd5 13.Nxd5 exd5 14.Nd6+ Ke7 
15.Nxc8+ Rhxc8 16.O-O-O Nf6 17.f3 b5 18.axb5 axb5 19.Bxb5 Ra5 20.Bd3 Bb4 
21.c3 d4 22.c4 Nd5 23.Bg5+ Ke6 24.Kc2 Ne3+ 25.Bxe3 dxe3 26.Ra1 Rca8 27.Rxa5 
Rxa5 28.Be2 g5 29.h4 h6 30.hxg5 hxg5 31.g4 Ke5 32.Rh8 Kf4 33.Re8 Bd2 34.Re7 
Kg3 35.Rxf7 Kf2 36.Kd3 Ra8 37.Rf5 Bc1 38.Rxg5 Bxb2 39.Rh5 Ra3+ 40.Kc2 Kxe2 
41.Kxb2 Ra8 42.f4 Re8 43.Rh1 Kf3 44.f5 Kxg4 45.Kc2 Kf3 46.Kd1 Rd8+ 47.Ke1 
Ra8 48.Rh3+ Ke4 49.Rh7 Ra1+ 50.Ke2 Ra2+ 51.Kd1 Kd4 52.Rd7+ Kxc4 53.f6 Rf2 
54.f7 Kc5 55.Ke1 Kb6 56.Rd6+ Kb5 57.Rd7 Kc5 58.Kd1 Kc6 59.Rd3 Rxf7 60.Ke2 
Re7 61.Rxe3 1/2-1/2

Namesake

BugChess by Erik van het Hof and Hermen Reitsma

Forum Posts

BugChess 2 bug by Gábor Szots, Winboard Forum, July 26, 2007
BugChess2 1.5.2 is out ! by François Karr, CCC, October 15, 2007
BugChess2 1.6.3 is out ! by François Karr, CCC, November 04, 2008
BugChess2 1.6.4 released ! by François Karr, CCC, November 05, 2009
BugChess2 1.9 available (SMP) by François Karr, CCC, April 29, 2011
SWCR: BugChess2 1.9 x64 test finished, +42 ELO by Frank Quisinsky, CCC, June 10, 2011

External Links

References

^ CSVNP8 supplement site 1999
^ Re: Programming language by Dann Corbit, Winboard Forum, September 04, 2001
^ Septober - Computerschach by Herbert Marquardt
^ BugChess2 from WBEC Ridderkerk
^ 2008 Second Annual ACCA World Computer Chess Championships - Results - PGN download

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
BugChess FR	Feb 24, 2013
BugChess NL	Feb 24, 2013
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
François Karr	Feb 24, 2013
Jean-Philippe Karr	Feb 24, 2013
TCEC Season 5	Jun 2, 2014
WCRCC 2008	Nov 21, 2016

Up one Level

Butcher

GerdIsenberg — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:59:00 GMT

Home * Engines * Butcher

		Butcher (Rzeźnik in Polish ^[1] ) a Chess Engine Communication Protocol compliant chess program written by Marek Kołacz in C, released in September 2001 ^[2] . Executables are available for MS-DOS, Windows and Linux. Since version 1.60, Butcher is able to perform a parallel search under Windows using processes and a shared hash table. A master process spawns worker processes, which run independently without any supervision. The Master process prepares all the structures necessary to split the node and continues the search. Worker processes simply use existing "split nodes" to start their search and report the results. The master process is responsible to kill the workers upon exit ^[3] .
Butcher's Tacuinum Sanitatis Casanatensis ^[4]

Tournament Play

Rzeźnik aka Butcher played all Polish Computer Chess Championships, and won its first edition, the PCCC 2002, and the open category of the PCCC 2004 and PCCC 2006 ^[5] , and otherwise was always a top scorer, at the PCCC 2012 best Polish program. Butcher further played multiple CCT Tournaments, and had its tournament debut at the CCT3 in May 2001.

Publications

Maciej Szmit (2006). The 5th Polish Computer-Chess Championship: The Second Comeback of Butcher. ICGA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 4 » PCCC 2006

Forum Posts

New Butcher by Grzegorz Sidorowicz, CCC, September 24, 2001
Gauntlet Petir v2.0 and Butcher v1.53 with download by Karl-Heinz Söntges, CCC, December 13, 2004
Gauntlets Liste B 5' + 5" - Butcher v1.56 - games by Karl-Heinz Söntges, CCC, July 11, 2005

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

References

^ Rzeźnictwo from Wikipedia.pl (Polish)
^ New Butcher by Grzegorz Sidorowicz, CCC, September 24, 2001
^ Butcher's Homepage
^ This picture is showing a 14th century butcher doing his trade in a traditional manner, unknown master, Butcher from Wikipedia
^ Maciej Szmit (2006). The 5th Polish Computer-Chess Championship: The Second Comeback of Butcher. ICGA Journal, Vol. 29, No. 4

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Atak	Aug 9, 2016
Butcher	Mar 12, 2013
CCT12	Jan 28, 2018
CCT3	Feb 14, 2013
CCT4	Apr 22, 2013
CCT5	Feb 22, 2013
CCT6	May 29, 2014
CCT7	Dec 16, 2017
CCT8	Apr 6, 2013
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
ICGA Journal	Dec 21, 2017
IOPCCC 2007	Nov 19, 2016
IOPCCC 2008	Feb 23, 2014
Marek Kołacz	Jul 4, 2010
PCCC 2002	Mar 14, 2013
PCCC 2003	Mar 13, 2013
PCCC 2004	Jun 16, 2013
PCCC 2005	Jun 26, 2013
PCCC 2006	Mar 12, 2013
PCCC 2009	Mar 11, 2013
PCCC 2010	Aug 9, 2016
PCCC 2011	Mar 12, 2013
PCCC 2012	Mar 11, 2013
Polish Computer Chess Championship	Mar 12, 2013

Up one Level

Buzz

GerdIsenberg — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 21:03:01 GMT

Home * Engines * Buzz

		Buzz, a Chess Engine Communication Protocol compliant chess engine written by Pradu Kannan in C++. An early version is available as open source engine under the GPL ^[1], intended to be an example program for new chess programmers. Buzz is a bitboard engine and applies Pradu Kannan's main stream implementation of Magic Bitboards with individual table sizes for each square, later dubbed Fancy Magic Bitboards, the generator is available as open source from the Buzz site. Buzz got a 2.2 x speedup from 32-bits to 64-bits on Core2 ^[2]. It uses a kind of principal variation search, dubbed Node-Type Search (NTS), explicitly considering node types ^[3], and utilizes multiple threads for a parallel search. In collaboration with Andres Valverde and Fonzy Bluemers, Buzz' search was incorporated into the team effort Dirty.
Buzz playing Twister ^[4]

Tournaments

So far, Buzz played the first three ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships, the ACCA 2006, ACCA 2007, and ACCA 2008, the first two ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championships, WCRCC 2007 and WCRCC 2008, as well the CCT9.

Photos & Games

ACCA 2008: Bob Hyatt, Charles Roberson, Pradu Kannan, Brian Richardson and Ted Summers ^[5]

ACCA 2008, Buzz - Tinker ^[6]

[Event "ACCA 2008"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2008.11.09"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Buzz"]
[Black "Tinker"]
[Result "1-0"]
 
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bb5+ Bd7 4.Bxd7+ Qxd7 5.O-O Nc6 6.c3 Nf6 7.d4 cxd4 
8.cxd4 Nxe4 9.d5 Nd8 10.Re1 f5 11.Nc3 Nxc3 12.bxc3 Rc8 13.Qd4 Kf7 
14.Qxa7 Rxc3 15.Qd4 Rc7 16.Be3 Rc8 17.Rac1 Kg8 18.Rxc8 Qxc8 19.Qa4 Nf7 
20.Rc1 Qd8 21.Nd4 Ne5 22.Ne6 Qb8 23.Rc7 Ng6 24.Bd4 h6 25.Qd7 Qa8 26.Nxf8
1-0

Forum Posts

Handling 3-rep/50-move in hash tables by Pradu Kannan, Winboard Forum, February 19, 2007 » Repetitions, Transposition Table
Re: Speedup with bitboards on 64-bit CPUs by Pradu Kannan, CCC, April 27, 2007
Compiling for Unix by Pradu Kannan, Winboard Forum, May 08, 2007 » Unix
Slight enhancement to PVS by Pradu Kannan, Winboard Forum, June 10, 2007 » Principal Variation Search, Node Types
Re: multithreading questions by Pradu Kannan, CCC, August 08, 2007 » Thread
A Few General Questions on Parallel Search by Pradu Kannan, Winboard Forum, August 31, 2007 » Parallel Search
Re: Adjusting weights the Deep Blue way by Pradu Kannan, Winboard Forum, September 01, 2008

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

References

^ Buzz - A Winboard Chess Engine
^ Re: Speedup with bitboards on 64-bit CPUs by Pradu Kannan, CCC, April 27, 2007
^ Slight enhancement to PVS by Pradu Kannan, Winboard Forum, June 10, 2007
^ Buzz, a stylized yellowjacket as official mascot of the Georgia Institute of Technology
^ The 2008 Third Annual ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Chamionships Site Pics from UAB » ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championship, ACCA 2008
^ The 2008 Third Annual ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships - Results

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
ACCA 2006	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2007	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2008	Jul 14, 2014
Alaric	Mar 4, 2014
Andres Valverde	Apr 6, 2013
Buzz	Jun 22, 2016
CCT9	Aug 25, 2013
Christopher Conkie	May 17, 2016
Dirty	Nov 14, 2017
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Georgia Institute of Technology	Nov 14, 2017
Homer	Dec 23, 2013
Matilde	Jan 1, 2014
Pradu Kannan	Aug 3, 2015
Symbolic	May 8, 2017
Unix	Jun 28, 2015
Wasp	Nov 24, 2017
WCRCC 2007	Nov 21, 2016
WCRCC 2008	Nov 21, 2016
Witz	Nov 14, 2017

Up one level

Cheng

GerdIsenberg — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 19:17:42 GMT

Home * Engines * Cheng

Cheng,
an UCI compliant open source chess engine by Martin Sedlak, written in C++ as exercise in generic programming, first released as Cheng3 in April 2011. Cheng is able to play Chess960, target platforms are Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Android systems ^[1]. Cheng4 0.38, released in January 2015, is available at GitHub under the permissive zlib license ^[2].

