Mussaurus 0.1-prealpha - a poor man's Vice

[Richard Allbert]

Thank you for checking the code. I noticed one - the null move pruning doesn't take zugzwang into account, but until I find a satisfying condition for zugzwang it will be buggy.

If you followed VICE exactly you'll have the condition that the side to move has to have a "big piece" aka non-pawn, non-king to perform a null move, however VICE mistakenly counts the king as a big piece meaning it will always allow null moves. Fixing this, not counting the king, in my engine (also based on VICE) allowed it to solve a lot of zugzwang positions it previously could not.

Yep, this was a stupid mistake, thanks for pointing it out.

[Guenther]

Thank you for checking the code. I noticed one - the null move pruning doesn't take zugzwang into account, but until I find a satisfying condition for zugzwang it will be buggy.

If you followed VICE exactly you'll have the condition that the side to move has to have a "big piece" aka non-pawn, non-king to perform a null move, however VICE mistakenly counts the king as a big piece meaning it will always allow null moves. Fixing this, not counting the king, in my engine (also based on VICE) allowed it to solve a lot of zugzwang positions it previously could not.

Yep, this was a stupid mistake, thanks for pointing it out.

Richard, did you just reveal yourself as the (unknown) author of Vice, or am I just confused? :)

[shinkarom]

I only know that Bluefever's Arena identifies him as RICHARD2.

[Guenther]

I only know that Bluefever's Arena identifies him as RICHARD2.

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 25#p593625

Ouch, with that link above it means it never was a hard riddle.
At least I was in hiatus when the above quote happened and no one noticed ;-)

Here is the wayback link to Richards Lime and Jabba (chess engines) - we had lot of fun in those times,
when I was still broadcasting.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160125173 ... /index.php

[shinkarom]

I'm deleting Mussaurus.
With my current chess skill it seems dishonest to create a chess engine; moreover, it seems not right to make such a long term project for which I don't have the stamina, and which will be drowned in bugs.

[Ovyron]

So you didn't enjoy working on the project?

[tmokonen]

That's too bad. I enjoyed trying out your engine.

[shinkarom]

I enjoyed it right up till the point where slowly moving towards bitboards didn't make the engine faster, but slower. Up till the point where the code became more and mroe like spaghetti with little understanding of how to untangle it. Till it started playing chess way better than me. (A question: should a chess programmer play good chess or it's not obligatory? Because when I create an engine while losing to the weakest engines myself I feel even more like an impostor.)
tmokonen, I need regular feedback, because, as they say "No good review is bad review in itself", and "No good review = why flood the forum with low quality stuff when there are better offers by better programmers to get people's attention".

[Ovyron]

A question: should a chess programmer play good chess or it's not obligatory? Because when I create an engine while losing to the weakest engines myself I feel even more like an impostor.

Nah, the top chess programmers weren't very good at chess. They were decent, but very early on the development stage the engine becomes stronger than you and there's no turning back. Actually, those people didn't play against their engines at all, to test they played against older versions or against other engines.

If you care about elo (and that's only a factor) I'd recommend you set your goal for your engine to beat some engine of someone else that it can't beat currently, and after you succeed you move to another one. People like doing this because it provides a sense of progress, if this is what you're after you can get a lot as Mussaurus goes up in the rankings.

I need regular feedback

So here's a problem. Chess programming is mostly a solitary exercise, the most feedback you can expect to get is people that test your engine and tell you how's it doing against the group they test it against, and major bugs that don't let them use the engine properly (like crashes or losing on time.)

But you'd do it because it's fun. Most people that don't have fun anymore just ditch their code and start from scratch, and surprising get to where they were before in a much shorter time thanks to all the experience they gained on their first attempt. Some people get addicted to this, and rewrite their engines from scratch several times.

So it's up to you where you wanna go, but of course if none of the possible paths to continue sound appealing, quitting is an option.

[Richard Allbert]

Richard, did you just reveal yourself as the (unknown) author of Vice, or am I just confused?

probably.