It's here ...Honey X6

[JohnS]

Excellent work Mike!

Can you please clarify the use of adaptive, play by Elo and variety? Do adaptive and play by ELo override the strength setting? Can they be used together (does this make any sense) or is it one or the other?

What does variety do and how does it interact with adaptive and play by ELo?

Can you provide examples of typical uci settings for lower strength options?

By the way, Leela scoring is now the default and it initially confused me because a score of +50 in the initial position looked crazy (you finally proved chess is a forced win for White ). I personally think centipawns should be the default as that is what most of us are used to.

Many thanks for a great engine.

Excelled questions. - first play by Elo is nps based - you should use the the uci sleep option when using any weakening level as the program will move instantly without it checked. There is no randomization except at the weakest levels. Why? Well Stockfish is so strong that even at 50 nps it plays in the 1500 to 1600 range (FIDE Elo with CCRL that’s about 1200) - the only way to get it below that Elo is to introduce randomness.

Variety play introduces randomness across the entire Elo spectrum. It costs about 300 Elo. To make up for that ,when it is used with play by Elo , I increase the nps, so it will still play close the Elo selected.

Adaptive play also introduces variety but does it differently. The code used here is from “EasyPlay”. For most people it will have range of playing of about 300 Elo as it will purposely throw you a bone when it gets ahead. Like variety play , the nps is increased under the hood , to keep the Elo close to what you selected.

You can tell when an adaptive play move is used , as the move played will not be in sync with the pv. So when you see that , that’s your chance to get back in the game. ;>)

With variety play , the pv will be in sync with the pv. They both can be used together and the play will be slight weaker than using one or the other - although the nps is raised even higher.

At higher levels of play , the adaptive play has even a wider range of playing - if you play at Elo 2900 with adaptive play , it will play close to Crafty. With a weaker opponent it could play as low 2300 to 2400 (CCRL rating), Variety play does not have a plying range capability - it plays at one level, just weaker than before.

On the LC0 scoring % , that is set to my preference, it’s what I use for all my analysis for my games and I am my number one customer ;> ) - for me that is more useful and intuitive than centipawn as it provides you the expected outcome of the game which centipawn does not provide. Keep in mind , the internal scoring mechanism is still the same - it is just converted using a formula. But I recognize that I am in the minority so there is a toggle to switch it back to centipawn scoring and with most good GUIs , one can make that change persistent. One thing I like about it is that it always real clear that are you looking at the game from my the side to move viewpoint so that box should be checked on your GUI - not from Black or white side viewpoint.
It’s one of those things, the more you use it , the more you appreciate it. Now if somebody has maintained a record of thousands and thousands of positions that they scored from a centipawn vantage point - well obviously it will not be for them.
But for actually playing games or doing analysis for a correspondence game - I like it better. I focused a lot harder on games where I am under 50% ;>).

Thank you Mike for the explanations, much clearer now. For scoring of course it is your decision what is default. Could I suggest a note on the website about this to alert folks who are not used to it and think the engine has a bug like I did when I first ran it.

[MikeB]

<huge snip>

Thank you Mike for the explanations, much clearer now. For scoring of course it is your decision what is default. Could I suggest a note on the website about this to alert folks who are not used to it and think the engine has a bug like I did when I first ran it.

Good point, will do thanks!

[MikeB]

It works without Blue

Apparently a "color" flag is now causing issues on some OS if one uses it as makefile defined ( 'features' is another prohibited defined own some OS) will update the source shortly. There's one or two more add'l items to fix as well related to compiling.

[Dann Corbit]

Here is a link to the version I made:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tLQiV ... ICHiAhzJZ0

It has a few more UCI fields and an evaluation tweak that takes mobility into account.

It also logs evaluation data to disk by default (so I can post process it and load it into my SQL database), so people will probably want to turn that off in the UCI settings if they want to try it.

I called it polygon {many-sided} because it uses all of the features except it does not have the blue stuff yet.

Thanks for your efforts on this project. I find it very useful.

[MikeB]

<huge snip>

At higher levels of play , the adaptive play has even a wider range of playing - if you play at Elo 2900 with adaptive play , it will play close to Crafty. With a weaker opponent it could play as low 2300 to 2400 (CCRL rating), Variety play does not have a plying range capability - it plays at one level, just weaker than before.

