New engine releases & news 2021

[jhonnold]

Berserk 7

Details
Another release of Berserk with an improved NNUE evaluation and small search patches.

The new network was trained using a custom trainer on 950 million FENs from Berserk 6 self play games. Along with this, the input arch has changed such that the pieces are now indexed relative to the side of the board the king is on. This should hopefully improve the network's ability to detect king attacks.

Minor search patches were added as well, most of which were many late move reduction tweaks.

Code: Select all

ELO   | 71.80 +- 4.62 (95%)
CONF  | 40.0+0.40s Threads=1 Hash=64MB
GAMES | N: 7504 W: 2110 L: 581 D: 4813

Self play results vs Berserk 6, this Elo gain may not reflect exactly when playing against other engines

Choosing a binary
Binaries currently require "popcnt".
Binaries without the label "avx2" are compiled with SSE.
Binaries with the label "pext" require your processor to support "bmi2".

They are available on Github: https://github.com/jhonnold/berserk/releases/tag/7

Changes
- Updated NNUE arch to utilize king side relativity and increased hidden layer to 512 neurons
- Evaluation scaling
- LMR Tweaks
Increase reductions on expected cutnodes
Less reduction for pawn pushes (to 7th) and checks
- Tweak bestmove update logic around previous cutnodes
Special thanks to Kim Kåhre of Koivisto for discovering this concept and sharing it with me

Bugs
- Fixed bug causing helper threads from being able to set bestmove in SMP. This should not have resulted in worse play, but could result in a crash when a helper started late and reported an old bestmove

Thanks
- As always, Andrew Grant (Ethereal's Author) for Open Bench. Development of Berserk would not be possible without this resource
- Connor McMonigle (Seer's Author) for continued guidance and advice on NNs
- Kim Kåhre (Koivisto's Author) for rubber duck debugging and theorizing

[Brunetti]

Hopper 1.7 Released

Bullet test:

Code: Select all

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Engines in Hopper 1.7 64-bit family
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rank  Elo   ±  Engine                                      Score Games  Wins Draws  Loss  Oppo time stal ille
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1. 2307  30 Hopper 1.7 64-bit                             49%   420   165    81   174    -8   2%   2%   0%
   2. 2240  24 Hopper 1.6 64-bit                             49%   696   273   137   286   -10   1%   6%   0%
   3. 2122  22 Hopper 1.5 64-bit                             49%   867   347   154   366    -3   5%   3%   0%
   4. 2112  28 Hopper 1.4 64-bit                             50%   485   196    96   193    +4  21%   4%   0%
   5. 1990  22 Hopper 1.3 64-bit                             49%   880   356   144   380   -12   1%   1%   0%
   6. 1967  23 Hopper 1.1 64-bit                             47%   755   303    97   355   -30  19%   1%   0%
   7. 1962  21 Hopper 1.2 64-bit                             48%   852   322   168   362   -20   1%   0%   0%
   8. 1877  21 Hopper 20211004 64-bit                        47%   915   348   161   406   -24   1%   0%   0%
   9. 1828  22 Hopper 20211003 64-bit                        49%   847   362   106   379    -5   1%   1%   1%
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alex

[Guenther]

FoxSEE 7.28
https://github.com/redsalmon91/FoxSEE/releases

[Brunetti]

Berserk 7

1'+1" rating:

Code: Select all

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Engines in Berserk 7 64-bit family
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rank  Elo   ±  Engine                                      Score Games  Wins Draws  Loss  Oppo time stal ille
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1. 3500  27 Berserk 7 64-bit                              62%   512   220   196    96  +126   0%   0%   0%
   2. 3454  17 Berserk 6 64-bit                              57%  1200   453   455   292   +68   0%   0%   0%
   3. 3371  22 Berserk 4.5.1 64-bit                          50%   772   251   274   247   +12   0%   0%   0%
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alex

[Brunetti]

FoxSEE 7.28

Elo bullet:

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Engines in FoxSEE 7.28 64-bit family
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rank  Elo   ±  Engine                                      Score Games  Wins Draws  Loss  Oppo time stal ille
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1. 2451  22 FoxSEE 7.27 64-bit                            50%   790   306   173   311    -4   0%   2%   0%
   2. 2448  21 FoxSEE 7.26.0 EM 64-bit                       49%   886   342   185   359   -10   0%   2%   0%
   3. 2422  23 FoxSEE 7.28 64-bit                            48%   725   266   159   300   -16   0%   0%   0%
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alex

[Brunetti]

Blank 1.2.0 released.

https://github.com/RyanLauQF/BLANK-Chess

Nice increase on 1+1 rating:

Code: Select all

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Engines in Blank 1.2.0 64-bit family
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rank  Elo   ±  Engine                                      Score Games  Wins Draws  Loss  Oppo time stal ille
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1. 1718  32 Blank 1.2.0 64-bit                            43%   394   124    87   183   -60   0%   2%   0%
   2. 1573  21 Blank 1.1.0 64-bit                            45%   907   334   142   431   -45   0%   3%   0%
   3. 1572  21 Blank 1.0 64-bit                              45%   894   321   155   418   -46   0%   4%   0%
   4. 1549  22 Blank 1.0.1 64-bit                            44%   889   318   148   423   -48   0%   3%   0%
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alex

[mvanthoor]

In case anyone notices: There was a release of Rustic Alpha 3.0.1 today.

https://github.com/mvanthoor/rustic/releases

It fixes a bug (typo) in the "extra" module which caused the engine to not compile if you included this module. I have reactivated the "extra" module in my code completion, because the tuner will be in there. That caused the code completion to indicate this error.

Nothing has changed in the main part of the engine. This release does not have to be tested.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi there,

Bagatur 2.2f is available.
https://github.com/bagaturchess/Bagatur/

Best
Frank

[tmokonen]

Hi there,

Bagatur 2.2f is available.
https://github.com/bagaturchess/Bagatur/

Best
Frank

And now Bagatur 2.2g has already been released, which is a bugfix of 2.2f. It's the same link as before.

[Guenther]

Soon to come:
Inanis (successor of Cosette)
https://github.com/Tearth/Inanis