Capablanca Random Chess engines.

[George Tsavdaris]

Trying (again) to make people interested in the great Chess variant, and i'm talking about Capablanca Random Chess(+Gothic Chess).
So since i have many years to see what is going on, can you list todays engines that can play this variant?

I'm aware and I own the Stockfish' port into that, the Stockfish Fairy which is very strong(yet VERY dumb in this variant and nowhere near its Chess brother), Bihasa, TJChess, Gothic Vortex, Joker80, Smirf, TSCPGothic, ChessV, Pingy.

So are there any more others now?
Where is HGM these days? I miss old days with his battle of the Goths tournaments. Is there time for a battle of Goths 2019 maybe?

I paired Stockfish Fairy against the previously known strongest engine Bihasa, but Stockfish won easily both games so it's obvious it is by far in its own league.
Maybe time for a Leela CRC zero?
As Bihasa can't use more than 1 core i had to use Stockfish in just 1 core also.
TC is blitz 3+3 with predefined opening by me(starting from Gothic Chess position):

SF-Bihasa 1-0 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B670Qx1r7EM

Bihasa-SF 0-1 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hynIyFFogU


PS: Winboard GUI is a pleasure to use!!

[Fabian Fichter]

The only CRC engines I know that you did not mention are Sjaak II and NebiyuChess. Those two I actually tested against Fairy-Stockfish during its development, mostly because I can use them for testing in many variants. You can find the estimated Elo differences for Capablanca chess (from some matches in cutechess) in https://github.com/ianfab/Fairy-Stockfi ... rd-version. Since the Elo differences are huge, the values are probably not very precise, since I only tested something like 100 games each.

Since you mentioned that SF is "very dumb", can you please name a few specific weaknesses? This might help me to find some improvements, since I did not really analyze its games myself so far. One issue I am aware of is that at short time controls it sometimes might not be able to win even the simplest endgames like KRK, because I had to disable the endgame evaluation functions for large-board variants, since they are specifically written for an 8x8 board and break for larger boards. I would like to fix this and re-enable the endgame evaluation, but unfortunately did not find the time so far.

[hgm]

At some point development of the engines came to a stop (Reinhard passed away, and I got more interested in Shogi variants), so a new Battle of the Goths would simply have been a repetition of the previous one. Which already was not very thrilling, as Bihasa was crushing all others.

Stockfish is a recent development, but it is just one new engine, and we already know it will crush all others. Which has no effect on the relative ranking of the others. AFAIK Gothic Vortex is still not available in a WB-compatible version.

What is Pingy?

[Roland Chastain]

Hello! There are also ArcBishop80 and BigLion80.

I am myself writing an engine supporting Capablanca random variant, but it's far to be finished, and it certainly will never be strong. For me it is already an accomplishment to manage to make an engine that works properly.

[George Tsavdaris]

At some point development of the engines came to a stop (Reinhard passed away, and I got more interested in Shogi variants), so a new Battle of the Goths would simply have been a repetition of the previous one. Which already was not very thrilling, as Bihasa was crushing all others.

Stockfish is a recent development, but it is just one new engine, and we already know it will crush all others. Which has no effect on the relative ranking of the others. AFAIK Gothic Vortex is still not available in a WB-compatible version.

What is Pingy?

Yes Gothic Vortex can play only on its own GUI. The once stronger than all other(Gothic Vortex) loses to Bihasa rather easily now, and it's getting CRUSHED every single time by Stockfish fairy.

Pingy is a private CRC and Gothic Chess engine of 2007 that i was given for beta testing by a well known commercial author. It was a little stronger than Gothic Vortex. It's irrelevant now.

It's too bad no interest in CRC as i think this should be main alternative for Chess authors. Crazyhouse and Shogi- like variants are awesome too as also Atomic Chess, and also some other variants like Progressive Chess etc, but CRC is more Chess-like variant using all the pieces like it was meant to be, e.g Archbishop= Bishop+Knight. I hope interest will increase in the future.

[George Tsavdaris]

Since you mentioned that SF is "very dumb", can you please name a few specific weaknesses? This might help me to find some improvements, since I did not really analyze its games myself so far. One issue I am aware of is that at short time controls it sometimes might not be able to win even the simplest endgames like KRK, because I had to disable the endgame evaluation functions for large-board variants, since they are specifically written for an 8x8 board and break for larger boards. I would like to fix this and re-enable the endgame evaluation, but unfortunately did not find the time so far.

Well no i don't speak about endgame. I'm speaking about its play in middlegame where there is a HUGE HUGE potential for improvement.
Stockfish-Fairy attacking abilities on building an attack are very limited and its "opinions" on piece imbalances are very bad. As only very recently discovered Stockfish-Fairy and started experimenting with it i will post more concrete examples, positions, games, etc in the future.

[hgm]

Pingy is a private CRC and Gothic Chess engine of 2007 that i was given for beta testing by a well known commercial author. It was a little stronger than Gothic Vortex. It's irrelevant now.

Well, if Gothic Vortex and Pingy could participate it would make sense to do a new tournament. Does Pingy use its own GUI too, or is it WinBoard-compatible? As you know who the author of Pingy is, perhaps you can ask him how he feels 12 year later about releasing the engine (possibly anonymously through you) rather than letting his work go to total waste. Or even releasing the source code (if that would not reveal too many secrets from his commercial normal engine that are still relevant). Or even allowing you to make it anonymously available just to me for one-time use in a tournament.

