New engine releases & news 2021

[Guenther]

I have added of course two compilations too a few days ago. (see chronology)
0.3.2 can still make illegal moves from time to time though...and it has a stalemate bug.

OK, I'm not going to pester any more.

Gabor, I didn't feel pestered, it would make sense though to look first into the chronology, that's all.
(I thought all potential testers do anyway?)

BTW current dev (r2046) seems a step back (again).
(check the issues at github - I stop testing it now for a while, as it makes no sense, there is a permanent change of code but obviously zero testing)

[Gabor Szots]

Gabor, I didn't feel pestered, it would make sense though to look first into the chronology, that's all.
(I thought all potential testers do anyway?)

BTW current dev (r2046) seems a step back (again).
(check the issues at github - I stop testing it now for a while, as it makes no sense, there is a permanent change of code but obviously zero testing)

I did look at the chronology first - ah, I see that GS now.
BTW, FoxSEE is not making progress either.

[Guenther]

Gabor, I didn't feel pestered, it would make sense though to look first into the chronology, that's all.
(I thought all potential testers do anyway?)

BTW current dev (r2046) seems a step back (again).
(check the issues at github - I stop testing it now for a while, as it makes no sense, there is a permanent change of code but obviously zero testing)

I did look at the chronology first - ah, I see that GS now.
BTW, FoxSEE is not making progress either.

Not only this, I noticed that FoxSEE had more releases in the past since 5.4.0, but they can vanish suddenly from one day to another.

IIRC I only add that GS, if there are no win compilations available at all, it's not important for me anyway and GS could be Gabor Szots either ;-)
(but I will always add my download link for alternative compilations e.g. old hardware or requests, if they are missing)

[Ras]

BTW, FoxSEE is not making progress either.

Btw., I think your problems with FoxSEE and Fritz 17 may be related to FoxSEE's incomplete UCI implementation. If I understand the code correctly, FoxSEE accepts either startpos plus movelist, or FEN but ignores the following movelist. If Fritz 17 handles it like Droidfish, i.e. handing over FEN plus movelist since the last irreversible move, then this wouldn't work. It would also explain why it works with some other GUIs. Maybe that would be a hint for FoxSEE's issue list.

[Gabor Szots]

BTW, FoxSEE is not making progress either.

Btw., I think your problems with FoxSEE and Fritz 17 may be related to FoxSEE's incomplete UCI implementation. If I understand the code correctly, FoxSEE accepts either startpos plus movelist, or FEN but ignores the following movelist. If Fritz 17 handles it like Droidfish, i.e. handing over FEN plus movelist since the last irreversible move, then this wouldn't work. It would also explain why it works with some other GUIs. Maybe that would be a hint for FoxSEE's issue list.

Thanks, I have included your suggestion in the FoxSEE issue conversation.

[voffka]

Igel 3.0.0 at https://github.com/vshcherbyna/igel/releases/tag/3.0.0 (official executable binaries for Windows and IGN net).

This release brings significant improvements in search, move ordering, time management and evaluation. Strength increase due to search/move ordering improvements is around 40 elo, strength increase due to new network is 20 elo more.

The new network ign-1-139b702b is trained using nnue-pytorch on 10.5 billions of positions using data from Igel 2.6.0 (HCE) and Igel 2.9.0 (NNUE).

Enormous amount of computational power has been used to test this build on OpenBench, I would like to thank Andrew Grant and Bojun Guo (noobpwnftw) for supporting Igel project!

I would like to also thank authors of nnue-pytorch project for helping to make this release possible and more or less 'hassle free' training experience!

P.S. I decided to remove 'EvalFile' option from uci parameters and embed network file into executable by default: there were too many users on Igel 2.9.0 having all sort of problems with that option and being confused if network is embedded or not. I hope it will be simpler as of Igel 3.0.0.

What's new:

- Train a new network using Igel 2.6.0 (HCE) and Igel 2.9.0 (NNUE) data: ign-1-139b702b
- Remove 'EvalFile' option - as of Igel 3.0.0 the network file is always embedded in the executable
- Fix in check extensions
- Use incbin on Linux to inject network file into the binary
- Tune null move prunning conditions
- Tune probcut prunning conditions
- Tune quiets prunning
- Fix bogus condition for history calculation
- Implement more aggressive null move prunning
- Stop extension of captures
- Prevent explosion of history extensions
- Implement better time management for sudden death time control
- Count not played quiets for LMP prunning
- Remove dummy 100 multiplier for history ordering calculation
- Fix compilation issues with gcc 10 and Android NDK's Clang
- Remove unused counter move table
- Fix out of boundary access for history array
- Fix issue with singular extensions - reported by ChizhovVadim (author of CounterGo chess engine)
- Fix crash when 'ucinewgame' command is not issued - reported by Ipmanchess
- Fix crash when thread position is not initialized - reported by Ipmanchess

Regression run against Igel 2.9.0:

Short Time Control No Increment

Code: Select all

ELO   | 115.05 +- 3.88 (95%)
SPRT  | 10.0+0.0s Threads=1 Hash=8MB
LLR   | 0.00 (-2.94, 2.94) [0.00, 0.00]
Games | N: 20652 W: 9913 L: 3314 D: 7425

Short Time Control With Increment

Code: Select all

ELO   | 75.88 +- 3.53 (95%)
SPRT  | 10.0+0.1s Threads=1 Hash=8MB
LLR   | 0.00 (-2.94, 2.94) [0.00, 0.00]
Games | N: 20904 W: 8061 L: 3567 D: 9276

Long Time Control No Increment

Code: Select all

ELO   | 83.16 +- 4.04 (95%)
SPRT  | 60.0+0.0s Threads=1 Hash=64MB
LLR   | 0.00 (-2.94, 2.94) [0.00, 0.00]
Games | N: 13508 W: 4814 L: 1641 D: 7053

Long Time Control With Increment

Code: Select all

ELO   | 58.22 +- 3.81 (95%)
SPRT  | 60.0+0.6s Threads=1 Hash=64MB
LLR   | 0.00 (-2.94, 2.94) [0.00, 0.00]
Games | N: 13540 W: 4023 L: 1775 D: 7742

P.S. In case of any questions/suggestions please post them in the main Igel thread at http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 36#p888936

[Gabor Szots]

P.S. I decided to remove 'EvalFile' option from uci parameters and embed network file into executable by default: there were too many users on Igel 2.9.0 having all sort of problems with that option and being confused if network is embedded or not. I hope it will be simpler as of Igel 3.0.0.

Thank you Volodymyr, nice improvement.

I can see you offer the NNUE file for download anyway. On what purpose, can it be used with 2.9.0 as well?

[voffka]

Hello Gabor,

Thank you Volodymyr, nice improvement.
I can see you offer the NNUE file for download anyway. On what purpose, can it be used with 2.9.0 as well?

I offer the network because for Linux compiles you still need to get it to embed - so tournament organizers can do this themselves. It is possible for this network to be used with 2.9.0, but 3.0.0 is still stronger as most of the improvements were in search.

[Angle]

Igel 3.0.0 at https://github.com/vshcherbyna/igel/releases/tag/3.0.0 (official executable binaries for Windows and IGN net).

Great news, Volodymyr! Thanks for the release!

[Guenther]

CrazyAra the Crazyhouse fame now also plays chess called ClassicAra!
https://github.com/QueensGambit/CrazyAr ... /tag/0.9.0

(not sure if/how being added to the chronology yet, as it uses MV-SF for move generation it seems, also it doesn't run here,
but for another reason than expected)