Blackmamba 1.2

[Mdannib]

For those interested we have just released the new version of our chess engine BlackMamba.
There are a lot of news "under the hood"

https://sites.google.com/site/mdannib/home

Regards
Matteo & Maurizio.

[Graham Banks]

For those interested we have just released the new version of our chess engine BlackMamba.
There are a lot of news "under the hood"

https://sites.google.com/site/mdannib/home

Regards
Matteo & Maurizio.

Hope the author doesn't mind me posting this info.

BlackMamba is a single core chess-engine for Windows (32 e 64bit) and Mac OSX (only Intel based).

BlackMamba is tested with Arena (Windows), ScidvsMac, Shredder and HIARCS Chess Explorer (Mac OSX).

Main features are :

adjustable playing strength
support for UCI protocol
MultiPV for game analysis
support for polyglot opening books
support for Gaviota tablebases
load and save hash content for long analysis

New version 1.2 released

A brief list of the changes :

increased strength
improved search speed
better eval routine
new way of count nodes
smart detection of pawn blockages
runtime detection for SSE42 support


BlackMamba is developed by :

Matteo D'annibale programmer and developer
Maurizio Platino tester and developer (nickname playchess.com Mortal_Sin)


Acknowledgements
First of all i must thank all the people on the forum Talk Chess, Open Chess and Giocare a scacchi that have been a source of inspiration and encouragement to continue to invest my free time in this wonderful passion. In particular Robert Hyatt, Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, Richard Vida, Miguel Ballicora for their beautiful engines Crafty, Stockfish, Critter and Gaviota. Without their support and ideas i'd never been able to get decent results. Also a big thank goes to Norman Schmidt for the great Fire. Finally, a thanks to the people who are behind the project Ippolit, Robbolito and Ivanhoe.
Last, but only for reasons of time, a huge thanks to Maurizio Platino who joined as a beta-tester in this crazy idea and has already made a huge contribution that you can see with the next versions of the engine.

For those who are curious to know what's behind a chess engine I invite you to visit the most complete site for the chess engine programming.
http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/

Matteo D'Annibale

[Mdannib]

Thanks Graham

[geots]

For those interested we have just released the new version of our chess engine BlackMamba.
There are a lot of news "under the hood"

https://sites.google.com/site/mdannib/home

Regards
Matteo & Maurizio.

It has been a pleasure running your engine in the top group of the Freeware RR Championships, with 8 rounds remaining and updates in Tourn. and Matches section here. Thank you for making it available, and I look forward to this new version.


All the best,

george

[Mdannib]

Thank you George.

[Mdannib]

We discover a strange bug that occur occasionally in positions with blocked pawn structure.
The fix is available https://sites.google.com/site/mdannib/download

For those who downloaded the version 1.2 please upgrade to 1.2a

Regards

/Matteo

[Werner]

Hi,
is this a bug or a feature:
In a match with ponder off, 40 moves in 8 min; startpositions 8 full moves: the engine answers in the first moves very fast - 1-2 seconds for a move - later it it uses more time (around 20 sec per move)

[Mdannib]

Hi,
is this a bug or a feature:
In a match with ponder off, 40 moves in 8 min; startpositions 8 full moves: the engine answers in the first moves very fast - 1-2 seconds for a move - later it it uses more time (around 20 sec per move)

The time manager reserve the amount of time per move depending on a lot of factors as the move number, the remaining time, the time spent on the previous move, the number of pieces on board, etc., etc.
This is not a bug but a feature; download the 1.2a version that fix a strange bug that can cause an "infinite loop" in some positions.

/Matteo

[Werner]

normally I see engines using more time at the start of the game...

[Mdannib]

Do you use the 1.2 or the new version (1.2b) ?

I've made a mistake during the compile of the version 1.2a
There is the update 1.2b available https://sites.google.com/site/mdannib/download

Regards

/Matteo