Description

Cheng ^[3] is a bitboard engine using fancy magic bitboards to determine sliding piece attacks. It applies staged move generation.

Search

The parallel multi-threaded search performs PVS alpha-beta with a shared transposition table inside a fractional ply iterative deepening framework with aspiration windows, featuring Lazy SMP ^[4]. Search routines are instantiated at compile time from a generic routine with three boolean template parameters, PV-node, in check, and null move pruning on-off, similar quiescence search has four instances for on-off combinations of PV-node and check. Further selectivity is applied by mate distance pruning, razoring, IID, futility pruning, check extensions and late move reductions. Move ordering is improved by the killer- and history heuristic.

Evaluation

Evaluation employs three further hash tables - evaluation hash table, material hash table and pawn hash table. The evaluation function determines hardware population count support at compile time, passed as template parameter to internal eval functions, finally adding a tempo bonus. Pawn and piece specific evaluators are further implemented with a color template, considering pawn structure, mobility, king safety and various piece pattern. Most of the gain in Cheng4 0.38, released in January 2015, is due to eval tuning using the Texel's Tuning Method by Peter Österlund ^[5].

Forum Posts

2011

cheng3 uci v1.0 by Martin Sedlak, CCC, April 19, 2011
cheng3 1.03 released by Martin Sedlak, CCC, May 27, 2011
cheng3 1.05 released by Martin Sedlak, CCC, September 26, 2011
cheng3 1.06 released by Martin Sedlak, CCC, November 23, 2011

2012 ...

cheng3 1.07 released by Martin Sedlak, CCC, January 21, 2012
cheng4 0.35 by Martin Sedlak, CCC, September 24, 2013
cheng4 0.36 by Martin Sedlak, CCC, November 10, 2013
cheng4 0.36a (FRC bugfix) by Martin Sedlak, CCC, November 15, 2013

2014 ...

cheng4 0.36c - last version by Martin Sedlak, CCC, January 30, 2014
Tragic that Martin Sedlak has discontinued Cheng by User923005, OpenChess Forum, January 31, 2014
Cheng: A great lost to the community by Frank Quisinsky, CCC, January 15, 2015
cheng4 0.38 release by Martin Sedlak, CCC, January 18, 2015
Lazy SMP in Cheng by Martin Sedlak, CCC, February 02, 2015 » Lazy SMP
Lazy SMP scaling Cheng0.38 by Bertil, FishCooking, February 24, 2015
Empirical results with Lazy SMP, YBWC, DTS by Kai Laskos, CCC, April 16, 2015 » Lazy SMP, YBWC, DTS
Cheng 4.39 release by Martin Sedlak, CCC, July 20, 2015
Cheng 4.39 Android version bugfix by Martin Sedlak, CCC, November 13, 2015

External Links

Chess Engine

GitHub - kmar/cheng4: cheng4 chess engine
Cheng chess engine hosted by Emil Vlasák
Index of /chess/engines/Jim Ablett/CHENG by Jim Ablett hosted by Kirill Kryukov
Cheng4 0.36a 64-bit in CCRL 40/40

Misc

Cheng (Disambiguation) from Wikipedia

References

^ UCI and XBoard Engines for Android by Aart Bik
^ GitHub - kmar/cheng4: cheng4 chess engine
^ Description based on Cheng4 036c
^ Lazy SMP in Cheng by Martin Sedlak, CCC, February 02, 2015
^ cheng4 0.38 release by Martin Sedlak, CCC, January 18, 2015

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Cheng	Jul 30, 2017
Engine releases	Apr 23, 2018
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Gavon	Apr 30, 2018
Lazy SMP	Jan 4, 2018
Martin Sedlak	Dec 25, 2017
Parallel Search	Dec 30, 2017
Shared Hash Table	Sep 11, 2017
TCEC Season 6	Dec 2, 2014
TCEC Season 7	Jan 23, 2015
TCEC Season 8	Nov 30, 2015

Up one level

Chiron

GerdIsenberg — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 22:05:58 GMT

Home * Engines * Chiron

		Chiron, a strong commercial chess engine by Ubaldo Andrea Farina, supporting both the Chess Engine Communication Protocol and UCI, the Polyglot and CTG ^[1] opening book formats, various endgame tablebase and bitbase formats, and able to play Chess960. The development started in 2002 and it has been under continuous development, underwent a major rewrite in 2009 using bitboards, and has been commercially released in October 2011 ^[2] . Chiron applies parallel search on multiprocessor systems, and has implemented pawn blockage detection function ^[3] ^[4], improved to detect blockages not only in pawn endgame but also when there are a few pieces on the board ^[5] ^[6] ^[7].
Eugène Delacroix: Chiron instructing Achilles ^[8]

Further Versions

Chiron 2

Chiron 2, released in December 2013 is about 40 Elo points stronger than Chiron 1.5 thanks to improvements in both search and evaluation ^[9].

Chiron 3

The next major release in May 2016, Chiron 3, is about 60 Elo stronger than 2, due to further search and evaluation enhancements and tuning, and also supports Syzygy Bases and is able to probe of 6-men Scorpio Bitbases ^[10].

Chiron 4

On January 10, 2017, Chiron 4 was released, again a considerable improvement of about 70 Elo over its predecessor, Chiron 4 improved in a further tuned evaluation, specially considering passed pawns and mobility, and various search enhacements, such as better forward pruning, Lazy SMP and NUMA awareness ^[11].

Tournament Play

Chiron played various Italian Computer Chess Championships, was best Italian entry at the CCC 2009 and the IOCSC 2010 ^[12] respectively, and further won the IGWT 2013, IGWT 2014 and IGWT III online, and the IGT 2016 and IGT 2017 over the board. Chiron played the WCCC 2006 in Turin, the IPCCC 2006, and four CCT Tournaments, winning the CCT14 in 2012 ^[13]

Photos & Games

WCCC 2006

Ubaldo, Nietta, Stefano and Eros, WCCC 2006, Chiron vs. Diep ^[14]

[Event "WCCC 2006"]
[Site "Turin, Italy"]
[Date "2006.06.01"]
[Round "11"]
[White "Chiron"]
[Black "Diep"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
 
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2 e5 7.Nb3 Be7 8.O-O O-O
9.a4 Nc6 10.a5 Be6 11.Be3 Nb412.f4 exf4 13.Rxf4 d5 14.e5 Nd7 15.Nc5 Qc7 16.Rxb4
Bxc5 17.Bxc5 Qxc5+ 18.Qd4 Qxd4+ 19.Rxd4 Rac8 20.Bf3 Nxe5 21.Bxd5 Bxd5 22.Rxd5 f6
23.Rad1 Nc4 24.Rd7 Nxb2 25.Rb1 Rxc3 26.Rxb2 Rb8 27.Rb4 h5 28.Re4 Rc5 29.Ree7 Rg5
30.h4 Rg4 31.Rxb7 Rxb7 32.Rxb7 Ra4 33.Kf2 Rxa5 34.Rc7 Ra2 35.Kf3 Ra3+ 36.Ke4 Rg3
37.c4 Rxg2 38.c5 Rc2 39.Kf5 Re2 40.Kg6 Rg2+ 41.Kf5 Rc2 42.Kg6 Kf8 43.Kxh5 Kg8
44.Kg6 Rg2+ 45.Kf5 Kh7 46.Ke6 Re2+ 47.Kd6 Rd2+ 48.Ke7 Re2+ 49.Kd8 Rc2 50.c6 a5
51.Rc8 Rd2+ 52.Kc7 Rc2 53.Ra8 g5 54.hxg5 fxg5 55.Kb7 Kg6 56.Rxa5 Kh5 57.c7 1/2-1/2

CCT14

CCT14, round 5, Chiron - Komodo ^[15] ^[16]

[Event "CCT14"]
[Site "Internet Chess Club"]
[Date "2012.02.26"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Chiron"]
[Black "Komodo"]
[Result "1-0"]
 
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8. c3 O-O 9.h3 Na5
10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7 12.d5 Bd7 13.Qe2 Rfe8 14.b3 g6 15.Bh6 Nh5 16.Qe3 Bf8 17.Nbd2 Nb7
18.g4 Nf4 19.Bxf4 exf4 20.Qxf4 Bg7 21.Rad1 Nd8 22.Qg3 f6 23.e5 dxe5 24.Ne4 Nf7 25.d6
Qc8 26.c4 Ra7 27.Rd5 Be6 28.Rxc5 Qb8 29.Nfd2 Nxd6 30.Rc6 Nf7 31.c5 Qd8 32.Nd6 Nxd6
33.Rxd6 Rd7 34.Rxd7 Qxd7 35.Ne4 Qd4 36.Rd1 Qb4 37.c6 Qf8 38.b4 Rc8 39.Nc5 Bc4 40.Qg2
Qe8 41.Be4 f5 42.gxf5 gxf5 43.Bxf5 Rxc6 44.Rd7 Qg6 45.Bxg6 Rxg6 46.Qxg6 hxg6 47.a3 Bh6
48.Rd6 Kf7 49.Rxa6 Bc1 50.Kg2 Bb2 51.Kf3 Bd5+ 52.Kg4 Bc4 53.Ra7+ Ke8 54.Kg5 Bd4 55.Kxg6
Bxf2 56.Kf6 Bh4+ 57.Kxe5 Bg3+ 58.Kf5 Bf2 59.Rb7 Bf1 60.Ne4 Be1 61.Rh7 Bd3 1-0

Acknowledgment

by Ubaldo Andrea Farina, 2011 ^[17] ^[18]

In these nine years Chiron has improved a lot thanks also to ideas found in strong open source engines, in computer chess forums and websites, etc. In particular I would like to thank Fabien Letouzey, Tord Romstad, Robert Hyatt, the Ippolit guys, Ed Schröder, Bruce Moreland, Ernst Heinz and many others. Thanks to Miguel Ballicora, Eugene Nalimov and Daniel Shawul for the probing code of their tablebases/bitbases, to Pradu Kannan, Gerd Isenberg and Lasse Hansen for the magic bitboards, to Sesse and Stephan Vermeire for the CTG specifications, to Ilari Pihlajisto for cutechess-cli that I've been using since 2009 for testing Chiron with very fast games. Thanks to all the people that tested Chiron in the past, among them Ciro Vignotto, Leo Dijksman, Olivier Deville, Günther Simon, Lars Hallerström, the testers of CEGT and CCRL and many others. Thanks to Wilhelm Hudetz for the Chiron logo. Finally, thanks to Salvo Spitaleri who has been the opening book author of Chiron since 2006.

