What is New in Toga II 1.3x4?

[glorfindel]

were you also able to fix the egbb problem?

Depends on how you define fix. I just disabled them.

No, no, this is no fix at all.

Toga 1.3x4's superiority in strength over the previous version is highly dubious. The main reason to upgrade to this new version for me would be the new feature of endgame bitbases.

The endgame is my favorite part of the game and so I analyze endgame positions a lot. Now I am still stuck with Crafty if I want to check out a 5-piece position. Crafty is fine, but Toga with egbb's would be super.

PS: Thanks for the makefile, I upgraded anyway.

[Eelco de Groot]

[
Hello Neil, thanks for the example of a makefile. I'm trying to study C a bit and Toga's source at the same time, but for compiling Toga in Microsoft Visual C I don't suppose one could use your example makefile? I assume many compiler switches would not be the same?

The project is pretty simple. I think you could use the Visual Studio IDE and just add all the source files to a project, then hit "build". It would be nice if the Toga team would include the Visual Studio project file (assuming that's what they use). You could also try building with Mingw although that might be more challenging if you are not an experienced programmer.

Also, as you say you compiled Toga for Linux, it is probably a 64 bits version that you made? Would the patch be necessary for compilation of this version?

No patch necessary. It seems to work fine for me.

Thanks Neil!

I will try that one of these days. Now as Teemu Pudas already observed earlier, there has to be found some way to teach Toga that having an endgame with a lot of passed pawns and a Knight is not always sufficient if the opponent has a Rook that vacuums up all the pawns.

You make it sound a less daunting project:

"Wanted: Chess programmer. No previous experience or technical background necessary. Has to be able to hit "Build-button". Experience with "Copy" and "Paste" functions is a pre. Call us! At Cyberdyne Programming Division 101, we are building the future!"

Eelco

Example of Toga missing some endgame knowledge here:

[Event "8 minuten per partij + 8 seconden per zet"]
[Site "Engine Match"]
[Date "2007.04.17"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Rybka 1.0 Beta 32-bit"]
[Black "Toga 1.3 Blueberry 0.94a"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3
e6 7. f3 b5 8. g4 h6 9. Qd2 Nbd7 10. O-O-O Bb7 11. Bd3 Ne5
12. Rhe1 b4 13. Na4 d5 14. exd5 Nxd5 15. Bg1 Bd6 16. Be4
O-O 17. Nb6 Rb8 18. Nf5 Nxb6 19. Qxd6 Qxd6 20. Nxd6 Bxe4
21. Rxe4 Nxf3 22. Rxb4 Nd5 23. Rxb8 Rxb8 24. c4 Nb4 25. a3
Nc6 26. Kc2 Rd8 27. Bc5 Nxh2 28. b4 Nxg4 29. b5 Nb8 30. b6
h5 31. b7 f6 32. Kc3 Ne5 33. Bb6 Rd7 34. c5 h4 35. Ba7 Nbc6
36. Rb1 h3 37. Rh1 Rxb7 38. Nxb7 Nxa7 39. Rxh3 Nac6 40. Rh4
g5 41. Ra4 g4 42. Kd2 f5 43. Ke2 Kf8 44. Na5 Nxa5 45. Rxa5
Ke7 46. Rxa6 f4 47. Kf1 f3 48. Ra4 g3 49. Re4 g2+ 50. Kg1
Nf7 51. Rh4 Ng5 52. Kh2 Kd8 53. Rg4 Nf7 54. Rg8+ Ke7 55. c6
Nd6 56. Rg7+ Kf6 57. Ra7 Ke5 58. c7 Kd5 59. Ra6 1-0

[D]8/2P5/R2np3/3k4/8/P4p2/6pK/8 b - -

[Jouni]

I wonder what happened with EGBB fix release? I already have 1.3x4a
with EGBB fix from Thomas directly. It seems to fix problems with partial
bitbases at least. But public release seems to be delayed.

Jouni