New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

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silentshark
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New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by silentshark »

Hot on the heels of the 0.20 release (after an 8 year break), Francesca 0.21 is almost ready for release - should be later today.

This should be another good step forward in strength. Currently, in my testing 0.21 is a +59 ELO improvement over 0.20. 0.20 was a +74 ELO improvement over 0.19. But my figures include lots of self-play testing, so are probably optimistic :)

Detail will be in the readme.txt file - the main improvement was an eval fix for kings in the endgame (old versions of my engine just didn't want to centralise the king enough and this made a big difference), better aspiration windows, more aggressive pruning, and better handling of passed pawns (still not very good though).

Buying a new PC at the start of last year has really helped. I can now test much better - lots of games in parallel. When I look back, over the years, there were many times where I thought I'd made an improvement (and hadn't), or incorrectly binned something good. This was all due to not playing enough games in testing. Lesson learnt!

Cheers,
Tom
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Gabor Szots
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Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by Gabor Szots »

silentshark wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:23 am Hot on the heels of the 0.20 release (after an 8 year break), Francesca 0.21 is almost ready for release - should be later today.

This should be another good step forward in strength. Currently, in my testing 0.21 is a +59 ELO improvement over 0.20. 0.20 was a +74 ELO improvement over 0.19. But my figures include lots of self-play testing, so are probably optimistic :)

Detail will be in the readme.txt file - the main improvement was an eval fix for kings in the endgame (old versions of my engine just didn't want to centralise the king enough and this made a big difference), better aspiration windows, more aggressive pruning, and better handling of passed pawns (still not very good though).

Buying a new PC at the start of last year has really helped. I can now test much better - lots of games in parallel. When I look back, over the years, there were many times where I thought I'd made an improvement (and hadn't), or incorrectly binned something good. This was all due to not playing enough games in testing. Lesson learnt!

Cheers,
Tom
Hi Tom,

You have moved up a gear! FYI, in our testing Francesca 0.20 is 63 Elo above 0.19. I am still playing a tournament so that may change. See here for the current comparison: http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/40 ... +opponents
Gabor Szots
CCRL testing group
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silentshark
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Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by silentshark »

Gabor Szots wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:55 am Hi Tom,

You have moved up a gear! FYI, in our testing Francesca 0.20 is 63 Elo above 0.19. I am still playing a tournament so that may change. See here for the current comparison: http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/40 ... +opponents
Thanks, Gabor, that's great news :-)
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silentshark
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Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by silentshark »

Ok, v0.21 is up. Download from the usual place www.silentshark.co.uk - select Computer Chess.

The zip file contains 3 exes. All 64 bit compiles.

fran.exe - small version, 150Mb of hash tables
lardy.exe - regular version, about 1GB for hash tables
legacy.exe - for old PC's. No SSE etc. compiler flags used, so should run on older PC's. Uses about 150Mb for hash tables.

Any feedback - let me know :-)

Cheers,
Tom
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CMCanavessi
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Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by CMCanavessi »

Nice progress! Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
Follow my tournament and some Leela gauntlets live at http://twitch.tv/ccls
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Gabor Szots
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Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by Gabor Szots »

CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:12 pm Nice progress! Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
Funny, when I tried to download 0.21 I was always directed to the main page where 0.19 was offered. Refreshed the page in the browser several times but no success. It took quite a while till I found 0.21.
Gabor Szots
CCRL testing group
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CMCanavessi
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Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by CMCanavessi »

Gabor Szots wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:18 pm
CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:12 pm Nice progress! Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
Funny, when I tried to download 0.21 I was always directed to the main page where 0.19 was offered. Refreshed the page in the browser several times but no success. It took quite a while till I found 0.21.
When that happens, you can do CTRL+F5 to force a web cache refresh. 8-)
Follow my tournament and some Leela gauntlets live at http://twitch.tv/ccls
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Gabor Szots
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Full name: Gabor Szots

Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by Gabor Szots »

CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 7:50 pm
Gabor Szots wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:18 pm
CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:12 pm Nice progress! Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
Funny, when I tried to download 0.21 I was always directed to the main page where 0.19 was offered. Refreshed the page in the browser several times but no success. It took quite a while till I found 0.21.
When that happens, you can do CTRL+F5 to force a web cache refresh. 8-)
Yes. Or CTRL+R. Or F5 without CTRL. None of them worked. Thanks anyway for the hint.

What helped was deleting all browsing history.
Gabor Szots
CCRL testing group
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silentshark
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Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by silentshark »

Yeah, sorry about that. Right-click in the middle of the screen and selecting 'Reload Frame' sorts this out in Chrome.
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tpoppins
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Re: New Release of Francesca MAD - imminent

Post by tpoppins »

silentshark wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 11:59 am Ok, v0.21 is up. Download from the usual place www.silentshark.co.uk - select Computer Chess.

The zip file contains 3 exes. All 64 bit compiles.

fran.exe - small version, 150Mb of hash tables
lardy.exe - regular version, about 1GB for hash tables
legacy.exe - for old PC's. No SSE etc. compiler flags used, so should run on older PC's. Uses about 150Mb for hash tables.

Any feedback - let me know :-)
Why not have fran.exe use double the hash and POPCNT rather than BMI2?

CMCanavessi wrote: ↑Sat Jan 19, 2019 3:12 pm Can you put a link on your website to download old versions? I was trying to download 0.20 but I can't find it!
franmad020.zip
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