Publications

Arno Nickel (2012). Die schöne neue Welt der Schachengines. SCHACH 2,3,5,6 2012, pdf (German) ^[19]

Forum Posts

Chiron 1.0 available for preorder by Ubaldo Andrea Farina, CCC, September 26, 2011
Code of Chiron for Detection of Pawn Blockages by Ubaldo Andrea Farina, CCC, October 13, 2011
Chiron 1.1 bug? by Richard Vida, CCC, December 24, 2011
CCT 14: Chiron is the Champion! by Peter Skinner, CCC, February 26, 2012
Chiron 1.5 by Cliff Sears, CCC, November 01, 2012
Re: Chiron chess a finished project? by Ubaldo Andrea Farina, CCC, August 10, 2013
Chiron 2 Released by mike hurd, CCC, December 13, 2013
Chiron 3 released by Christian Goralski, CCC, May 01, 2016

External Links

Chess Engine

Chiron's ICGA Tournaments
.:: Chiron Chess Engine ::.:
Chiron 1.5 released, November 01, 2012
Chiron 2 released, December 13, 2012
Chiron 3 released, May 01, 2016
Chiron 4 released, January 10, 2017

Misc

References

^ CTG specification by Sesse, Rybka Forum, September 30, 2007
^ Chiron 1.0 available for preorder by Ubaldo Andrea Farina, CCC, September 26, 2011
^ Omid David, Ariel Felner, Nathan S. Netanyahu (2004). Blockage Detection in Pawn Endgames. ICGA Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3
^ Omid David, Ariel Felner, Nathan S. Netanyahu (2004). Blockage Detection in Pawn Endings. CG 2004
^ .:: Chiron Chess Engine ::.: | Pawn Blockages
^ Code of Chiron for Detection of Pawn Blockages by Ubaldo Andrea Farina, CCC, October 13, 2011
^ Chiron 1.1 bug? by Richard Vida, CCC, December 24, 2011
^ Chiron, half man, half horse: instructing Achilles, The Education of Achilles, by Eugène Delacroix, 2nd third of 19th century, Palais Bourbon, Liminal being from Wikipedia
^ .:: Chiron Chess Engine ::.: Chiron 2 released
^ .:: Chiron Chess Engine ::.: Chiron 3 released
^ Chiron 4 released, January 10, 2017
^ I have seen parts of the source by Gian-Carlo Pascutto, CCC, October 11, 2011
^ CCT 14: Chiron is the Champion! by Peter Skinner, CCC, February 26, 2012
^ Turin 2006 - Chess - Round 11 - Game 5 (ICGA Tournaments)
^ CCT 14 Games | Computer Chess Tournaments
^ Re: CCT 14: Chiron is the Champion! by Larry Kaufman, CCC, February 26, 2012
^ .:: Chiron Chess Engine ::.: | About
^ Thank you! (Gerd Isenberg, April 22, 2012) My own contribution to Magic Bitboards was the line-wise forerunner, dubbed Kindergarten Bitboards, also tried with "random" factors, while Lasse Hansen had the idea to hash both lines simultaneously. I was initially skeptical whether the huge tables pay off.
^ Part 1 covers Houdini, Rybka, Komodo, Stockfish, Critter, Naum, Chiron and Spike

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Achilles	Dec 31, 2015
Amyan	Dec 10, 2013
Andscacs	Jan 16, 2018
Arno Nickel	Sep 25, 2015
Atak	Aug 9, 2016
Blockage Detection	Oct 19, 2017
Booot	Jan 22, 2018
CCC 2005	Feb 27, 2014
CCC 2008	Jan 6, 2014
CCC 2009	Apr 29, 2015
CCT Tournaments	Jan 29, 2017
CCT13	Dec 6, 2013
CCT14	Aug 23, 2012
CCT16	May 13, 2014
CCT6	May 29, 2014
CCT9	Aug 25, 2013
Centaur	Mar 24, 2017
Cheiron	Jan 7, 2016
Chiron	Sep 24, 2017
CIPS 2003	Jan 6, 2014
CIPS 2004	Jan 6, 2014
CIPS 2006	Jan 6, 2014
CIPS 2007	Jan 6, 2014
Critter	Jan 25, 2014
Dorky	Oct 10, 2016
Engine releases	Apr 23, 2018
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Equinox	Dec 12, 2016
Eros Riccio	Oct 5, 2016
Giancarlo Delli Colli	Jun 27, 2017
Hamsters	Apr 11, 2014
Houdini	Apr 14, 2018
IGT 2016	Nov 23, 2016
IGT 2017	Oct 2, 2017
IGWT 2013	Jun 23, 2014
IGWT 2014	Feb 2, 2016
IGWT III	May 15, 2017
IGWT IV	May 17, 2017
Influence Quantity of Pieces	Jul 21, 2017
IOCSC 2010	Jul 13, 2013
IOCSC 2011	Feb 26, 2013
IPCCC 2006	Dec 8, 2012
Italian Computer Chess Championship	Sep 24, 2017
Kiwi	Sep 2, 2016
Komodo	Mar 6, 2018
Naum	Nov 23, 2017
Rybka	Mar 27, 2017
Salvo Spitaleri	Mar 11, 2013
Spike	Jan 7, 2016
Stockfish	Apr 7, 2018
TCEC Season 10	Jan 3, 2018
TCEC Season 11	Apr 18, 2018
TCEC Season 6	Dec 2, 2014
TCEC Season 7	Jan 23, 2015
TCEC Season 8	Nov 30, 2015
TCEC Season 9	Nov 6, 2017
The Baron	Jan 8, 2018
Ubaldo Andrea Farina	Jan 7, 2016
WCCC 2006	Jan 28, 2018
WCCC 2017	Dec 31, 2017
WCRCC 2011	Oct 21, 2014
WCRCC 2015	Jul 19, 2015
WCRCC 2016	Jun 27, 2017
WCRCC 2017	Jun 27, 2017
WCSC 2017	Jul 4, 2017

Up one Level

Cinnamon

GerdIsenberg — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 10:52:39 GMT

Home * Engines * Cinnamon

		Cinnamon, an UCI compliant open source chess engine by Giuseppe Cannella, written in C++11, published under GPL Version 3. Cinnamon was first released in February 2013 ^[1] under that name, while former versions of the engine were called Butterfly. It targets multiple hardware platforms and operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Android, also available for the Raspberry Pi, and further provides a JavaScript library to play with chessboardjs or any js GUI. Cinnamon is bundled with the Tarrasch GUI for Windows ^[2].
Cinnamon ^[3]

Features

^[4]

Forum Posts

OSX compiler wanted by Giuseppe Cannella, Winboard Forum, July 06, 2013
Cinnamon 1.1 for Mac OS X 32-bit by Norbert Raimund Leisner, CCC, July 07, 2013

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

References

^ Cinnamon « G 6
^ cinnamon chess engine - open source chess engine
^ Cinnamon: sticks (ceylon cinnamon from Sri Lanka), powder, and flowers. Created from 31 images stacked with CombineZP, by Simon A. Eugster, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons, Cinnamomum from Wikipedia
^ cinnamon/README.md at master · gekomad/cinnamon · GitHub

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Cinnamon	Sep 23, 2017
DGT Pi	Oct 22, 2017
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Gavon	Apr 30, 2018
Giuseppe Cannella	Sep 26, 2017

Up one Level

Cmcchess

GerdIsenberg — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 13:45:07 GMT

Home * Engines * Cmcchess

Cmcchess,
an UCI compatible chess engine written by Chao Ma, first released in 2010. Cmcchess applies a parallel SMP search, using MTD(f) as basic search algorithm ^[1].

Forum Posts

A Chinese UCI chess engine ! by Ruxy Sylwyka, CCC, March 14, 2012

External Links

References

^ Welcome to Cmcchess' website

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Chao Ma	Feb 6, 2017
Cmcchess	Jun 19, 2015
Engines	Mar 10, 2018

Up one Level

Counter

GerdIsenberg — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 22:56:29 GMT

Home * Engines * Counter

		Counter, (Счетчик) an UCI compliant chess engine by Vadim Chizhov, initially written in C# to run under Windows .Net, available since early 2007 ^[1]. Counter 0.8 played a strong CCCCISC 2008 over the board. Counter was then ported to the Go programming language and released in May 2017 as open source at GitHub, dubbed CounterGo ^[2].
Mechanical Counters ^[3]

Descriptions

Counter C#

According to the sdchess description, Counter is based on bitboards using Pradu Kannan's magic bitboard implementation to generate moves ^[4], while the Counter 1.2 readme claims a hybrid board representation consisting of a 10x12 board and bitboards for pawns ^[5]. Counter applies PVS alpha-beta with transposition table, null move-, delta-, futility- and extended futility pruning, SEE, LMR, check-, mate threat-, passed pawn- and capture extensions, and IID. The evaluation has improved over the time, specially the assessment of a safe king and passed pawns, since version 0.8, lazy evaluation was removed.

CounterGo

CounterGo comes as didactic open source engine written in the Go programming language along with an intuitive source structure. As modern bitboard engine using a dense board definition ^[6], it applies magic bitboards to determine sliding piece attacks. Inside its iterative deepening loop, CounterGo performs a parallel search conform to the young brothers wait concept ^[7] using Goroutines ^[8], with no (longer) PVS but pure alpha-beta with transposition table and null move pruning. CounterGo extends recaptures of pieces, checks and pawns to the 7th rank only in case of positive SEE, while move ordering is enhanced by the killer and history heuristics along with IID and SEE ^[9].

