You're right about one thing, Norm: DeepSaros is a version of Ivanhoe, just the 999952a, as you wrote. So why change the name? The idea came from a group of friends, fans of chess engines, and were to create a customized version of Ivan, to highlight some of its characteristics and eliminate others. An "independent box" on which to experiment and have fun playing.
Early versions of D.S. had the following characteristics:
- First you have eliminated many options UCI in order to make it easy and quick to use the program.
- Another variation is the correction of some bugs which tended to crash Ivan after a certain number of games. DS is a feature of stability, in tests it has proven more stable than the original program.
- Other changes: the elimination of TB and the addition, in the functions of evaluation, some ideas taken from Fruit and Crafty (in vers. d2, c3 and c4).
- Well, these small changes, while not "epochal"or "brilliant", have perverted what was the original program, in the meantime, the original IvanHoe has evolved, and many new versions have arrived. I basically did what in the world of Open Source is called "fork".
In further versions, D.S. continued to change: it introduced other experiments, while other things will go back ... For example in the evaluation functions: After trying different ideas, I realized that they were not so good, so I removed and returned to the original functions used by Ivan. Future versions will try others! Another thing: After several tests we found that the TB program was playing better (obviously) so have been implemented again. Right now I am studying stockfish and probably will try to put some idea in his DS (ideas, not code: Stockfish is structured differently)...
In practice D.S. is my "toy", which I like to experiment and play, without having to explain anything to anyone.
The site D.S. was born with the sole idea of distributing D.S. to my friends and I did not think that instead, in short, DS become "famous. " After seeing that in many sites we talked about it, I proceeded to explain my intentions (especially with the authors of Ivan, on their official website) and I published the source code for the latest version (Paradoxically, this version is the most "neutral ", because we have decided to remove all the ideas that were not working and start again, with other ideas and other tests!).
Sorry Norm, but hear you, that makes allegations against cloners, is a strange thing... Is like listening to Osama Bin Laden which indictments against terrorism!
It seems to me that in recent times, the sites of chess engines, has created an exaggerated climate of "cleansing", a kind of "religious wars", a ridiculous McCarthyism that is completely out of place, in a "playful room" what should be the chess world.
Ah .. I also wrote that the repeated use of D.S. ensure the regrowth of hair, and that win the lottery... I'll be sued for fraud?
Roberto