[JohnWoe]

Yes. This 8x8 chess is boring. I could add atomic+3checks to my bitboarder. But it is still too boring.

I'm currently writing a capablanca/gothic/caparandom engine. In ruby language. The only ruby engine that supports caparandom?!
A special code for 10x8 board. Board size can be modified easily. As if Stockfish clones start invading you can increase board.

Movegenenerator + search is done. Xboard protocol. Can play 1000s of caparandom games in cutechess without crashing. Mgen is really slow. That limits what you can do.

Code: Select all

Started game 598 of 1000 (Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1)
Finished game 598 (Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1): 1/2-1/2 {Draw by 3-fold repetition}
Score of Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1: 30 - 35 - 533  [0.496] 598
Started game 599 of 1000 (Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1)
Finished game 599 (Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1): 1-0 {White mates}
Score of Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1: 31 - 35 - 533  [0.497] 599
Started game 600 of 1000 (Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1)
Finished game 600 (Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1): 1/2-1/2 {Draw by 3-fold repetition}
Score of Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1: 31 - 35 - 534  [0.497] 600
Started game 601 of 1000 (Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1)
^CFinished game 601 (Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1): * {No result}
Score of Shuriken 0.1 vs Shuriken 0.1: 31 - 35 - 534  [0.497] 600
Elo difference: -2.32 +/- 9.21

First ever win against fairy in capablanca chess:
[pgn][Event "?"] [Site "?"] [Date "2019.07.07"] [Round "89"] [White "Shuriken 0.1"] [Black "Fairy-Max 5.0b"] [Result "1-0"] [PlyCount "57"] [Termination "time forfeit"] [TimeControl "40/1"] [Variant "capablanca"] 1. Nh3 Nc6 {+0.01/4 0.030s} 2. i4 Nh6 {+0.09/4 0.064s} 3. a3 Nxi4 {+0.80/4 0.021s} 4. j4 e5 {+1.06/3 0.010s} 5. e3 Bf6 {+1.06/3 0.010s} 6. c3 h5 {+1.02/3 0.014s} 7. Aa2 d6 {+0.96/4 0.14s} 8. Nj2 Bxj2 {+2.08/3 0.012s} 9. e4 Ai2 {+4.45/4 0.051s} 10. Ke2 f5 {+5.33/2 0.023s} 11. c4 Axh1 {+5.40/2 0.019s} 12. f4 Axg2 {+14.84/3 0.010s} 13. Nc3 Bh4 {+16.23/2 0.042s} 14. a4 Bxe1 {+23.25/2 0.018s} 15. Bc2 Bh4 {+23.42/2 0.064s} 16. Rc1 Axf4+ {+25.52/3 0.023s} 17. Kd1 fxe4 {+25.23/3 0.023s} 18. Bb3 Nxh2 {+26.13/3 0.015s} 19. Bc2 Nxj1 {+29.85/3 0.011s} 20. Bb6 axb6 {+33.79/3 0.013s} 21. a5 Rxa5 {+35.60/2 0.011s} 22. Ab1 Ra1 {+38.12/4 0.017s} 23. Aa3 Rxa3 {+39.20/3 0.009s} 24. Bd3 Rxc3 {+46.00/2 0.007s} 25. Be2 Rxc1+ {+52.21/4 0.009s} 26. Kxc1 Axe2+ {+51.63/6 0.039s} 27. Kc2 Bxc4 {+51.49/1 0.030s} 28. d3 Axd3+ {+53.32/4 0.056s} 29. Kd2 {Black loses on time} 1-0[/pgn]

[Roland Chastain]

I'm currently writing a capablanca/gothic/caparandom engine. In ruby language. The only ruby engine that supports caparandom?!
A special code for 10x8 board. Board size can be modified easily. As if Stockfish clones start invading you can increase board.

Movegenenerator + search is done. Xboard protocol. Can play 1000s of caparandom games in cutechess without crashing. Mgen is really slow. That limits what you can do.

Great news! Congratulations.

I hope I will have a first working version of my engine before the end of the week.

[George Tsavdaris]

Pingy is a private CRC and Gothic Chess engine of 2007 that i was given for beta testing by a well known commercial author. It was a little stronger than Gothic Vortex. It's irrelevant now.

Well, if Gothic Vortex and Pingy could participate it would make sense to do a new tournament. Does Pingy use its own GUI too, or is it WinBoard-compatible? As you know who the author of Pingy is, perhaps you can ask him how he feels 12 year later about releasing the engine (possibly anonymously through you) rather than letting his work go to total waste. Or even releasing the source code (if that would not reveal too many secrets from his commercial normal engine that are still relevant). Or even allowing you to make it anonymously available just to me for one-time use in a tournament.

No response yet from the author of Pingy. Maybe he even do not have the same email or something. There have been 12+ years or something.
Anyway we need new blood not circulate the same old engines.
Played 2 more SF-Bihasa games and upload on Youtube:
Sf has no opponent unfortunately

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O1XLkw86r8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bnQKGeAsGk