Crafty v25.2 Release

[rcmaddox]

Bob Hyatt and team - Tracy Reigle, Peter Skinner and myself, are please to announce the release of Crafty-v25.2

Binaries for windows and linux are available here.

The same notes as for 25.1 apply.

Thank you!

[Peter Berger]

Really - how about documenting things like MAJOR changes at least ?

After I finally managed to get one of these binaries running on my computer I noticed that there obviously have been some changes that should be explained IMHO.

Has Nalimov endgame table support been discontinued ?

It looks as if support of Roland's tables has been added - any documentation on this?

Peter

[Matthias Hartwich]

Really - how about documenting things like MAJOR changes at least ?

After I finally managed to get one of these binaries running on my computer I noticed that there obviously have been some changes that should be explained IMHO.

Has Nalimov endgame table support been discontinued ?

It looks as if support of Roland's tables has been added - any documentation on this?

Peter

As usual, all can be found in main.c:

Code: Select all

 *    25.1   Cleanup of NextMove() plus a minor ordering bug fix that would    *
 *           skip counter moves at ply = 2. Added NUMA code to force the hash  *
 *           tables to be spread across the numa nodes as equally as possible  *
 *           rather than all of the data sitting on just onenode.  This makes  *
 *           one specific user policy important.  BEFORE you set the hash size *
 *           for any of the four hash tables, you should ALWAYS set the max    *
 *           threads limit first, so that the NUMA trick works correctly.  Of  *
 *           course, if you do not use -DAFFINITY this is all irrelevant.  The *
 *           -DNUMA option has been removed.  I no longer use any libnuma      *
 *           routines.  A new "smpnuma" command is now used to enable/disable  *
 *           NUMA mode (which really only affects how the hash tables are      *
 *           cleared, all the other NUMA code works just fine no matter        *
 *           whether this is enabled or disabled.  Fixed a bug with the xboard *
 *           memory command that could overflow and cause preposterous malloc  *
 *           requests.  Change to LMP that now enables it in the last 16 plies *
 *           of search depth, although only the last 8-10 plies really have    *
 *           a chance for this to kick in unless there are more than 100 legal *
 *           moves to try.  Minor change to hash path in HashStore() that made *
 *           it hard to store entries on the first search after the table was  *
 *           cleared.  Removed Nalimov DTM EGTB code and converted to SYZYGY   *
 *           WDL/DTC tables instead (courtesy of Ronald de Man).  This         *
 *           correctly handles the 50 move rule  where the Nalimov tables      *
 *           would walk into forced draws (by 50 move rule) while convincing   *
 *           the search it was winning.  Swindle mode now also activates when  *
 *           in a drawn ending with a material plus for the side on move, as   *
 *           well as when the best root move is a "cursed win" (forced win,    *
 *           but drawn because of the 50 move rule).  This gives the non-EGTB  *
 *           opponent the opportunity to turn that 50 move draw into a loss.   *
 *           There are some changes in the scoring output as a result of this. *
 *           The usual +/-MatNN scores show up for real mates, but when in     *
 *           EGTB endings, the scores are of the form Win or Lose with the     *
 *           appropriate sign correction (-Win means black is winning, +Lose   *
 *           means white is losing.)  Basil Falcinelli contributed to the new  *
 *           syzygy code used in this version.  Minor change to skill code to  *
 *           avoid altering search parameters since the speed reduction and    *
 *           randomness in the eval is more than enough to reduce the Elo.     *
 *           Minor change to HashProbe() where I now only update the AGE of an *
 *           entry that matches the current hash signature if the entry        *
 *           actually causes a search termination, rather than updating it     *
 *           each time there is a signature match.  If the search is not       *
 *           terminated on the spot, we have to store an entry when the search *
 *           ends which will also overwrite the current exact match and update *
 *           the age as well.  Suggested by J. Wesley Cleveland on CCC.        *
 *                                                                             *
 *    25.2   Minor bug in the fail-high / fail-low code.  Crafty is supposed   *
 *           to deal with the case where the first move produces a score, then *
 *           a later move fails high but then produces a worse score.  We are  *
 *           supposed to revert to the better move.  An "optimization" made    *
 *           this fail, but it has been fixed here.  "new" command removed as  *
 *           it is pretty difficult to restore everything once a game has been *
 *           started.  To start a new game, quit crafty and restart.  Crafty   *
 *           now notifies xboard/winboard to do this automatically so using    *
 *           those interfaces requires no changes to anything.                 *

[tmokonen]

Does Peter Skinner no longer makes Windows compiles of Crafty? He used to make the official ones at one time.

[bob]

Thank you Mike B, it worked. One note for the Ubuntu/Debian users, /bin/csh must be replaced by /bin/sh because csh does not exist.

You can always install it easily. And sometimes "tcsh" or "zsh" is installed which is basically the same shell.

[bob]

Really - how about documenting things like MAJOR changes at least ?

After I finally managed to get one of these binaries running on my computer I noticed that there obviously have been some changes that should be explained IMHO.

Has Nalimov endgame table support been discontinued ?

It looks as if support of Roland's tables has been added - any documentation on this?

Peter

Those are documented in main.c as always... Nalimov is gone, syzygy is now in. Nothing different for using them, tbpath can be set to point to one or more directories, or you can put 'em in the default ./TB location.

