Honey-X5i and Crystal-Honey-X5i Dual Release!

[MikeB]

Honey X5i

Crystal-Honey X5i

Binaries of all flavors are towards the bottom of each release page, will add more notes in few days headed to my nephew's a wedding at the shore for tomorrow!

One important note - ALL weaker levels ( play b y Elo or adaptive play) should be used with ONLY one core or thread and 16M hash is more than enough.
These weaker levels will make their moves instantly UNLESS you check the UCI_Sleep button, Then they will play exactly the same moves ( except for the random element that may factor in) , but will take the appropriate time for the time control selected since they will fall into a non busy sleep for that time control.

Enjoy - the adaptive levels will tend to play at your level - so if you're having a bad day, the engine will have a bad day as well . If you start to pull ahead, it will pickup it's game and get tougher.

Both engines have the exact same features - ability to use 4 opening books in sequence ( including Brainfish books) , play by Elo , adaptive play , sleep option to stop rapid fire moves etc.

Enjoy! - will check the board remotely for any questions periodically,

[MikeB]

Honey X5i

Crystal-Honey X5i

Binaries of all flavors are towards the bottom of each release page, will add more notes in few days headed to my nephew's a wedding at the shore for tomorrow!

One important note - ALL weaker levels ( play b y Elo or adaptive play) should be used with ONLY one core or thread and 16M hash is more than enough.
These weaker levels will make their moves instantly UNLESS you check the UCI_Sleep button, Then they will play exactly the same moves ( except for the random element that may factor in) , but will take the appropriate time for the time control selected since they will fall into a non busy sleep for that time control.

Enjoy - the adaptive levels will tend to play at your level - so if you're having a bad day, the engine will have a bad day as well . If you start to pull ahead, it will pickup it's game and get tougher.

Both engines have the exact same features - ability to use 4 opening books in sequence ( including Brainfish books) , play by Elo , adaptive play , sleep option to stop rapid fire moves etc.

Enjoy! - will check the board remotely for any questions periodically,

Also much gratitude and appreciation with a tip of the hat towards Lucas Monge in providing the windows and linux binaries as he had done faithfully with every release. Scally will update RPi binaries upon his return from Ireland.

[ChiefPushesWood]

Thanks Mike,
Just compiled my copy

Chief

[PeterO]

Great!

Can you PLEASE make a ANDROID version?

Peter

[MikeB]

Great!

Can you PLEASE make a ANDROID version?

Peter

Hopefully someone can help you out, I certainly don't have the means since I do not have any android devices except for a 32 bit Pi and that would not work.

[PeterO]

Thanks for your answer!

I am looking for YEARS for an engine like this!

Can someone help me?

Peter

[Master Om]

Honey X5i

Crystal-Honey X5i

Binaries of all flavors are towards the bottom of each release page, will add more notes in few days headed to my nephew's a wedding at the shore for tomorrow!

One important note - ALL weaker levels ( play b y Elo or adaptive play) should be used with ONLY one core or thread and 16M hash is more than enough.
These weaker levels will make their moves instantly UNLESS you check the UCI_Sleep button, Then they will play exactly the same moves ( except for the random element that may factor in) , but will take the appropriate time for the time control selected since they will fall into a non busy sleep for that time control.

Enjoy - the adaptive levels will tend to play at your level - so if you're having a bad day, the engine will have a bad day as well . If you start to pull ahead, it will pickup it's game and get tougher.

Both engines have the exact same features - ability to use 4 opening books in sequence ( including Brainfish books) , play by Elo , adaptive play , sleep option to stop rapid fire moves etc.

Enjoy! - will check the board remotely for any questions periodically,

Can please tell whats the purpose of Honey ? I mean its specialty over default SF ?

[Leo]

Honey X5i

Crystal-Honey X5i

Binaries of all flavors are towards the bottom of each release page, will add more notes in few days headed to my nephew's a wedding at the shore for tomorrow!