Selected Games

CCCCISC 2008, round 5, Counter - SmarThink ^[10]

[Event "CIS 2008"]
[Site "Moscow SDCHESS RGSU"]
[Date "2008.03.02"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Counter 0.8"]
[Black "SmarThink 1.1 r1119"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
 
1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 c5 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5 Nc6 7.e3 c4 8.Bxf6 gxf6 
9.Rc1 Be6 10.Be2 Qa5 11.O-O O-O-O 12.Re1 Kb8 13.Qc2 f5 14.Qd2 Rg8 15.Bd1 Rc8 
16.Ba4 Nb4 17.Bc2 Bd6 18.g3 Nxc2 19.Rxc2 f6 20.Nh4 Rcd8 21.Ng2 Bb4 22.Nf4 Bf7 
23.a3 Be7 24.f3 h5 25.Kf2 h4 26.Rg1 hxg3+ 27.hxg3 Rg5 28.Rh1 Rg7 29.Rh3 Qc7 
30.Rc1 Rg5 31.Nb5 Qd7 32.Qa5 a6 33.Nc3 Bg8 34.Rh8 Rc8 35.Rch1 Bd8 36.Qa4 Qd6 
37.R1h5 Bc7 38.Qc2 Qc6 39.R5h6 Qd6 40.Nh5 Rxh5 41.Rxh5 Qxg3+ 42.Kf1 f4 43.Rh3 
Qg7 44.exf4 b5 45.f5 Qg5 46.R3h4 Bf7 47.R8h7 Bg8 48.Rg4 Qe3 49.Rh3 Re8 50.Rg7 
a5 51.Qf2 Qd3+ 52.Kg2 b4 53.axb4 axb4 54.Rh8 bxc3 55.Rgxg8 Rxg8+ 56.Rxg8+ Kb7 
57.bxc3 Qxc3 58.Rg6 Qc1 59.Qe2 Qf4 60.Rg4 Qxf5 61.Qb2+ Kc6 62.Qa2 Kb5 63.Qb2+ 
Kc6 64.Qa2 Kb5 65.Qb2+ Kc6 1/2-1/2

Forum Posts

2007 ...

Counter 0.2 : 2098 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, May 15, 2007
Counter 0.3 : 2201 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, July 10, 2007
Counter 0.4 : 2182 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, August 22, 2007
Counter 0.5 : 2280 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, September 09, 2007
Counter 0.6 : 2292 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, September 20, 2007
Counter 0.7 : 2344 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, November 17, 2007
Counter 0.8 : 2291 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, January 04, 2008
Counter 1.0 : 2383 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, August 17, 2008
Counter 1.1 : 2327 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, January 19, 2009

2010 ...

Counter 1.2 Updated by Swaminathan, CCC, February 12, 2010
Counter 1.2 : 2336 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, February 14, 2010
Counter 1.2 - CCRL 40/4 Results by Adam Hair, CCC, August 08, 2010
New version of Counter (in Go language) by Günther Simon, CCC, May 27, 2017
Counter 2.1.0 released by Tony Mokonen, CCC, November 13, 2017

External Links

Chess Engine

Misc

counter - Wiktionary
Counter from Wikipedia
Counter (disambiguation) from Wikipedia
Counterattack from Wikipedia
Attack & Counterattack in Chess compiled by SamAtoms1980, chessgames.com
countermove - Wiktionary » Countermove Heuristic
Counterpoint from Wikipedia
Pat Metheny - Electric Counterpoint III (Steve Reich), YouTube Video

References

^ Counter 1.2 Updated by Swaminathan, CCC, February 12, 2010
^ New version of Counter (in Go language) by Günther Simon, CCC, May 27, 2017
^ Three mechanical counters by Arnold Reinhold, April 20, 2009, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons, Counter from Wikipedia
^ Counter by Вадим Чижов (Vadim Chizhov), Russia! from sdchess.ru
^ Counter_12 - readme.txt
^ CounterGo/types.go at master · ChizhovVadim/CounterGo · GitHub
^ CounterGo/searchutils.go at master · ChizhovVadim/CounterGo · GitHub
^ Effective Go - The Go Programming Language - Concurrency
^ CounterGo/searchservice.go at master · ChizhovVadim/CounterGo · GitHub
^ The The First championship of the CIS (Первый официальный чемпионат СНГ) from sdchess.ru

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Bison	Sep 29, 2016
CCCCISC 2008	Jan 19, 2014
Counter	Nov 13, 2017
Engine releases	Apr 23, 2018
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Go (Programming Language)	Nov 2, 2017
Vadim Chizhov	Jan 19, 2014

Up one Level

Crafty

GerdIsenberg — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 09:05:11 GMT

Home * Engines * Crafty

		Crafty, ^[1] a portable open source engine supporting the Chess Engine Communication Protocol written by Robert Hyatt in ANSI C starting in the early 90s, loosely derived from Cray Blitz, winner of the 1983 and 1986 World Computer Chess Championships ^[2]. Crafty pioneered in using Rotated bitboards , parallel search and probing Nalimov Tablebases. It performs a principal variation search, null move pruning, LMR as well as a SEE swap algorithm for move ordering and to prune "bad" captures in quiescence search. In 2006/2007, Crafty switched from rotated to Magic bitboards ^[3], according to Robert Hyatt because it was not faster but simpler ^[4]. Crafty 25.1, released in October 2016, not only includes an increase in playing strength ^[5] but support for Syzygy bases by Ronald de Man aided by the coding contributions of Basil Falcinelli ^[6]. Crafty 25.3 features playing strength adjustment between 800 and 2600 Elo ^[7].
Crafty Owl ^[8]

Leading or Trailing Zeros

Team Members

as mentioned at WCRCC 2010 ^[9] and CCT15, 2013 ^[10]

Peter Berger, Crafty's book author at WCCC 2004, WCCC 2005 and WCCC 2006
Michael Byrne
Robert Hyatt
Tracy Riegle
Peter Skinner

Tournaments

Crafty participated at four World Microcomputer Chess Championships, the WMCCC 1996, WMCCC 1997, WMCCC 2000, and WMCCC 2001, three World Computer Chess Championships, the WCCC 2004, WCCC 2005 and WCCC 2006, the ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships, the ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championships, CCT and various other tournaments. Crafty won the CCT1 in 2000, CCT5 in 2003 and CCT6 in 2004. At the Fifth Annual ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships in 2010 Crafty was runner-up behind Thinker ^[11] .

Descriptions

1997

from the ICGA page ^[12] :

Crafty is a "bitmapper" using 64 bit words to represent the chess board, along the lines of the famous Chess 4.x program from Northwestern University. It uses a traditional alpha/beta search with the PVS (null-window) enhancement, along with null-moves (R=2) and lots of search extensions including "fractional ply extensions" to drive the search deeper along interesting lines. It has a very simple quiescence search that only considers capture moves and is fairly selective about which captures are included. It does a full endpoint evaluation, with no root pre-processing nor incrementally updated scoring terms. It is currently about 37,000 lines of ANSI C with about 3,000 lines of that being evaluation.

Since Crafty uses bitmaps, much of the evaluation is significantly shorter than it would be in a more traditional (array-based) board representation, so that this 3,000 lines of code is somewhat misleading (for example, to ask "can this pawn run and promote before the opposing king can get there?" only takes one line of code in Crafty. It is still very fast, searching around 100,000 moves per second. At 60 seconds per move, it solves 297/300 of the Win At Chess tactical positions. It has a large opening database composed from 250,000 GM games, and uses 3-4-5 piece endgame databases during the search (not just at the root of the tree.) It has played over 100,000 games during the past two years, playing on various chess servers around the world, and has maintained ratings on these servers that are always near the very top.

2008

from a CCC post ^[13] :

Crafty's basic search is pretty simple. Just PVS + null-move + LMR + check extension (all others have been removed after testing showed they hurt performance rather than helped), + simple q-search checks (I am playing with this as I write this however and it might change) + simple q-search. I've used killers and hashing since middle 70's so those are not new. Bitboards were around in the middle 70's so that's not new. I don't think there is anything remarkable in my evaluation, certainly nothing we were not doing 15 years ago or longer, other than tuning adjustments.

As far as tuning goes on LMR and null-move, I have not gone very far afield there. I use R=3 everywhere. LMR is a 1-ply reduction although I have plans to try a variable reduction so that for moves that look really ugly I reduce them even further (white playing Na1 for example, with king on the other side of the board, no passed pawns, etc...)

I have even run without the check extension, the only one that is left. Many think the purpose of this extension is to find deep mates. That's wrong. The purpose is to try to expose horizon-effect moves and avoid them when possible. I also want to test a restricted check extension, where it is only applied in the last N plies where the horizon effect is most notable, where right now I apply them everywhere with no limit, always +1 ply added to depth.

