New engine releases 2020

[matejst]

I have just read that the author plans to stop development of RubiChess on his github page. RubiChess was one of the few modern engine I liked, although I discovered it late. It could miss a hidden tactical possibility, but it had a good, reasonable evaluation, and its "ideas" -- if one can say that an engine has ideas -- were sensible. It would really be a pity to stop now.

I hope that Matthies will change his mind.

[Gabor Szots]

I'm waiting for a cataract operation, which doesn't make things better to say the least.

I am sure it will make things better in the end. It did for my mother.

[JohnWoe]

FoxSEE 3.3.4 https://github.com/redsalmon91/FoxSEE/releases
KnightX 2.0 http://technochess.free.fr/
Minic 2.33 (unofficial edition) https://github.com/tryingsomestuff/Mini ... ter/Minic2 -
v2.31 https://github.com/tryingsomestuff/Minic/releases
Sapeli 1.90 https://github.com/SamuraiDangyo/Sapeli/releases
Stash 16.0 https://gitlab.com/mhouppin/stash-bot/-/releases

genecook – C++ - Xboard
https://github.com/genecook/chess/releases (v0.2 alpha Ubuntu)

robertomil81mil – UCI
https://github.com/robertomil81mil/PayFleens/releases (v1.0.1 Linux)

Thanks!
I released Sapeli 1.90 which is the smallest Sapeli ever: 1992 sloc
I'm pretty happy with the status que right now. Making it even smaller will hurt readability.
With these changes. g++ can't compile Sapeli anymore. But clang++ can. It's a C program anyway.

The next release will be stronger. If I have time to work on it.

[mvanthoor]

I'm waiting for a cataract operation, which doesn't make things better to say the least.

I am sure it will make things better in the end. It did for my mother.

Heh... I assume so too. Maybe I wasn't clear enough: the waiting doesn't make things better. My eyesight is even worse than it normally is. The operation should have been in april, but it was postponed because of the corona pandemic.

[tmokonen]

Tinman 0.3.0:

https://github.com/mikeleany/tinman/releases/tag/v0.3.0

[Gary Internet]

I have just read that the author plans to stop development of RubiChess on his github page. RubiChess was one of the few modern engine I liked, although I discovered it late. It could miss a hidden tactical possibility, but it had a good, reasonable evaluation, and its "ideas" -- if one can say that an engine has ideas -- were sensible. It would really be a pity to stop now.

I hope that Matthies will change his mind.

Yeah I saw this:

May 2020: I will most probably stop development of RubiChess, so 1.7.3 will be the last version.
There is no progress to expect without massive copy-and-paste from better engines which is not my intention.
Also competing with other engines that are just translations of Stockfish to other programming languages
is no motivation. So better stop here. It was fun but better search for something new now.
Well, at least there is some cleanup in the making, not easy to get awy from this stuff

[matejst]

It seems that Matthies still develops RubiChess. He tested some changes on Andy's OpenBench recently.

[silentshark]

Oops, embarassing fix just published.

Francesca 0.29a has been uploaded to my website (www.silentshark.co.uk). This hopefully fixes a bizarre bug which seemed to kick in on games where 'ponder mode' was on. Nothing else changed, so if you've used 0.29 without ponder, there should be no difference.

Pip-pip

[voffka]

Igel 2.5.0 at https://github.com/vshcherbyna/igel/releases/tag/2.5.0 (binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows).

This release brings various improvements in code quality as well as strength improvements in search, evaluation and tt management. As of this release Igel uses OpenBench as a primary testing system and I would like to specially thank Andrew Grant for supporting Igel development on OpenBench.

What's new:

- Implement OpenBench support
- Implement BMI2 instruction support for faster search
- Implement prefetch instruction support for faster search
- Implement ponder support
- Implement improved sudden death time control management
- Implement use of hugepages in Linux OS
- Implement more efficient tt management and re-write tt replacement scheme to 'always replace'
- Implement proper handling of chopper moves
- Implement improved king safety evaluation
- Implement improved weights management
- Implement symmetric evaluation function
- Set tt score in qsearch
- Set bestmove as a hashmove by default
- Bugfix for knight outpost
- Bugfix for depth skipping in smp mode
- Implement pst based evaluation for connected passers
- Bugfix for probcut in check
- Factor in 'improving' even when in checks
- Adjust bestscore from tt score
- Bugfix shuffling of moves at root in smp mode

In case of bug reports, questions, discussions please ask them at main Igel topic at http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 06#p847306 to prevent polluting this thread.

[jonkr]

Big day for chess engine releases, Wasp, Ethereal, SlowChess and Igel.

I was reading voffka's post and decided it is good idea to announce SlowChess Blitz Classic 2.2 here too, since some people mentioned missing 2.1 when I released it since I re-use the old thread, also any SlowChess bugs or discussion I'll find easier here : http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=73420

I was hoping there was a small chance at just squeezing past Ethereal 12.00 on the FRC list where Slow does better against other engines than standard chess, then I saw an Ethereal update posted while I was getting release ready, so I guess I won't have to wonder, any strength increase probably too much.