There weren't any major changes since the last release other than to fix a small bug in fail high processing... otherwise it is exactly the same as 25.1

[Peter Berger]

Really - how about documenting things like MAJOR changes at least ?

After I finally managed to get one of these binaries running on my computer I noticed that there obviously have been some changes that should be explained IMHO.

Has Nalimov endgame table support been discontinued ?

It looks as if support of Roland's tables has been added - any documentation on this?

Peter

Those are documented in main.c as always... Nalimov is gone, syzygy is now in. Nothing different for using them, tbpath can be set to point to one or more directories, or you can put 'em in the default ./TB location.

There weren't any major changes since the last release other than to fix a small bug in fail high processing... otherwise it is exactly the same as 25.1

Well, my latest version before seemed to be 25.0.1 , not 25.1 ( whatever sense 25.0.1 makes as version number). I clearly missed that this was not the latest Crafty version ..

Btw - even Tracy Riegle who is mentioned as one of Crafty's authors these days doesn't seem to be able to post a legal crafty.rc file - see craftychess.com which has an example crafty.rc file with cache=32M, an option that doesn't exist anymore and will produce an error message. ( oh , and btw, this page was updated 3 days ago )

Maybe everyone but me can deal with this easily and in a competent way. From experience I am somewhat sceptical though.

LG
Peter

[MikeB]

Really - how about documenting things like MAJOR changes at least ?

After I finally managed to get one of these binaries running on my computer I noticed that there obviously have been some changes that should be explained IMHO.

Has Nalimov endgame table support been discontinued ?

It looks as if support of Roland's tables has been added - any documentation on this?

Peter

Those are documented in main.c as always... Nalimov is gone, syzygy is now in. Nothing different for using them, tbpath can be set to point to one or more directories, or you can put 'em in the default ./TB location.

There weren't any major changes since the last release other than to fix a small bug in fail high processing... otherwise it is exactly the same as 25.1

Well, my latest version before seemed to be 25.0.1 , not 25.1 ( whatever sense 25.0.1 makes as version number). I clearly missed that this was not the latest Crafty version ..

Btw - even Tracy Riegle who is mentioned as one of Crafty's authors these days doesn't seem to be able to post a legal crafty.rc file - see craftychess.com which has an example crafty.rc file with cache=32M, an option that doesn't exist anymore and will produce an error message. ( oh , and btw, this page was updated 3 days ago )

Maybe everyone but me can deal with this easily and in a competent way. From experience I am somewhat sceptical though.

LG
Peter

We do give full refunds - now how much was it that you paid?

There's only 4 of us , Bob is old as dirt, I'm right behind him and dementia is settling in. enuf said...

[bob]

Really - how about documenting things like MAJOR changes at least ?

After I finally managed to get one of these binaries running on my computer I noticed that there obviously have been some changes that should be explained IMHO.

Has Nalimov endgame table support been discontinued ?

It looks as if support of Roland's tables has been added - any documentation on this?

Peter

Those are documented in main.c as always... Nalimov is gone, syzygy is now in. Nothing different for using them, tbpath can be set to point to one or more directories, or you can put 'em in the default ./TB location.

There weren't any major changes since the last release other than to fix a small bug in fail high processing... otherwise it is exactly the same as 25.1

Well, my latest version before seemed to be 25.0.1 , not 25.1 ( whatever sense 25.0.1 makes as version number). I clearly missed that this was not the latest Crafty version ..

Btw - even Tracy Riegle who is mentioned as one of Crafty's authors these days doesn't seem to be able to post a legal crafty.rc file - see craftychess.com which has an example crafty.rc file with cache=32M, an option that doesn't exist anymore and will produce an error message. ( oh , and btw, this page was updated 3 days ago )

Maybe everyone but me can deal with this easily and in a competent way. From experience I am somewhat sceptical though.

LG
Peter

25.0.1 fixed some minor glitch in 25.0. I don't even remember exactly what. 25.1 introduced syzygy endgame tables and eliminated Nalimov.

As far as "cache" goes I did not see a quick way to update that when I was working on this, but it is on my to-do list to add it back in.

[bob]

Really - how about documenting things like MAJOR changes at least ?

After I finally managed to get one of these binaries running on my computer I noticed that there obviously have been some changes that should be explained IMHO.

Has Nalimov endgame table support been discontinued ?

It looks as if support of Roland's tables has been added - any documentation on this?

Peter

Those are documented in main.c as always... Nalimov is gone, syzygy is now in. Nothing different for using them, tbpath can be set to point to one or more directories, or you can put 'em in the default ./TB location.

There weren't any major changes since the last release other than to fix a small bug in fail high processing... otherwise it is exactly the same as 25.1

Well, my latest version before seemed to be 25.0.1 , not 25.1 ( whatever sense 25.0.1 makes as version number). I clearly missed that this was not the latest Crafty version ..

Btw - even Tracy Riegle who is mentioned as one of Crafty's authors these days doesn't seem to be able to post a legal crafty.rc file - see craftychess.com which has an example crafty.rc file with cache=32M, an option that doesn't exist anymore and will produce an error message. ( oh , and btw, this page was updated 3 days ago )

Maybe everyone but me can deal with this easily and in a competent way. From experience I am somewhat sceptical though.

LG
Peter

We do give full refunds - now how much was it that you paid?

There's only 4 of us , Bob is old as dirt, I'm right behind him and dementia is settling in. enuf said...

That would be retired dirt, thank you.