Ongoing GO programming?

[shiv]

What is the strongest GO (commercial or free) program currently? Is there any in development possibly by members of this forum?

[Zach Wegner]

A few come to mind: Don Dailey and Remi Coulom, though not regular members, have established programs. Daniel Mehrmann has one I believe. I have a small program that is not in active development.

The strongest I believe is Mogo, at least at 9x9. I'm not sure of the status of 19x19 though.

[yoshiharu]

And what about arabic chess engines?
My chess engine has a twin playing shatranj, but I have an hard time finding tabiyat on the web. Also documentation to refine the evaluation function, but that's another question

Cheers, Mauro

[chessfurby]

"Leela" is a program in development by GCP and it is improving rather fast. However it is private afaik.

Cheers

[mageofmaple]

And what about arabic chess engines?
My chess engine has a twin playing shatranj, but I have an hard time finding tabiyat on the web. Also documentation to refine the evaluation function, but that's another question

Cheers, Mauro

ChessV plays Shatranj - http://www.chessv.com

[hgm]

Fairy-Max is a Winboard engine that can be configured for Shatranj, although I am not sure about the repetition and reversible-move draw rules in that game (or even how stalemate is handled). So it might handle those completely wrong. Also the piece values are wild guesses. But it should play, even if lousy.

[yoshiharu]

And what about arabic chess engines?
My chess engine has a twin playing shatranj, but I have an hard time finding tabiyat on the web. Also documentation to refine the evaluation function, but that's another question

Cheers, Mauro

ChessV plays Shatranj - http://www.chessv.com

Thank you.
As a matter of fact I already knew about ChessV; I would have preferred a xboard/winboard engine, but nonetheless I will give it a try.

Does it come with an opening book or something similar?

Cheers, Mauro

[yoshiharu]

Fairy-Max is a Winboard engine that can be configured for Shatranj, although I am not sure about the repetition and reversible-move draw rules in that game (or even how stalemate is handled). So it might handle those completely wrong. Also the piece values are wild guesses. But it should play, even if lousy.

I see. I will give Fairy-Max (Phi-Max ? ) a try later. The xboard compatibility is a valuable plus for me.

AFAIK stalemate is a loss condition (you are stalemated==you lose). Also bare king loses (unless it can capture back the last opponent's piece).
I think this won't be hard to implement anyway.

I get it, anyway, that it won't come with any opening book...

Cheers, Mauro

[mageofmaple]

And what about arabic chess engines?
My chess engine has a twin playing shatranj, but I have an hard time finding tabiyat on the web. Also documentation to refine the evaluation function, but that's another question

Cheers, Mauro

ChessV plays Shatranj - http://www.chessv.com

Thank you.
As a matter of fact I already knew about ChessV; I would have preferred a xboard/winboard engine, but nonetheless I will give it a try.

Does it come with an opening book or something similar?

Cheers, Mauro

Hi Mauro,

It does not have an opening book for Shatranj (although it has support for it - if you drop a file called Shatranj.txt in the openings directory, it will work.) There isn't much point, though, because the openings in Shatranj are so slow ... For the first several moves I don't think you really have to be too concerned about what your opponent is doing.

As for piece values, I use the following as defaults: Elephant = 1000, Ferz = 1850, Knight = 4000, Rook = 5500 (all measured in millipawns.)

[hgm]

As for piece values, I use the following as defaults: Elephant = 1000, Ferz = 1850, Knight = 4000, Rook = 5500 (all measured in millipawns.)

Interesting. The main problem with Fairy-Max was that it really is designed to work with ordinary FIDE Pawns, that promote to FIDE Queens, and that such Pawns get very hefty bonuses for reaching 6th or 7th rank, due to the loomin promotion. As thiese bonuses are hard-coded into fMax, I have to scale up all the other piece values (including Pawn base value) to make the bonus more in line with the prospect of gaining a measly Ferz.

So I guessed values

P=3
F=8
E=8
N=15
R=25

where the 6th and 7th-rank bonuses would be 1 and 2, respectively. So a Pawn on 7th would be worth 5, still well below the value of an actual Ferz.

Seems I lightly underestimated the Pawn, and grossly overestimated the Elephant. Better to put P=4 and E=4 then, which you can easily do in the fmax.ini file.