New WCCC Version of The Baron Released (Plus Polyglot Opening Book)

[Steve Maughan]

Richard Pijl has been kind enough to released The Baron 3.43. This is almost identical to the version that played in the 2018 WCCC. Here are Richard’s release notes:

Changes since 3.42:
Bugs solved:

• Pin detection in evaluation only detected close pins.
  Handle spaces in the syzygy path
  Slightly more restrictive in playing easy moves
  Fixed singular extensions bug
  Increased search stack size

Improvement:

• Detecting pins to the queen
  Evaluation tuning
  Better use of time, especially on short time controls
  More selective in quiescence
  Reduced aspiration window

Changes since 3.41:
Bugs solved:

• UCI mode possible from the command prompt
  Handling missing dtz files correctly (I hope)
  Show Refutations is disabled as I did not have the time yet to look at it.

Improvement:

• Changed scoring on TB hits
  Keep probing TB during search on reaching TB positions
  Added Syzygy path option to UCI
  Ported to Raspberry Pi
  Full functionality available in native Linux version
  Refactoring of several classes

You can download it using the ling below, along with The Baron’s opening book (in Polyglot format):

https://www.chessprogramming.net/new-ve ... ning-book/

[tmokonen]

Thank you Richard for the engine, and Steve for hosting it.

However... when I try download the book, the download link points to the same file as the engine download.

[Graham Banks]

Thank you Richard for the engine, and Steve for hosting it.

+1

[CMCanavessi]

Thanx a lot for this new version!

[tmokonen]

OK, I think I figured out the link for the book:

https://maughancdn.s3.amazonaws.com/che ... book30.zip

[Steve Maughan]

Yes the book link is:

https://maughancdn.s3.amazonaws.com/che ... book30.zip

Steve

[matejst]

Great news! Thank you, Steve, and, of course Richard.

[Damir]

Thanks for a very nice engine Richard. I hope you keep on improving Baron.

[Colin-G]

The 32 bit version does not work at all on my computer running Win XP 32 bit.
The cpu is athlon64 but does not have popcnt instruction, so thats probably why.
The 64 bit version works ok in Arena with wine in Mint 18.1 (different computer) but crashes as soon as it is used after the path to my 5 man Syzygy files is entered in the .ini file.
The 64 bit version works as a UCI engine in Arena in Windows 10 (another computer) but fails when trying to analyse my test position which I use to check whether my 5 man Syzygy files are being used.
[d]8/3k4/8/8/1p3p2/8/2NBK3/8 w --
It immediately plays Ne3 and the game is drawn after pawn takes knight!
I removed the .ini file, turned off learning, deleted the learn file, deleted the path to the Syzygy files, restarted Baron and Arena but it makes this move every time?
Other engines, which use Syzygy, have no problem with this position, which is mate in 30.

[Colin-G]

Please ignore the comments about the 64bit version problems in my previous post.
They seem to work ok this morning.
The 32bit version still fails on that computer, its ok on the others.
I was unable to edit or delete the post.