Generation II

Crafty 25.0, Generation II, December 2015 ^[14]

This version contains a major rewrite of the parallel search code, now referred to as Generation II. It has a more lightweight split algorithm, that costs the parent MUCH less effort to split the search. The key is that now the individual "helper" threads do all the work, allocating a split block, copying the data from the parent, etc., rather than the parent doing it all. Gen II based on the DTS "late-join" idea so that a thread will try to join existing split points before it goes to the idle wait loop waiting for some other thread to split with it. In fact, this is now the basis for the new split method where the parent simply creates a split point by allocating a split block for itself, and then continuing the search, after the parent split block is marked as "joinable". Now any idle threads just "jump in" without the parent doing anything else, which means that currently idle threads will "join" this split block if they are in the "wait-for-work" spin loop, and threads that become idle also join in exactly the same way. This is MUCH more efficient, and also significantly reduces the number of split blocks needed during the search. We also now pre-split the search when we are reasonably close to the root of the tree, which is called a "gratuitous split. This leaves joinable split points laying around so that whenever a thread becomes idle, it can join in at these pre-existing split points immediately. We now use a much more conservative approach when dealing with fail highs at the root. Since LMR and such have introduced greater levels of search instability, we no longer trust a fail-high at the root if it fails low on the research. We maintain the last score returned for every root move, along with the PV . Either an exact score or the bound score that was returned. At the end of the iteration, we sort the root move list using the backed-up score as the sort key, and we play the move with the best score. This solves a particularly ugly issue where we get a score for the first move, then another move fails high, but then fails low and the re-search produces a score that is actually WORSE than the original best move. We still see that, but we always play the best move now. One other efficiency trick is that when the above happens, the search would tend to be less efficient since the best score for that fail-high/fail-low move is actually worse than the best move/score found so far. If this happens, the score is restored to the original best move score (in Search()) so that we continue searching with a good lower bound , not having to deal with moves that would fail high with this worse value, but not with the original best move's value.
We also added a new method to automatically tune the new SMP parameters. The command is autotune and "help autotune" will explain how to run it.
In addition , we did a complete re-factor of pawn evaluation code. There were too many overlapping terms that made tuning difficult. Now a pawn is classified as one specific class, there is no overlap between classes, which simplifies the code significantly. The code is now easier to understand and modify. In addition, the passed pawn evaluation was rewritten and consolidates all the passed pawn evaluation in one place. The evaluation used to add a bonus for rooks behind passed pawns in rook scoring, blockading somewhere else, etc. All of this was moved to the passed pawn code to make it easier to understand and modify.
Added a limited version of late move pruning (LMP) for the last two plies. Once a set number of moves have been searched with no fail high, non-interesting moves are simply skipped in a way similar to futility pruning.
We had a minor change to history counters that now rely on a "saturating counter" idea. I wanted to avoid the aging idea, and it seemed to not be so clear that preferring history moves by the depth at which they were good was the way to go. I returned to a history counter idea I tested around 2005 but discarded, namely using a saturating counter. The idea is that a center value (at present 1024) represents a zero score. Decrementing it makes it worse, incrementing it makes it better. But to make it saturate at either end, I only reduce the counter by a fraction of its distance from the saturation point so that once it gets to either extreme value, it will not be modified further avoiding wrap-around. This basic idea was originally reported by Mark Winands in 2005. It seems to provide better results (slightly) on very deep searches. One impetus for this was an intent to fold this into a move so that I could sort the moves rather than doing the selection approach I currently use. However, this had a bad effect on testing, since history information is dynamic and is constantly changing, between two moves at the same ply in fact. The sort fixed the history counters to the value at the start of that ply. This was discarded after testing, but the history counter based on the saturating counter idea seemed to be OK and was left in even though it produced minimal Elo gain during testing.
We change to the way moves are counted, to add a little more consistency to LMR. Now Next*() returns an order number that starts with 1 and monotonically increases, this order number is used for LMR and such decisions that vary things based on how far down the move list something occurs. Root move counting was particularly problematic with parallel searching, now things are at least "more consistent". The only negative impact is that now the move counter gets incremented even for illegal moves, but testing showed this was a no-change change with one thread, and the consistency with multiple threads made it useful.
Added the "counter-move" heuristic for move ordering (Jos Uiterwijk, IJICCA) which simply remembers a fail high move and the move at the previous ply. If the hash, captures or killer moves don't result in a fail high, this move is tried next. No significant cost, seems to reduce tree size noticeably. Added a follow-up idea based on the same idea, except we pair a move that fails high with the move two plies back, introducing a sort of "connection" between them. This is a sort of "plan" idea where the first move of the pair enables the second move to fail high. The benefit is that this introduces yet another pair of good moves that get ordered before history moves, and is therefore not subject to reduction. I have been unable to come up with a reference for this idea, but I believe I first saw it somewhere around the time Fruit showed up, I am thinking perhaps in the JICCA/JICGA. Any reference would be appreciated.
A minor change to the way the PV and fail-hi/fail-low moves are displayed when pondering .
Crafty now adds the ponder move to the front of the PV enclosed in parentheses so that it is always visible in console mode. The depths are reaching such extreme numbers the ponder move scrolls off the top of the screen when running in console mode or when "tail -f" is used to watch the log file while a game is in progress. This is a bit trickier than you might think since Crafty displays the game move numbers in the PV.
The penalty for pawns on same color as bishop now only applies when there is one bishop.

Leading or Trailing Zeros

Crafty had always mapped square-index 0 to square 'a1', 7 to 'h1', and 63 to 'h8' respectively, but recently (crafty-20.6) reversed the bit-index versus square-index mapping from leading to trailing zero count based little-endian rank-file (LERF), using bitscan forward (LSB) to retrieve squares in a1-h8 order, as most often used in CPW bitboard samples.

LSB

Trailing zero count aka bitscan forward for non empty sets as used in bitboard serialization for move generation and evaluation purposes, is implemented with x86-64 bsf instruction via intrinsic or inline assembly if available (there are also 32-bit x86 bsf versions), and a conditional 16-bit byte lookup approach otherwise - Windows 64, Linux 64 and lookup versions with preprocessor instructions for conditional compiles omitted ^[15]:

int LSB(BITBOARD arg1) {
  unsigned long index;
  if (_BitScanForward64(&index, arg1))
    return index;
  else
    return 64;
}
 
int static __inline__ LSB(long word)
{
  long dummy, dummy2;
 
asm("          bsfq    %1, %0     " "\n\t"
    "          jnz     1f         " "\n\t"
    "          movq    $64, %0    " "\n\t"
    "1:                           " "\n\t"
:   "=&r"(dummy), "=&r" (dummy2)
:   "1"((long) (word))
:   "cc");
  return (dummy);
}
 
unsigned char lsb[65536];
 
int LSB(BITBOARD arg1) {
  if ( arg1        & 65535) return (lsb[ arg1        & 65535]);
  if ((arg1 >> 16) & 65535) return (lsb[(arg1 >> 16) & 65535] + 16);
  if ((arg1 >> 32) & 65535) return (lsb[(arg1 >> 32) & 65535] + 32);
  return (lsb[arg1 >> 48] + 48);
}

Last One

Earlier Crafty versions prior to 20.6 had a leading zero count compliant, big-endian rank-file mapping. Left-bottom square (from White's point of view) 'a1' with square-index 0 was mapped to the leftmost, arithmetical most significant bit of an unsigned 64-bit integer with bit-index 63, while square 'h8' with square-index 63, was mapped to the rightmost, arithmetical least significant bit with bit-index 0. Bitscan forward and found index reversal was used in LastOne, to retrieve squares in h8-a1 order ^[16]:

int LastOne(BITBOARD arg1)
{
  unsigned long index;
  if (_BitScanForward64(&index, arg1))
    return 63 - index;
  else
    return 64;
}

This one was found in 15.17 with MAC OS support ^[17]

int LastOne(register BITBOARD a)
{
  register unsigned long i;
  if (i = a & 0xffffffff)
    return(__cntlzw(i ^ (i - 1)) + 32);
  if (i = a >> 32)
    return(__cntlzw(i ^ (i - 1)));
  return(64);
}

Selected Games

WCCC 2004

WCCC 2004, round 9, Falcon - Crafty ^[18]

[Event "WCCC 2004"]
[Site "Ramat Gan, Israel"]
[Date "2004.07.11"]
[Round "9"]
[White "Falcon"]
[Black "Crafty"]
[Result "0-1"]
 
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.Nc3 Bd6 5.O-O O-O 6.d3 h6 7.Be3 a6 8.Ba4 b5 
9.Bb3 Na5 10.d4 exd4 11.Bxd4 Be7 12.e5 Ne8 13.Nd5 Nxb3 14.axb3 c5 15.Be3 
Bb7 16.b4 Bxd5 17.Qxd5 Nc7 18.Qb7 Rb8 19.Qe4 cxb4 20.Rfd1 Qc8 21.Nd4 Re8 
22.Nf5 Bf8 23.Qg4 Kh7 24.Bxh6 gxh6 25.Qh5 Kg8 26.Rd3 Re6 27.Rg3+ Rg6 28.Rxg6+ 
fxg6 29.Qxg6+ Kh8 30.Nxh6 Bxh6 31.Qxh6+ Kg8 32.Qg6+ Kf8 33.Rd1 Ne6 34.Rd3 
Ke7 35.Qf6+ Ke8 36.Rg3 Qc5 37.Rg8+ Nf8 38.Rg7 Rb6 39.Qf7+ Kd8  40.Rg8 Kc7 
41.Qxf8 Qxf8 42.Rxf8 a5 43.Ra8 a4 44.g3 Rb8 45.Ra7+ Rb7 46.Ra5 Kb6 47.Ra8 
Ra7 48.Rb8+ Kc6 49.Rc8+ Kd5 50.e6 dxe6 51.Rd8+ Kc5 52.Rc8+ Kb6 53.Re8 a3 
54.Rxe6+ Kc5 55.bxa3 0-1

WCCC 2006

WCCC 2006, round 8, Diep - Crafty ^[19]

[Event "WCCC 2006"]
[Site "Turin, Italy"]
[Date "2006.05.30"]
[Round "8"]
[White "Diep"]
[Black "Crafty"]
[Result "0-1"]
 
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Be7 6.Bf4 O-O 7.Qd2 c6 8.O-O-O b5 
9.f3 b4 10.Nce2 c5 11.Nb3 Nc6 12.Bxd6 c4 13.Nc5 Qa5 14.Bxe7 Nxe7 15.Qd6 Nf5 
16.exf5 Qxa2 17.g4 a5 18.Rd4 Re8 19.Kd1 Qxb2 20.Nc1 b3 21.cxb3 cxb3 22.Bd3 a4 
23.Re1 Rxe1+ 24.Kxe1 Qxc1+ 25.Ke2 Bb7 26.Qd8+ Ne8 27.Qe7 Bc6 28.Bc4 Nf6 29.Bxf7+ 
Kh8 30.Nd3 b2 31.Rd8+ Rxd8 32.Qxd8+ Be8 33.Bxe8 Qc2+ 34.Ke3 Nd5+ 35.Kd4 Qc3+ 
36.Ke4 Qc7 37.Qxc7 Nxc7 38.Nxb2 a3 39.Bf7 axb2 40.Ba2 Nb5 41.Kd3 Na3 42.g5 b1=B+ 
43.Bxb1 Nxb1 44.h4 Kg8 45.h5 Kf8 46.f4 Ke7 47.Kd4 Nd2 48.Ke3 Nc4+ 49.Kd4 Nd6 
50.Ke5 Nf7+ 51.Kd5 h6 52.f6+ gxf6 53.g6 Nd8 54.f5 Nb7 55.Kc6 Na5+ 0-1

Copyright

Many programmers did not grasp Crafty's Copyright statement, but apparently took remarks by Robert Hyatt like in his reply to Ren Wu, January 26, 1999, concerning code reuse and not reinventing the wheel as alibi for their chess programming ^[20] :

This is a basic tenet of software engineering called 'code reuse'. Why should I pay you to write something from scratch and take a year, if you can take something that exists and modify it to do the same thing in a month? And then I don't have as much trouble debugging and testing, since it is mostly already done...

that's not a bad side to this... Of course occasionally starting over is a good thing. But not starting from 'scratch'. IE if you don't know what has already been tried, you will re-invent the same bad wheels over and over and probably follow the same footsteps many before you did... software engineering wants to avoid that 'reinvention' problem...