Correction , using adaptive play at FULL STRENGTH will play close to Crafty not the FIDE Elo 2900 level. Just happened to see that and I knew it wasn't right

Code: Select all

Rank Name              Rating   Δ     +    -     #     Σ    Σ%     W    L    D   W%    =%   OppR 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1 Crafty-25.3        1455   0.0   59   59   100   51.5  51.5   40   37   23  40.0  23.0  1445 
   2 Honey-FIDE-3500a   1445   9.1   59   59   100   48.5  48.5   37   40   23  37.0  23.0  1455 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[MikeB]

Fine just for fun result s- just 20 positions chosen at random using 'jot'.

'Bluefish' is pretty cool, it is as tough as nails and it plays some pretty interesting chess I would definitely check out that engine, some pretty nice coding by Eelco de Groot.

Code: Select all

Time to complete: 19:29:36
20 rounds and 1120 games completed...
Time control: 240 + 2.0000 seconds 
Threads = 1
Hash = 256
Date: 10/09/19 : 19:12:17
Rank Name               Rating   Δ     +    -     #     Σ    Σ%     W    L    D   W%    =%   OppR 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1 Honey X6            3126   0.0   18   18   280  152.5  54.5   46   21  213  16.4  76.1  3096 
   2 Bluefish-1008       3123   2.4   18   18   280  151.0  53.9   49   27  204  17.5  72.9  3097 
   3 Blue-Honey-X6       3115   8.5   18   18   280  147.0  52.5   41   27  212  14.6  75.7  3098 
   4 Stockfish-1008      3107   7.6   18   18   280  143.5  51.2   36   29  215  12.9  76.8  3099 
   5 Bluefish-fd-1008    3090  17.3   18   18   280  135.5  48.4   30   39  211  10.7  75.4  3101 
   6 Blue-Honey-fd-X6    3084   6.3   18   18   280  132.0  47.1   17   33  230   6.1  82.1  3102 
   7 Honey-fd-X6         3078   5.6   18   18   280  129.5  46.2   22   43  215   7.9  76.8  3103 
   8 Stockfish-fd-1008   3077   0.7   18   18   280  129.0  46.1   16   38  226   5.7  80.7  3103 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All 1120 games in pgn format:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rzcbsqyqcv9wu ... n.zip?dl=0

Note: Grab it now, if you think you might want it. it won't be here forever.
But with 4 mi and 2 sec tc on single core , there won't be much gold.

[Dann Corbit]

Here is a link to the version I made:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tLQiV ... ICHiAhzJZ0

It has a few more UCI fields and an evaluation tweak that takes mobility into account.

It also logs evaluation data to disk by default (so I can post process it and load it into my SQL database), so people will probably want to turn that off in the UCI settings if they want to try it.

I called it polygon {many-sided} because it uses all of the features except it does not have the blue stuff yet.

Thanks for your efforts on this project. I find it very useful.

Updated file at the same location, last version did not log the EPD position:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tLQiV ... ICHiAhzJZ0

[Paloma]

When i run bench, the commandLine Window close immedately after the bench endet.

[Dann Corbit]

Yes, I have a UCI option for that.
It looks like this:
setoption name Exit After Bench value false

Set it to false if you do not want it to exit.

Typically, I will have a bunch of machines running a bench command against various files of EPD positions (logging the data to disk).
When the calculation is complete, the executable sits there hogging the entire memory for the machine. Unless I exit. So I exit.
But you can change the behavior by setting "Exit After Bench" to false.

I guess you will also want to set "Write Search Log" to false. Otherwise, data will be written to a disk file while the positions are being analyzed.
This is also true for game play (not just EPD analysis).

[MikeB]

well if you have a macOS computer anyway , or if you can compile your own

other OS flavors will be released upon receipt.

all versions have all bell and whistles, including play by FIDE Elo (or CCRL Elo) and improved adaptive and variety play
FD versions have 'fortress detection' code written Joe Ellis.
Bluefish and Blue-Honey versions have Bluefish evaluation code written by Eelco de Groot.

https://github.com/MichaelB7/Stockfish/releases/tag/X6

that's right - 8 stockfish derivative flavors , including

current-dev-Stockfish
current-dev-Stockfish-FD
Honey X6
Honey-FD
Blue-Honey
Blue-Honey-FD
Bluefish
BlueFish-FD

there's build script in the src folder, on my machine it takes 62 seconds to build all 8 flavors, just over two minutes for PGO flavors ( all macOS versions were PGO optimized)

why "X" ? , it signifies that this version is related to Stockfish 10 and development code added since the release of Stockfish 10.

have fun!

come and get it ... all flavors now available, scroll to the bottom for the binaries...

https://github.com/MichaelB7/Stockfish/releases/tag/X6

macSO users should re-download ( also bmi2 was added)

Also, please be sure to thank Alan Cooper and Lucas Monge for all their work in making the exe's available for you!