Has anyone heard of this chess program

[cooldalek]

I am loving playing against Vicki. Great fun!

[gerold]

I stand in awe at how my little chess program is being torn apart. Please note the use of the word "little". Many aspects such as transposition tables and null moves are still missing. Thank you for the interest and let me know what you guys think.

Just something on the rating. I based the fact that Vicki plays at 1200 ELO on my own strength and that of known chess engine ratings. I also state on my web page that this value is a pure estimation. It value is a pure guideline and I believe that it is fairly good estimation... If you don't like that, than regard Vicki to be on "a-work-in-progress-beginner-program-by-a-chess-hobbiest" strength

Thanks Jaco for the interesting eng. Enjoy playing it.
Keep up the good work.

Gerold.

[cooldalek]

Andres

Will do. I'll send the pgn to anyone who wants it (confess I haven't checked for time losses - will do that tonight - although I did watch one of the games against EveAnn and Vicki won it on merit)

I'll do a more complete tourney at longer time controls tonight

Running long tourney now. Actually, when I double checked EveAnn did lose on time so my memory was wrong.

[cooldalek]

6-0 to eveann

But I still think Vicki is great fun to play against!

[sparky]

The next version of Vicki will be released soon and I suspect a significant improvement. Will keep the forum posted.

[cooldalek]

Great - I already think it is stronger than cassandre 0.24

I am about to do a 6 game tourney at 40 10 time controls

[hgm]

I was doing a round robin of Nunn matches with some engines from the tail of the WBEC list, in order to determine a rating for micro-Max 1.6 (which, with 1433 characters, is currently the smallest version of micro-Max, and thus likely the smallest Chess program in the World source-code wise). So far I am still working at either 1'+1" or 40/1' time control on a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo (ponder off).

(Not all engines in this region understand all time controls, especially in combination with force+go, and although I mainly play 40/1', for some I have to use 1'+1", which should be nearly equivalent, to get reasonable time usage.)

I added Vicki to the list. It lost to TSCP (16-4) and Zoltron and CEFAP (both 12-8), and beat micro-Max 4.0 (13.5-6.5) and Eden and micro-Max 1.6 (both 17-3). I guess these results put it closer to 1400 on the WBEC scale (which, I am aware, is not a bullet rating).

Some criticism:

At this time control, it cannot mate in KQK, despite the search depth of 7 ply it reaches. This cost it several points against TSCP. It even bungled KQNPPK. You could solve all this by telling the eval that a bare King is good in the center (e.g. through a piece-square table).

It does not properly use 1'+1" time control: the time on its clock stays very close to 1' during the entire game.

There also seems to be something wrong with the draw claim: CEFAP gets the game awarded on grounds of {Forfeit due to illegal move} on every repetition draw. (With other engines I didn't see this, but this might be because they claim themselves earlier. CEFAP does not even claim when it checkmates the opponent, which causes a game against Vicki to hang, as Vicki does not terminate or resign when checkmated...) Against Eden, each time Eden is checkmated, the game goes to Vicki due to the same illegal-move forfeit, so I guess that Vicki does not claim checkmates either, even if it performs the checkmate. To make life on testers easier, please fix this...

[Tord Romstad]

Wao. I didn't think people would take notice of Vicki! It is playing so badly at the moment!! My aim with the engine is not to create a strong overpowering engine at 2800 elo (perhaps I'll switch with the winboard "computer" command), but to create an engine a little less strong, say 2000 elo, that plays sacrificial chess, takes big risks and plays a kind of chess that we as humans will regard as beautiful. Who can forget the immortal game between Anderssen and Kieseritzky? That is what I am going for!

Sounds fun: That's the kind of chess engine I like. I wish I could test it myself. Any chance of a Mac OS X version?

Tord