Robert Hyatt further on the copyright problem ^[21] :

My primary requirement is that if something is done to crafty to make it 'better', then that 'something' must be as public as the original code was. Because many have contributed bits and pieces... Eugene, George, Steffen, Mark, SJE, and many others that are to numerous to mention. Seems unfair that they modify what I did, then they make their stuff public, and then someone else takes _all_ of this and purports it to be 'original'.

I suppose it has to do with 'national morals' or whatever, ie the software piracy problem in China, to name but one.

Crafty Clones

1. Bionic Impakt
2. Brause
3. Chinito
4. Fafis
5. Gunda-1
6. Kaissa (BY)
7. LaGrande
8. LaPetite
9. Patriot
10. Voyager

Publications

Robert Hyatt, Monroe Newborn (1997). CRAFTY Goes Deep. ICCA Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2
Ernst A. Heinz (2001). Modeling the “Go Deep” Behaviour of CRAFTY and DARK THOUGHT. Advances in Computer Games 9 » Depth, DarkThought
Levente Kocsis, Jos Uiterwijk, Eric Postma, Jaap van den Herik (2002). The Neural MoveMap Heuristic in Chess. CG 2002, pdf » Neural MoveMap Heuristic
Albert Xin Jiang (2003). Implementation of Multi-ProbCut in Chess. CPSC 449 Thesis, pdf
Jan Renze Steenhuisen (2005). New Results in Deep-Search Behaviour. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 4, pdf
Matej Guid, Ivan Bratko (2007). Factors affecting diminishing returns for searching deeper. CGW 2007 » Crafty, Rybka, Shredder, Diminishing Returns
Matej Guid, Ivan Bratko (2007). Factors affecting diminishing returns for searching deeper. ICGA Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2, pdf
Matej Guid, Aritz Pérez, Ivan Bratko (2007). How trustworthy is Crafty's analysis of world chess champions? CGW 2007
Matej Guid, Aritz Pérez, Ivan Bratko (2008). How trustworthy is Crafty's analysis of world chess champions? ICGA Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3, pdf
Robert Hyatt (2014). A Solution to Short PVs Caused by Exact Hash Matches. ICGA Journal, Vol. 37, No. 3 » Transposition Table, Separate TT for the PV
Monroe Newborn, Robert Hyatt (2014). Computer Chess Endgame Play with Pawns: Then and Now. ICGA Journal, Vol. 37, No. 4 » Peasant, Pawn Endgame
Guy Haworth (2015). Chess Endgame News. ICGA Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1 » FinalGen

Forum Posts

1995 ...

Re: Crafty version 8.7 by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, October 05, 1995
Crafty V9.22 by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, April 05, 1996
Crafty V9.26 by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, May 08, 1996
Crafty's opening book - technical details by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, October 04, 1996
Crafty 11.15 by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, January 30, 1997
Repetitions in Crafty by Martin Borriss, rgcc, January 30, 1997 » Repetitions
quiescence search by Andrew Tridgell, rgcc, April 16, 1997 » Quiescence Search, Check
Crafty and fastest Cray: question to Bob by Jouni Uski, CCC, December 01, 1997
Parallel Crafty by Robert Hyatt, CCC, March 19, 1998
Current Crafty strength on SMP? by Charlton Harrison, rgcc, April 29, 1998
crafty copyright problem by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, February 17, 1999 » Voyager
Crafty Modifications MUST be made available to Robert Hyatt by KarinsDad, CCC, February 17, 1999
Crafty implications ... by Chris Whittington, rgcc, March 4, 1999
Do have the Crafty the Assembler written core? by Leonid, CCC, November 01, 1999

2000 ...

Crafty internal iterative deepening by Tijs van Dam, CCC, January 26, 2000 » Internal Iterative Deepening
Crafty 17.13 - re-importing FEN files? by Wieland Belka, CCC, November 02, 2000
Crafty 17.13 - using game archives by engines? by Wieland Belka, CCC, November 02, 2000
razoring in crafty version 16.9, mid 1999 by Vincent Diepeveen, August 21, 2002
Crafty SMP questions by Matthew Hull, CCC, August 05, 2003 » SMP
Crafty 19.08 SE 2004 released ... by Michael Byrne, Winboard Forum, January 01, 2004 » Wb2UCI
Re: Crafty 1910 SE vs Ruffian2 I hate this , but by Peter Skinner, CCC, February 04, 2004 » Ruffian
is this a sign of broken smp by Michael Byrne, CCC, March 09, 2004 » SMP
Question about Crafty and Bishop Pair by Renze Steenhuisen, CCC, July 13, 2004 » Bishop Pair

2005 ...

Re: need help in compiling Crafty by Joshua Haglund, CCC, February 19, 2005
Crafty and assembly code by Alain Zanchetta, CCC, May 08, 2005
Re: BitBoard Tests Magic v Non-Rotated 32 Bits v 64 Bits by Robert Hyatt, CCC, August 25, 2007 » Magic Bitboards
crafty-22.0 by Robert Hyatt, CCC, February 18, 2008
Crafty questions by Pablo Vazquez, CCC, May 16, 2008
Re: Lemming Poll by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 22, 2008 » Tapered Eval, LearningLemming
Crafty - no analysis output near mate? by cyberfish, December 03, 2008

2010 ...

old crafty vs new crafty on new hardware by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 11, 2010
Crafty tests show that Software has advanced more by Don Dailey, CCC, September 12, 2010
Final results - Crafty - hardware vs software by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 13, 2010
hardware doubling number for Crafty by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 15, 2010

2011

On Crafty... by Robert Hyatt, CCC, May 22, 2011
Re: Robert - How did you came up with the name Crafty by Robert Hyatt, CCC, June 16, 2011
Re: Still waiting on Ed by BB+, OpenChess Forum, July 07, 2011 » on 22.1 vs. 23.4. differences
Re: Still waiting on Ed by Robert Hyatt, OpenChess Forum, July 07, 2011 » on 22.1 vs. 23.4. differences
ICGA rule #2 / opening books / Diep-Crafty, Turino 2006 by Peter Berger, CCC, October 22, 2011 » Opening Book, WCCC 2006

2012

Crafty source by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 26, 2012

2013

Crafty 23.6 released by Peter Skinner, CCC, June 20, 2013
interesting SMP bug by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 24, 2013 » Parallel Search
Crafty 23.8 by Robert Hyatt, CCC, November 11, 2013

2014

Crafty 24.0 by Robert Hyatt, CCC, May 26, 2014
Crafty 24.1 by Daniel José Queraltó, CCC, October 01, 2014
Threads test incl. Crafty 24.1 by Andreas Strangmüller, CCC, October 15, 2014 » Thread, Parallel Search

2015 ...

Grafty vs Crafty by Marcel van Kervinck, Rybka Forum, April 21, 2015 » Stockfish
parallel speedup and assorted trivia by Robert Hyatt, CCC, June 05, 2015 » Parallel Search
Crafty UCI version by Marek Soszynski, July 10, 2015 » UCI
An interesting parallel search non-bug by Robert Hyatt, CCC, November 05, 2015 » Parallel Search
Crafty 25.0 Release by Michael B, CCC, December 25, 2015
Crafty 25.0 announcement by Robert Hyatt, CCC, December 28, 2015

2016

crafty eval cache by Alvaro Cardoso, CCC, January 01, 2016 » Evaluation Hash Table
NUMA 101 by Robert Hyatt, CCC, January 07, 2016 » NUMA
Crafty 25.0.1 by Robert Hyatt, CCC, January 15, 2016
Crafty's four hash tables by Louis Zulli, CCC, January 17, 2016 » Hash Table
Crafty c questions by J. Wesley Cleveland, CCC, March 10, 2016 » C
Crafty chess engine by Krzysztof Grzelak, CCC, March 20, 2016
Crafty SMP measurement by Robert Hyatt, CCC, April 04, 2016 » Parallel Search
Around Crafty dev. ... by Frank Quisinsky, CCC, August 31, 2016
Re: Around Crafty dev. ... by Robert Hyatt, CCC, September 01, 2016
Crafty 25.1 Release by Michael B, CCC, October 04, 2016
Crafty v25.2 Release by Michael B, CCC, October 29, 2016

2017

Crafty Play By Elo ( Crafty v25.3) by Michael B, CCC, January 23, 2017 » Playing Strength

External Links

Chess Engine

GitHub - MichaelB7/Crafty
Crafty Chess managed by Tracy Riegle
Index of /downloads/source
Crafty from Wikipedia
Crafty Documentation
Crafty's ICGA Tournaments
The chess games of Crafty (Computer) from chessgames.com
Crafty from WBEC Ridderkerk
How Far We've Come: 20 Years of Personal Computing by Blake Linton Wilfong, November 05, 2000 » ACM 1981, Sargon, Cray Blitz
186.crafty: SPEC CPU2000 Benchmark Description
Crafty Versions at CCRL 40/40

Misc

crafty - Wiktionary
Craft from Wikipedia
American craft from Wikipedia
Arts and Crafts movement from Wikipedia
American Craftsman from Wikipedia
Guitar Craft from Wikipedia
Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists, YouTube Video

