New engine releases & news 2021

[Damir]

If you tell him it is a joke personally maybe it will motivate the author to further degrade his engine...

[Wolfgang]

...and other CEGT testers

???
It's new to me that Gabor is CEGT tester
You mean CCRL, do you?

[Damir]

Hi

I mixed those 2 things up... but the purpose of both CCRL and CEGT is to test chess engines....

[Gabor Szots]

Megalodon 0.4.3 with hash tables!
https://github.com/megalodon-chess/mega ... tag/v0.4.3

Cosette 5.0
https://github.com/Tearth/Cosette/releases/tag/v5.0

[Guenther]

Megalodon 0.4.3 with hash tables!
https://github.com/megalodon-chess/mega ... tag/v0.4.3

Cosette 5.0
https://github.com/Tearth/Cosette/releases/tag/v5.0

I compiled some binaries for Megalodon 0.43. Also I did some tests yesterday if it would be more stable than the last ones I tested inbetween.
The stalemate bug is gone and it gained about 200 rating points in my test vs. KillerQueen 2.03b. (around 1300 in GURL/CCRL which makes
Megalodon now around 1150 roughly guessed)
It still can lose on time occasionally though (2/60 in my test with 40/120).

Code: Select all

Score of Megalodon_043-64 vs KillerQueen_20b3: 9 - 33 - 18 [0.300]
...      Megalodon_043-64 playing White: 5 - 16 - 9  [0.317] 30
...      Megalodon_043-64 playing Black: 4 - 17 - 9  [0.283] 30
...      White vs Black: 22 - 20 - 18  [0.517] 60
Elo difference: -147.2 +/- 78.8, LOS: 0.0 %, DrawRatio: 30.0 %
60 of 200 games finished.

Player: Megalodon_043-64
   "Draw by 3-fold repetition": 15
   "Draw by adjudication: user decision": 1
   "Draw by stalemate": 2
   "Loss: Black loses on time": 1
   "Loss: Black mates": 15
   "Loss: White loses on time": 1
   "Loss: White mates": 16
   "Win: Black loses on time": 1
   "Win: Black makes an illegal move: e8d8": 1
   "Win: Black mates": 3
   "Win: White makes an illegal move: b4b5": 1
   "Win: White mates": 3

As promised I have uploaded all versions of CPP1, Embla and Micah that I found in my archives after the official downloads
had vanished.

Chronology Details sheet also updated with lots of informations for the 'peculiarities' column yesterday!
(which continues finally my old idea of a bug list, each entry can now hold four lines of informations.)

[niel5946]

After a lot of work and testing, Loki 3.0 is now released. Thanks to Marcel (who pointed out how underrated Loki was, its feature set taken into account), I have been working tirelessly to rework the search and evaluation function. This has paid off greatly!

I have tested the new version to have a strength of around 2510 (>600 elo points stronger than v1.2.0). This was done in three separate gauntlets against MadChess 2.2 and Raven 1.10.

The release: https://github.com/BimmerBass/Loki/releases/tag/v3.0.0

[Gabor Szots]

After a lot of work and testing, Loki 3.0 is now released. Thanks to Marcel (who pointed out how underrated Loki was, its feature set taken into account), I have been working tirelessly to rework the search and evaluation function. This has paid off greatly!

I have tested the new version to have a strength of around 2510 (>600 elo points stronger than v1.2.0). This was done in three separate gauntlets against MadChess 2.2 and Raven 1.10.

The release: https://github.com/BimmerBass/Loki/releases/tag/v3.0.0

Splendid news, Niels.

Unfortunately, even my Loki 2.0.0 results could not appear on our list yet so 3.0 will have to wait a bit I'm afraid.

[emadsen]

After a lot of work and testing, Loki 3.0 is now released. Thanks to Marcel (who pointed out how underrated Loki was, its feature set taken into account), I have been working tirelessly to rework the search and evaluation function. This has paid off greatly!

I have tested the new version to have a strength of around 2510 (>600 elo points stronger than v1.2.0). This was done in three separate gauntlets against MadChess 2.2 and Raven 1.10.

The release: https://github.com/BimmerBass/Loki/releases/tag/v3.0.0

Sounds like great progress, Niels. However, I saw in your recent commit you tested Loki versus MadChess 2.2 with a time control of 5s + 0.1s. I don't test MadChess at lightning time control. The fastest games I use are 2m+1s, so MadChess' rating at 5s + 0.1s is unreliable. My guess is MadChess performs much worse at 5s + 0.1s than 2m + 1s. I don't know why. I've never investigated it. Perhaps due to the disadvantage of a managed memory runtime (C#) versus a native runtime (C++). Perhaps due to poor implementation on my part that manifests itself only in very fast games.

Anyhow, if you're basing your ELO estimate of Loki off a gauntlet versus MadChess at 5s + 0.1s, you're likely inflating the rating of Loki. You can answer the question definitively by running games at 2m+1s, which is what CCRL uses for blitz ratings.

[niel5946]

Sounds like great progress, Niels. However, I saw in your recent commit you tested Loki versus MadChess 2.2 with a time control of 5s + 0.1s. I don't test MadChess at lightning time control. The fastest games I use are 2m+1s, so MadChess' rating at 5s + 0.1s is unreliable. My guess is MadChess performs much worse at 5s + 0.1s than 2m + 1s. I don't know why. I've never investigated it. Perhaps due to the disadvantage of a managed memory runtime (C#) versus a native runtime (C++). Perhaps due to poor implementation on my part that manifests itself only in very fast games.

Anyhow, if you're basing your ELO estimate of Loki off a gauntlet versus MadChess at 5s + 0.1s, you're likely inflating the rating of Loki. You can answer the question definitively by running games at 2m+1s, which is what CCRL uses for blitz ratings.

Thank you for your response! I don't know if this is worth anything, but when I ran the gauntlets, I anchored the ratings to Raven's 2min+1sec CCRL rating, and the rating of MadChess 2.2 (in all three tests) was nearly identical to the one on CCRL Blitz, so I assumed the results would at least be partly valid. I also tested Loki 3.0 against some weaker engines (because my self-play against v2.0 and v1.2.0 showed lower elo changes), and they showed an elo in the same range.
Therefore I think the rating results of Loki 3.0 are, as said, at least within a reasonable range of its real rating. But unfortunately, due to school and only owning one computer, it is rather hard for me to conduct longer tc tests.

[emadsen]

Therefore I think the rating results of Loki 3.0 are, as said, at least within a reasonable range of its real rating. But unfortunately, due to school and only owning one computer, it is rather hard for me to conduct longer tc tests.

OK. I wanted to warn you were wandering into uncharted territory using a very fast time control with my engine. I understand testing is difficult with limited computing resources. We'll see what CCRL finds.