One important note - ALL weaker levels ( play b y Elo or adaptive play) should be used with ONLY one core or thread and 16M hash is more than enough.
These weaker levels will make their moves instantly UNLESS you check the UCI_Sleep button, Then they will play exactly the same moves ( except for the random element that may factor in) , but will take the appropriate time for the time control selected since they will fall into a non busy sleep for that time control.

Enjoy - the adaptive levels will tend to play at your level - so if you're having a bad day, the engine will have a bad day as well . If you start to pull ahead, it will pickup it's game and get tougher.

Both engines have the exact same features - ability to use 4 opening books in sequence ( including Brainfish books) , play by Elo , adaptive play , sleep option to stop rapid fire moves etc.

Enjoy! - will check the board remotely for any questions periodically,

Can please tell whats the purpose of Honey ? I mean its specialty over default SF ?

I was wondering that also.

[Ovyron]

Honey is the latest version of the McBrain-McCain branches of Stockfish. Those branches were specifically coded to be useful in analysis of chess positions, with improvements that would allow it to find the best moves before Stockfish dev, other branches, or by using MultiPV internally (called the Tactical Settings).

Around the date McCain X was released I could say it was the definitive Stockfish version to use for analysis of correspondence games (it won me many games that I couldn't have won without it!). But time has passed, there have been important improvements on Stockfish that have made the differences with McCain/Honey less relevant, and that have meshed well with different code changes from other branches, like Eman or CFish (which is still better than Stockfish dev for this.) Otherwise, Honey suggests very similar moves to other branches so it seems its useful times have been over since July or thereabouts (in my experience).

As for the Crystal version, it adds code that makes it a tactical monster in test suites, being the best at finding the most tactics in the most positions the fastest, or something. In practice, I couldn't find an use for it. The problem is that if there's no tactic to find it's really slow, as in, if the best move isn't tactical it's going to take ages to find it. You'd want to use Crystal if there's a tactic on the board and you want to find it ASAP, but the conundrum is that you can't know that in advance, so if you already know about the tactic you don't need Crystal in the first place...

Disclaimer: I haven't tried Sugar NN yet, that's why it's absent from this post.

[MikeB]

Honey X5i

Crystal-Honey X5i

Binaries of all flavors are towards the bottom of each release page, will add more notes in few days headed to my nephew's a wedding at the shore for tomorrow!

One important note - ALL weaker levels ( play b y Elo or adaptive play) should be used with ONLY one core or thread and 16M hash is more than enough.
These weaker levels will make their moves instantly UNLESS you check the UCI_Sleep button, Then they will play exactly the same moves ( except for the random element that may factor in) , but will take the appropriate time for the time control selected since they will fall into a non busy sleep for that time control.

Enjoy - the adaptive levels will tend to play at your level - so if you're having a bad day, the engine will have a bad day as well . If you start to pull ahead, it will pickup it's game and get tougher.

Both engines have the exact same features - ability to use 4 opening books in sequence ( including Brainfish books) , play by Elo , adaptive play , sleep option to stop rapid fire moves etc.

Enjoy! - will check the board remotely for any questions periodically,

Can please tell whats the purpose of Honey ? I mean its specialty over default SF ?

Does SF have adaptive play?
Does SF have FIDE Elo levels?
Does SF have the ability to use 4 openings books?
Does SF have the ability to turn brute force search on?
Does SF have a variety option?
Does SF has the ability to turn off null moves?
Does SF have predefine level settings ( see snapshot below)?
Does SF have the ability to turn off 7 man probing with more than 7 pieces on the board ( Honey performs one probe with 7 man pieces and that's it. If have have most of 7 man syzygy on HDD, you will know exactly what I'm talking about)
If those options above do not interest you, then perhaps Honey is not for you and I'm fine with that and you should be too.

I make Honey for myself - and I'm just willing to share with with others that share my common desire for the features I have added. It's not everybody's cup of tea, and I'm fine with that.

snapshot of UCI options:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9b0pexn34351 ... M.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uzsk3vu1yo0qm ... M.png?dl=0

Edit : Also Honey does more extensions and less pruning - this often causes it to be slightly weaker at micro bullet , but some people may prefer those settings when using Honey for deep analysis , for example, in an ICCF game.