References

^ Re: Robert - How did you came up with the name Crafty by Robert Hyatt, CCC, June 16, 2011
^ Crafty from Wikipedia
^ Re: Fastest Magic Move Bitboard Generator ready to use by Robert Hyatt, Winboard Forum, November 09, 2006
^ Re: BitBoard Tests Magic v Non-Rotated 32 Bits v 64 Bits by Robert Hyatt, CCC, August 25, 2007
^ Crafty Chess managed by Tracy Riegle
^ Crafty 25.1 Release by Michael B, CCC, October 04, 2016
^ Crafty Play By Elo ( Crafty v25.3) by Michael B, CCC, January 23, 2017
^ Two Girls Being Crafty: Owl Pin Cushion
^ 2010 Fourth Annual ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championships - Participants
^ CCT 15 Participants | CCT Events
^ The 2010 Fifth Annual ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships - Results
^ Crafty's ICGA Tournaments
^ Re: Hardware vs Software - test result by Robert Hyatt, CCC, December 03, 2008
^ Crafty 25.0 Release by Michael B, CCC, December 25, 2015
^ Index of /downloads/source crafty-23.5.zip, inline64.h, boolean.c
^ Index of /downloads/source, crafty-20.5.zip, boolean.c
^ Index of /downloads/source, crafty-15.17.zip, boolean.c
^ Ramat-Gan 2004 - Chess - Round 9 - Game 3 (ICGA Tournaments)
^ Turin 2006 - Chess - Round 8 - Game 5 (ICGA Tournaments)
^ Re: Bionic v Crafty - a possible solution by Robert Hyatt, CCC, January 26, 1999
^ Re: crafty copyright problem by Robert Hyatt, rgcc, February 17, 1999

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
ACCA 2006	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2007	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2008	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2009	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2010	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2011	Jul 14, 2014
ACCA 2012	Jul 14, 2014
Alain Zanchetta	Feb 20, 2018
Albert Xin Jiang	Jun 22, 2015
Albrecht Heeffer	Sep 6, 2016
Alexander Naumov	Sep 19, 2014
Alvaro Cardoso	Jan 12, 2018
Amyan	Dec 10, 2013
Andreas Strangmüller	May 15, 2017
Andrew Tridgell	Aug 3, 2015
APHID	Jun 26, 2017
Arasan	Apr 8, 2018
Aritz Pérez	Jan 2, 2017
Artem Petakov	Jan 14, 2017
Aspiration Windows	Nov 1, 2017
AtlanChess	Sep 15, 2016
Bad bishop	Jun 22, 2015
Bionic	May 27, 2013
Bionic Impakt	Sep 6, 2014
Bishop Pair	Sep 10, 2017
Bishops of Opposite Colors	Aug 22, 2012
BitScan	Sep 10, 2017
Book Learning	Jan 1, 2017
Bookbuilder	Feb 4, 2018
Bookup	Feb 4, 2018
Bratko-Kopec Test	Jun 1, 2015
Brause	Aug 30, 2017
C	Feb 19, 2018
CCT Tournaments	Jan 29, 2017
CCT1	Dec 30, 2012
CCT10	May 5, 2013
CCT11	Feb 17, 2015
CCT12	Jan 28, 2018
CCT13	Dec 6, 2013
CCT14	Aug 23, 2012
CCT15	Oct 21, 2014
CCT16	May 13, 2014
CCT2	Sep 7, 2012
CCT3	Feb 14, 2013
CCT4	Apr 22, 2013
CCT5	Feb 22, 2013
CCT6	May 29, 2014
CCT7	Dec 16, 2017
CCT8	Apr 6, 2013
CCT9	Aug 25, 2013
Centipawns	Aug 9, 2016
CGW 2007	Jan 2, 2017
Check	Feb 1, 2018
Check Extensions	Apr 19, 2018
Chess Assistant	Jul 16, 2017
Chess Wizard	Dec 22, 2014
Chezzz	Jan 20, 2013
Chinito	Jan 7, 2016
Cluster Toga	Jan 7, 2016
Copy-Make	May 23, 2017
Crafty	Jan 28, 2018
Cray Blitz	Dec 25, 2017
Cutechess-cli	Jan 6, 2018
DanChess	Jun 17, 2012
DEC Alpha	Aug 15, 2015
Deep Sjeng	Jan 7, 2016
Dennis Sceviour	Feb 14, 2018
Depth	Feb 25, 2018
DOCCC 2001	Aug 15, 2015
Dreamer	Aug 5, 2015
Edwards' Tablebases	Sep 26, 2016
Eigenmann Endgame Test	Jun 1, 2017
Endgame Tablebases	Mar 6, 2018
Engine releases	Apr 23, 2018
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Equinox	Dec 12, 2016
Ethereal	Mar 20, 2018
Eugen	Jan 7, 2016
Eugenio Castillo Jiménez	Jul 23, 2017
Evaluation Hash Table	Dec 4, 2016
Evaluation of Pieces	Jan 8, 2018
Fafis	May 17, 2016
Fernando Villegas	Aug 15, 2016
FinalGen	Aug 14, 2016
Firefly	Oct 23, 2017
Fortress (Engine)	Oct 19, 2017
Frank Phillips	Sep 26, 2016
Frédéric Louguet	Aug 4, 2013
Gabriele Müller	Jan 22, 2012
Gavon	Apr 30, 2018
Gazebo	May 21, 2017
Ghost	Feb 2, 2018
GridChess	Jul 13, 2016
GridGinkGo	Jul 13, 2016
GridProtector	Jul 13, 2016
Guido Schimmels	Apr 23, 2013
Gunda-1	Jan 8, 2016
Guy Haworth	Nov 20, 2017
Hakkapeliitta	Apr 26, 2016
Hans Secelle	Nov 2, 2012
Hardware	Jan 20, 2018
Harun Taner	May 17, 2015
Hash Table	Jan 1, 2018
Hidden Passed Pawn	Nov 11, 2017
Historical Examples	Jan 16, 2017
Hossa	Jan 7, 2016
Houdini	Apr 14, 2018
ICGA Journal	Dec 21, 2017
InterChess	Jan 8, 2016
Internal Iterative Deepening	Feb 5, 2018
IsiChess	Jan 7, 2016
Itanium	Aug 29, 2015
Ivan Bratko	Aug 16, 2017
Jan Renze Steenhuisen	Sep 10, 2017
John Merlino	Feb 26, 2015
Jouni Uski	Sep 28, 2017
Junior	Feb 27, 2018
Kaissa (BY)	May 16, 2016
King of Kings	Sep 4, 2013
King Safety	Feb 14, 2018
Knowledge	Jul 22, 2017
LaGrande	Jan 22, 2012
LaPetite	Jan 22, 2012
Leila	May 8, 2017
Leonid Liberman	May 23, 2015
List (Program)	Jan 7, 2016
Logging	Jan 20, 2018
Louis Zulli	Feb 18, 2015
Magic Bitboards	Apr 13, 2018
Marcel van Kervinck	Dec 6, 2017
Martin Thoresen	Apr 29, 2015
Match Statistics	Mar 31, 2018
Matej Guid	Jan 6, 2018
Mathematician	Apr 9, 2018
Matthew Lai	Dec 6, 2017
MBChess	Sep 29, 2012
Michael Byrne	Jun 23, 2017
Michel Langeveld	Feb 4, 2018
Monroe Newborn	Dec 23, 2017
Movei	Jan 7, 2016
Nalimov Tablebases	Dec 23, 2016
Naum	Nov 23, 2017
Neural MoveMap Heuristic	Sep 24, 2015
Novag Best-Publication Awards to Include	Jan 2, 2014
Null Move Pruning	Dec 2, 2017
NUMA	Mar 29, 2017
OliThink	May 19, 2017
Open Source Engines	Jul 14, 2015
Opponent Model Search	Aug 14, 2017
Outside passed pawn	Jun 7, 2012
Pablo Vazquez	Apr 11, 2014
Parallel Search	Dec 30, 2017
Patriot	Sep 27, 2016
Pawn Endgame	Oct 11, 2017
Pawn Race	Dec 16, 2017
Peasant	May 21, 2015
Pepito	Nov 27, 2014
Perft	Sep 26, 2017
Perft Results	Feb 10, 2018
Persistent Hash Table	Dec 31, 2017
Peter Berger	Feb 29, 2016
Peter Skinner	Oct 30, 2016
Playing Strength	Mar 31, 2018
Plisk	Dec 31, 2014
Point Value by Regression Analysis	Aug 26, 2017
PowerPC	Oct 6, 2017
Principal Variation Search	Oct 22, 2017
ProbCut	Mar 25, 2016
Protector	Oct 12, 2017
Protocols	Jan 20, 2018
PVS and aspiration	Oct 8, 2014
PyChess	Dec 28, 2017
Quantifying Evaluation features	Jun 6, 2012
Quiescence Search	Aug 19, 2017
Rafael Peña	Nov 9, 2011
Razoring	Oct 5, 2015
RedQueen	Nov 13, 2017
Relative History Heuristic	Jun 8, 2015
Rémi Coulom	Feb 5, 2018
Ren Wu	Jul 23, 2017
Repetitions	Jan 16, 2018
Robert Houdart	Dec 8, 2017
Robert Hyatt	Dec 25, 2017
Rudolf Huber	Jan 7, 2016
Rybka	Mar 27, 2017
Rybka Controversy	Jan 18, 2018
Sargon	Dec 25, 2017
Searcher	Sep 26, 2016
SEE - The Swap Algorithm	Jun 5, 2017
Severi Salminen	May 7, 2015
Shredder	Jan 21, 2018
Sloppy	Sep 17, 2016
SMP	Dec 26, 2017
Software	Jul 28, 2017
Steffen A. Jakob	Jan 7, 2016
Stockfish	Apr 7, 2018
Strategic Test Suite	Dec 19, 2016
Suryadi Harmanto	Mar 21, 2015
Tapered Eval	Jan 9, 2018
TCEC Season 5	Jun 2, 2014
TCEC Season 6	Dec 2, 2014
TCEC Season 7	Jan 23, 2015
TCEC Season 8	Nov 30, 2015
Thread	Apr 22, 2018
Tijs van Dam	Feb 27, 2017
Tony Hedlund	Jun 19, 2017
UCI	Mar 4, 2018
University of Alabama at Birmingham	Jul 14, 2014
Unmake Move	Jun 10, 2017
Vladimir Yelin	May 16, 2016
Voyager	Aug 12, 2012
Wb2UCI	Feb 1, 2018
WCCC 1999	Jul 13, 2017
WCCC 2004	Jan 28, 2018
WCCC 2005	Dec 27, 2016
WCCC 2006	Jan 28, 2018
WCRCC 2007	Nov 21, 2016
WCRCC 2008	Nov 21, 2016
WCRCC 2009	Jul 14, 2014
WCRCC 2010	Jul 14, 2014
WCRCC 2011	Oct 21, 2014
WCRCC 2012	Jul 14, 2014
WCRCC 2014	Jul 27, 2014
WCRCC 2015	Jul 19, 2015
WCRCC 2016	Jun 27, 2017
Weak Pawns	Dec 19, 2013
Who's Who	Sep 6, 2017
Wieland Belka	Jul 13, 2013
Win at Chess	Sep 25, 2017
Wing	Oct 26, 2017
WMCCC 1996	Sep 15, 2016
WMCCC 1997	Apr 4, 2017
WMCCC 2000	Feb 27, 2018
WMCCC 2001	Jul 25, 2017
World Computer Chess Championship	Mar 6, 2018
Xiphos	Apr 22, 2018
Zappa	Oct 24, 2017
Đorđe Vidanović	Feb 20, 2017

