New Fischerle Version: 0.9.80 SE

[RolandoFurioso]

Hi all,

I have just released a follow-up version of my chess engine: Fischerle 0.9.80 SE. It is available for download at http://www.stuckardt.de/index.php/schac ... herle.html

These are the refinements:

* a slightly more aggressive forward pruning scheme is now applied, employing smaller margins for futility pruning, extended futility pruning, and limited razoring;
* adding delta pruning and implementing some further slight enhancements, quiescence search has been mildly refined;
* the piece value assigned to bishops and the pair-of-bishops bonus have been slightly reduced, taking into account observations in practical play as well as the empirical findings by Larry Kaufman;
* king safety evaluation has been refined, adding an additional incentive to keep some safety-critical castling-side pawns in their initial position;
* Fischerle’s mate approaching scheme has been enhanced; moreover, a minor inconsistency has been eliminated that caused Fischerle to come up with an illegal move in some very rare cases in which the opponent, while mating Fischerle, deviated from the optimal line of play;
* Fischerle now exploits as well the results of partially completed iterative deepening cycles in case the search failed high at that level.

According to first empirical results, Fischerle 0.9.80 SE seems to play just slightly stronger than its predecessor (Fischerle 0.9.70 SE). So let's see whether it now jumps over the Elo 2300 mark @ CCRL-40/40.

All the best,
Roland

[Graham Banks]

Thanks Roland. Always a pleasure testing Fischerle.

[RolandoFurioso]

Thanks, Gabor & Graham, for all your competent and highly helpful evaluation work @ CCRL !