Gaviota engine, v0.75.7 release (UCI)

[kingliveson]

A new version of the engine is available. Main change is that it now support the UCI protocol and many features, and solved issues, double book, bit bases on the fly, GTB restarting etc. etc.
http://sites.google.com/site/gaviotache ... e/releases

Do not expect a change in strength. If there is any, it will be tiny because of the new time management.

Check Change Log for details.
http://sites.google.com/site/gaviotache ... change-log

You can get Linux and Windows, 32 and 64 bit version at the download page
Tools to compress and verify the tablebases have been separated in a different zip file.

Miguel
PS: Thanks to Dann corbit for compiling the win64 version and all the people who beta-tested it. Check the acknowledgements
http://sites.google.com/site/gaviotache ... wledgments
I am sure I forgot someone writing some lines at the last minute... sorry...

Man, about time...thanks

[yanquis1972]

UCI!!!

[Aaron Becker]

Congratulations on the new release, Miguel. Your dedication to compatibility and stability is admirable.

Will a Mac OS X binary be provided?

We need to get Dann a Mac, or find a Mac user (whom programmers trust with their source codes) to provide OS X binaries of chess engines.

Running Windows binaries via Wine (usually) works, but it would be nice to have native OS X binaries.

I'm happy to help anyone who wants to create Mac binaries, either by producing them myself or by helping authors with Mac-specific compile issues (not that there should be very many).

[beachknight]

Thank you for the update.

Will be tested in my x64 tournaments.

Best,

[Jamal Bubker]

Thanks Miguel for this new release of Gaviota

[yanquis1972]

i have been meaning to toy around with this engine for some time, but the GUIs i primarily use didnt seem to support it.

miguel, do you have an estimate of what its human elo would be? nothing i'm going to hold you to, but after seeing hundreds/thousands of games i assume you have at least a rough feel for its strength. i see ccrl rates an older version 2600, which is quite surprising to me as i recall it being verrrrry slowww and primarily a 'knowledge' engine. but i'll know more soon.

at some point i am going to pester you/the board about these GTBs, but until then -- thanks!

[tmokonen]

Thank you Miguel, and a big, big thank you for your efforts with your tablebases, and openly sharing your tablebase probing code.

[michiguel]

i have been meaning to toy around with this engine for some time, but the GUIs i primarily use didnt seem to support it.

miguel, do you have an estimate of what its human elo would be? nothing i'm going to hold you to, but after seeing hundreds/thousands of games i assume you have at least a rough feel for its strength. i see ccrl rates an older version 2600, which is quite surprising to me as i recall it being verrrrry slowww and primarily a 'knowledge' engine. but i'll know more soon.

at some point i am going to pester you/the board about these GTBs, but until then -- thanks!

Certainly more than 2500, less than 2700, in current hardware. It does not search deep, but it has a difficult style for a human. It generally chooses positions with active pieces, which are not easy to play for us. Gaviota has many holes in evaluation, but it understands well where to place the pieces and keep the pressure (relatively speaking). That is why it has this Jekyll/Hyde style. One game will look awful, but the following, it may look like Kasparov. Certain classic positions are surprisingly good for Gaviota (Ruy Lopez, French, Slav), and others are not (most Sicilians).

Miguel

[michiguel]

Thank you, Miguel.

BTW, I regret to say that I could not find time to test which compression method is best - my first impression was method 3 so that's what I use now.

Cheers,

Method 3 is not the fastest, or the smallest, but it may be the best overall. Unfortunately it does not fit in every 8 MB flash drive (which are 7.4 MiB) to make it the default (scheme 4 is 6.5 MiB and 3 is 7.9 MiB).

Miguel

[michiguel]

Wow, it didn't take like 8 years

Hey! that is uncalled for! going from 0.33 to 0.74 was 6 years only.

Thanks for the new release; UCI is a great feature. It's so much easier to just install it normally vs. WB2UCI. And as a bonus, it should work in Aquarium now.

BTW, does it support any UCI2 features like Multi-PV and searchmoves?

Peter

It supports searchmoves, but not Multi-PV (yet). I think that Multi-PV is the last big feature that Gaviota is lacking. I am tempted to bump the version number to 1.0 after adding it.

Miguel

Miguel