Up one level

Critter

GerdIsenberg — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 13:11:36 GMT

Home * Engines * Critter

		Critter, an UCI compatible cross-platform chess engine by Richard Vida, executables freely available for personal use to run under Windows, Linux, Android and Mac OS ^[1] . Starting in late 2008, Critter was first written in Object Pascal compiled with Delphi, now available as open source engine ^[2] ^[3] , and was ported to C / C++ in 2009 ^[4] . It consistently evolved through various board representations from 0x88 to bitboards, as acknowledged by Richard Vida, also incorporating ideas from strong open source programs like Ippolit ^[5] , to a world class engine which achieved top five of most engine rating lists ^[6] .In 2012, Critter had its over the board debut at the ICT 2012, where it became strong runner-up behind the Rybka cluster.
Critter Country ^[7]

Description

Critter applies a principal variation search with aspiration windows, null move pruning ^[8] and other state of the art forward pruning, reduction and extension techniques, such as the Botvinnik-Markoff extensions ^[9] . It can search in parallel with up to eight threads ^[10] , supports Gaviota tablebases ^[11] , and is able to play Chess960 ^[12] . Critter features a tapered eval with a score pair class and overloaded operators ^[13] ^[14] , and blockage detection in late endgames ^[15] .

Selected Games

ICT 2012, round 7, Rybka - Critter ^[16] ^[17]

[Event "ICT12"]
[Site "Leiden"]
[Date "2012.05.13"]
[Round "7"]
[White "Rybka"]
[Black "Critter"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
 
1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 c6 4.e3 Bd6 5.b3 f5 6.Bd3 Nf6 7.O-O Qe7 8.Bb2 O-O
9.Qc1 b6 10.Ba3 Bb7 11.Bxd6 Qxd6 12.Nc3 dxc4 13.Bxc4 Nbd7 14.Re1 b5
15.Bd3 b4 16.Na4 c5 17.Nxc5 Bxf3 18.gxf3 Rfc8 19.Bc4 Nxc5 20.dxc5 Rxc5
21.a3 bxa3 22.Qxa3 Nd5 23.Red1 Qc7 24.Kg2 Rd8 25.Bxd5 Rdxd5 26.Qa4 Qe7
27.Rxd5 Rxd5 28.Qxa7 Qxa7 29.Rxa7 Rb5 30.Re7 Rb6 31.Kg3 Kf8 32.Rd7 Rxb3
33.Kf4 Rb5 34.h4 h6 35.Kg3 Rb8 36.h5 Re8 37.Rb7 Re7 38.Rb5 Kf7 39.e4 Kf6
40.exf5 exf5 41.Kf4 Re2 42.Rxf5+ Ke6 43.Rb5 Rxf2 44.Rb6+ Kf7 45.Rb7+ Kf6
1/2-1/2

Release Dates

Critter 0.38 : 2009-05
Critter 0.39a : 2009-06
Critter 0.42 : 2009-10
Critter 0.52 : 2010-01
Critter 0.52b : 2010-02
Critter 0.60 : 2010-04
Critter 0.70 : 2010-05
Critter 0.80 : 2010-07
Critter 0.90 : 2010-11
Critter 1.0 : 2011-03
Critter 1.01 : 2011-03
Critter 1.2 : 2011-06
Critter 1.4 : 2011-12
Critter 1.4a : 2012-01
Critter 1.6 : 2012-06
Critter 1.6a : 2012-06

Publications

Arno Nickel (2012). Die schöne neue Welt der Schachengines. SCHACH 2,3,5,6 2012, pdf (German) ^[18]

Forum Posts

2009

Critter 0.34 : 2146 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, April 18, 2009
Critter 0.38 : 2330 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, May 22, 2009
Critter 0.40 released by Richard Vida, CCC, July 26, 2009
Critter 0.40 : 2471 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, August 01, 2009
Critter: Pascal vs C by Richard Vida, CCC, August 27, 2009 » C, Pascal
Critter 0.42 available by Richard Vida, CCC, October 08, 2009 » Pascal
Critter 0.42 : 2649 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, October 11, 2009

2010

Critter 0.52 available by Richard Vida, CCC, Jan 25, 2010 » C
Critter 0.52b added to the IPON list ... by Ingo Bauer, CCC, February 04, 2010
Strange knight underpromotion by Critter by Richard Vida, CCC, March 04, 2010
Critter goes SMP (version 0.60 is released) by Richard Vida,CCC, April 13, 2010
Critter 0.60: 2718 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, April 14, 2010
Critter 0.70 is out by Richard Vida, CCC, May 23, 2010
Critter 0.80 by Richard Vida, CCC, July 24, 2010
Critter 0.90 released by Richard Vida, CCC, November 29, 2010
Critter - looking at static evaluation by Richard Vida, CCC, December 11, 2010

2011

Critter 1.0 available by Richard Vida, CCC, March 16, 2011
Critter 1.0 for Linux by Richard Vida, CCC, March 22, 2011 » Linux
My experience with Linux/GCC by Richard Vida, CCC, March 23, 2011
Critter bugfix update by Richard Vida, CCC, March 28, 2011 ^[19]
Critter 1.2 update + new homepage by Richard Vida, CCC, June 25, 2011 » Android
Critter 1.2 SEEMS to be a member of the Ippo family by Kai Laskos, CCC, July 02, 2011
for Pascal fans: Critter by Richard Vida, CCC, September 16, 2011

2012 ...

Re: World Computer Chess Championship ? by Richard Vida, CCC, June 11, 2012
Re: Critter 1.6 released! by Richard Vida, CCC, June 15, 2012
Continuation of Critter would be very appreciated by Mike Scheidl, CCC, May 15, 2013

External Links

Chess Engine

Critter for win32/64, linux and android platforms hosted by Emil Vlasák
SourceForge.net: Critter Chess - Project Web Hosting - Open Source Software (Pascal Version)
Critter (chess) from Wikipedia
Critter at CCRL 40/40

Misc

References

^ Critter for win32/64, linux and android platforms hosted by Emil Vlasák, Mac OS version compiled by Jeremy Bernstein
^ for Pascal fans: Critter by Richard Vida, CCC, September 16, 2011
^ SourceForge.net: Critter Chess - Project Web Hosting - Open Source Software
^ Critter: Pascal vs C by Richard Vida, CCC, August 27, 2009
^ Re: World Computer Chess Championship ? by Richard Vida, CCC, June 11, 2012
^ Critter (chess) from Wikipedia
^ Critter Country from Wikipedia run by The Walt Disney Company
^ Interview with Richard Vida by Frank Quisinsky, February 20, 2010
^ Re: World Computer Chess Championship ? by Richard Vida, CCC, June 11, 2012
^ Critter goes SMP (version 0.60 is released) by Richard Vida, CCC, April 13, 2010
^ Critter 0.70 is out by Richard Vida, CCC, May 23, 2010
^ Critter 0.80 by Richard Vida, CCC, July 24, 2010
^ Re: talk about IPP's evaluation by Richard Vida, CCC, November 07, 2009 » Ippolit, SIMD and SWAR Techniques
^ My experience with Linux/GCC by Richard Vida, CCC, March 23, 2011
^ Chiron 1.1 bug? by Richard Vida, CCC, December 24, 2011
^ Leiden Round 7: Rybka vs Critter by Ray, Rybka Forum, May 13, 2012
^ ICT 12 - PGN download, CSVN
^ Part 1 covers Houdini, Rybka, Komodo, Stockfish, Critter, Naum, Chiron and Spike
^ Difficult position to Critter by Jouni Uski, CCC, March 24, 2011

What links here?

Page	Date Edited
Arno Nickel	Sep 25, 2015
Blockage Detection	Oct 19, 2017
Chiron	Sep 24, 2017
Critter	Jan 25, 2014
Delphi	Dec 16, 2016
Engines	Mar 10, 2018
Gaviota Tablebases	Apr 22, 2018
Houdini	Apr 14, 2018
ICT 2012	Jun 11, 2012
Kai Laskos	Jan 21, 2018
Komodo	Mar 6, 2018
Languages	Nov 26, 2017
Naum	Nov 23, 2017
Richard Vida	Aug 11, 2013
Rybka	Mar 27, 2017
Scid on the Go	Jan 26, 2015
Spike	Jan 7, 2016
Stockfish	Apr 7, 2018
Strelka	May 17, 2016
TCEC Season 5	Jun 2, 2014
TCEC Season 6	Dec 2, 2014
TCEC Season 7	Jan 23, 2015
TCEC Season 9	Nov 6, 2017
Who's Who	Sep 6, 2017

Up one level

Wikispaces : chessprogramming - items matching description

Achilles

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