New version(s) of Ares

[CRoberson]

Ares 1.005.2.1 is here http://aigames.net/AresChess1-005.2.html

I added code to the King Safety code and some equation tuning to prevent rear flank attacks
that it was blind to as pointed out by a game with Myrddin on Graham's site. Now, it makes
such attacks and should defend against them. After 100 games with Ares 1.005.2 it seems 28
Elo stronger, but I suspect more. It did make attacks and win with the new knowledge, but
Ares 1.005.2 never tried to attack with that because it didn't know about them. So, it might
be higher than that due to its ability to anticipate and defend against Myrddin's rear flank
attacks wasn't tested by the older version of Ares.

Future works: I've been inspired of late by several things lately: several upcoming live computer chess events, Alpha Zero, Lc0 and some games I've watched on Grahams site. So, Ares 2.0 will be a holistically tuned version with no new code except for tuning. Never tuned except by hand and a GA I coded to tune one section of the eval. The method will be something I thought of in grad school in the 1990s while reading Gerald Tesauro's published research papers on Backgammon. Ares 3.0 will be based on further research he did on Backgammon. (Side info: In the early 1990s, I met him at an IEEE conference on Computational Intelligence - he was very nice and it was quite enjoyable talking to him about his research.) Also, when Ares increases its strength maybe I can get it in a board - I've been interested in that since the 80s.

[Graham Banks]

Excellent news. Thanks Charles.

[Dokterchen]

Great news!

BTW: I have played against TD Gammon. A friend of mine have had a computer with OS/2. Jesus! - almost 30 years ago.

[Sergio Martinez]

Thank you very much for the new version Charles!

Testing now...