Andscacs - New version 0.90

[cdani]

Andscacs with EGTB will avoid such games like this one. Much time will not be wasted.

Andscacs can't resist the tablebases

Yes

[cdani]

Detailed changes:

* Now it can play indefinitely long games.
* Little bonus for central pawns.
* Removed bonus for open or semi open column for queen.
* Rival pawn in front of the king can protect it. Seen on Stockfish, but that was in the list of things to do previously.
* Penalization for king when rival pawn on c3/f3, and side column open.
* Less attack when no minors attacking and no contact checks.
* Tuned various evaluation parameters, specially king safety ones.
* Knight is less valuable if can be changed immediately.
* Bonus for knight than can go to an outpost. Idea from Stockfish.
* Little bonus for having pawns in the two flanks. Idea seen in a recent patch of Stockfish, but that was in the list of things to do previously. Also I only take into account a,b,c and f,g,h columns. I apply it at the end of the evaluation function, as a fixed bonus, when mg and eg values are already consolidated.
* Solved bugs of ponder mode and others.
* Speed improvements.
* Imbalance rook and pawns vs two bishops.
* Some improvements on lmr, futility pruning, ...
* Clear killer entries for ply + 1 (H.G. Muller idea, http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 586#705586)
* Hash pawns: Don't take into account turn for key index.
* Added uci parameter WinGroupAffinity, to allow better performance for more than 64 cores computers. Disabled by default. In previous 0.89 version was enabled and was not possible to disable it.

[carldaman]

Thanks++, Daniel!

CL

I published a new version, 0.90.

Changes:
* Improved various evaluation parameters.
* Solved little bugs.
* Speed and move search improvements.
* Improved pawn hash.

Later I will publish the detailed changes.

http://www.andscacs.com/downloads/andscacs090.zip

I expect at least 15 elo improvement. It depends mostly on how well scales some late week improvement.

I solved also some bugs of ponder mode, so I expect some bigger wins in tournaments with ponder.

I also have a new website, done by a friend. Thanks to him!!

[cdani]

Ingo is testing it already for the Ipon rating list. Thanks!

http://www.inwoba.de/090.html

Pretty good result so far. As commented, should improve more in ponder on rating list like this one. Basically should obtain a similar position than in other rating lists.

[Graham Banks]

Thanks Daniel.

[Dokterchen]

Thanks Daniel. keep on your good work!

[Engin]

congrats daniel for the release.

your engine is now at top 10

[cdani]

Thanks all!

Ingo has already published the updated list.
http://www.inwoba.de/bayes.html

Also a not anymore "secret" change that this new version had is being discussed here:

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 296#710296

[Dann Corbit]

The new logo with the green knights is pretty, but we will miss the giant cheese-balls logo for the big tournaments like TCEC.

[tttony]

wow you must have a supercomputer to test it! Every version it's better

I think that this version will surpass SF4 and also (hope) Deep Shredder 13

Congrats!