New WCCC Version of The Baron Released (Plus Polyglot Opening Book)

[tpoppins]

I had Syzygy-related problems with v3.41. v3.42 fixed that but showed a big drop in Elo; the readme said the next version would be v4.xx, a rewrite.

[matejst]

I had problems installing the 32-bit version, but then I copied all the files from the zip file, and it worked under wine and Ubuntu 16.04.

The evaluation is better in the early phases of the game, and The Baron 3.43 easily finds books move where the 3.42 version opted for other paths.

I somehow felt that the 3.4 versions somehow regressed compared to the 3.29, but now I like this version's eval very much.

[Modern Times]

When I look at the baron.ini file, for some items it gives a default recommended value, but then when you look at the UCI parameters the default value is different. For example:

Default/Recommended value

# lmrextrapv 6
In the UCI parameters the default is 4


#lmrextrascout 2
The default in UCI parameters is 4

#prunelevel 5
The default in UCI parameters is 4


Does this mean that The Baron will play differently depending on whether you use it as a UCI or Winboard engine ?

[Gabor Szots]

When I look at the baron.ini file, for some items it gives a default recommended value, but then when you look at the UCI parameters the default value is different. For example:

Default/Recommended value

# lmrextrapv 6
In the UCI parameters the default is 4


#lmrextrascout 2
The default in UCI parameters is 4

#prunelevel 5
The default in UCI parameters is 4


Does this mean that The Baron will play differently depending on whether you use it as a UCI or Winboard engine ?

While you comment out the parameter values The Baron will use its default UCI parameter values, e.g. for lmrextrapv it will use 4. But if you remove the # then, with the above setting, it will default to 6.
I guess Baron.ini makes sense for WB mode only. If you use The Baron in UCI mode then you can modify all values whatever defaults are given to them in Baron.ini.

So yes, Baron in UCI mode will play differently from WB mode unless the values in Baron.ini are set to the same values as their default UCI values (which you can see if you run the Baron in UCI mode after deleting the Baron.ini file).

[pijl]

Unfortunately there is an annoying bug in this version for those that are not playing with the complete 6-men set (so either with missing files, or just the 5-men set). If you do not have the complete 6-men it is definitely better not to use Syzygy with the Baron. The problem is fixed in the upcoming 3.44 release (probably somewhere next month).

Thanks to Werner Schüle to report the problem and supply me with the logs so I could reproduce and fix it.
Richard.