Fairy-Stockfish 10.3 released

[Guenther]

Fairy-Stockfish (UCI/USI variant engine) version 10.3 is available:
https://github.com/ianfab/Fairy-Stockfi ... ry_sf_10_3

I guess it supports crazyhouse?
In this case how is it related to Niklas Fiekas Stockfish which incorporates multivariant changes from Daniel Dugovic?
I have this one as an entry in the crazhouse section in my XB/UCI chronology.

https://github.com/niklasf/Stockfish/releases

Yes, it supports crazyhouse as well as most other variants the multi-variant fork (used by lichess) also supports. I am co-author of that fork (e.g., the crazyhouse implementation and a large part of the playing strength improvements are from me) and the motivation for starting Fairy-Stockfish came from the fact that I wanted to have a more convenient way to support more variants, because in multi-variant Stockfish it is really tedious to add variants, and the addition of variants with fairy pieces is basically impossible. However, apart from the official Stockfish code, the two forks do not share much code, but I of course re-used my knowledge from developing it.

Thanks for the info Fabian.

Do you have an idea how similar their crazyhouse play would be?
I need to figure out, if I should add both versions to the crazyhouse section or just yours.

[George Tsavdaris]

Which error did you get?

When Winboard opens it crashes saying this:

The problem might be related to that by "-fUCI" you are using the built-in UCI2WB adapter, which is not able to parse the long variant list. Which was the last Fairy-SF version you used previously?

I used 210519(10.2) and 140719 with no problems for countless games.....

Removing -fUCI makes SF-Fairy 10.3 to not crash but it's like it isn't loaded, can't analyze, can't play any game, can't change any variant in Winboard, nothing happens!

With previous versions lines like:
"fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern102.exe" -fd "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish" /variant="capablanca" -fUCI
........worked perfectly. I wonder why not now

Using my fork of the UCI2WB adapter might solve it.

I don't see any executable for Windows in there so i can't use it(no experience in compiling from github).
(i assume UCI2WB-minishogi.exe is for minishogi only?
EDIT: I used this UCI2WB-minishogi.exe renamed as UCI2WB.exe and replacing the old UCI2WB but Fairy-Sf 10.3 still crashes in Winboard)

Can you please try to start the "fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" from the command line? Does it print "Fairy-Stockfish 10.3 64 POPCNT by F. Fichter"?

From command line it works just fine. Can analyze with any variant etc....

[Fabian Fichter]

Fairy-Stockfish (UCI/USI variant engine) version 10.3 is available:
https://github.com/ianfab/Fairy-Stockfi ... ry_sf_10_3

I guess it supports crazyhouse?
In this case how is it related to Niklas Fiekas Stockfish which incorporates multivariant changes from Daniel Dugovic?
I have this one as an entry in the crazhouse section in my XB/UCI chronology.

https://github.com/niklasf/Stockfish/releases

Yes, it supports crazyhouse as well as most other variants the multi-variant fork (used by lichess) also supports. I am co-author of that fork (e.g., the crazyhouse implementation and a large part of the playing strength improvements are from me) and the motivation for starting Fairy-Stockfish came from the fact that I wanted to have a more convenient way to support more variants, because in multi-variant Stockfish it is really tedious to add variants, and the addition of variants with fairy pieces is basically impossible. However, apart from the official Stockfish code, the two forks do not share much code, but I of course re-used my knowledge from developing it.

Thanks for the info Fabian.

Do you have an idea how similar their crazyhouse play would be?
I need to figure out, if I should add both versions to the crazyhouse section or just yours.

I think their play probably has some similarities, because they use basically the same search algorithm from Stockfish, but their evaluation is quite different (starting already with the piece values). I have never measured move similarity so far, I only compared the playing strength, see e.g. https://github.com/ianfab/Fairy-Stockfi ... al-version. The multi-variant fork is of course stronger, because it is more specialized for crazyhouse, and since it is used on lichess it is of course more relevant for the crazyhouse community. So if you decide to include only one of the two, then please keep multi-variant Stockfish.

[Fabian Fichter]

Which error did you get?

When Winboard opens it crashes saying this:

The problem might be related to that by "-fUCI" you are using the built-in UCI2WB adapter, which is not able to parse the long variant list. Which was the last Fairy-SF version you used previously?

I used 210519(10.2) and 140719 with no problems for countless games.....

Removing -fUCI makes SF-Fairy 10.3 to not crash but it's like it isn't loaded, can't analyze, can't play any game, can't change any variant in Winboard, nothing happens!

With previous versions lines like:
"fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern102.exe" -fd "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish" /variant="capablanca" -fUCI
........worked perfectly. I wonder why not now

Using my fork of the UCI2WB adapter might solve it.

I don't see any executable for Windows in there so i can't use it(no experience in compiling from github).
(i assume UCI2WB-minishogi.exe is for minishogi only?
EDIT: I used this UCI2WB-minishogi.exe renamed as UCI2WB.exe and replacing the old UCI2WB but Fairy-Sf 10.3 still crashes in Winboard)

Can you please try to start the "fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" from the command line? Does it print "Fairy-Stockfish 10.3 64 POPCNT by F. Fichter"?

From command line it works just fine. Can analyze with any variant etc....

Thanks for testing. At least it is not a problem with the executable itself, since it is working fine from the command line. So the problem is somewhere in the interface between SF and WinBoard. Can you please test two more things to nail down the problem:
1. instead of variant capablanca, please try a variant without fairy pieces on an 8x8 board, e.g., crazyhouse or standard chess
2. try the same with the normal (non-large-board) version from the 10.3 release.

[George Tsavdaris]

1. instead of variant capablanca, please try a variant without fairy pieces on an 8x8 board, e.g., crazyhouse or standard chess

No matter the variant, or even using normal Chess, the fairy largeboard Stockfish 10.3 crashes Winboard.

2. try the same with the normal (non-large-board) version from the 10.3 release.

The normal (fairy-stockfish_x86-64-modern) 10.3 version works with any variant perfectly in Winboard.

[Fabian Fichter]

1. instead of variant capablanca, please try a variant without fairy pieces on an 8x8 board, e.g., crazyhouse or standard chess

No matter the variant, or even using normal Chess, the fairy largeboard Stockfish 10.3 crashes Winboard.

2. try the same with the normal (non-large-board) version from the 10.3 release.

The normal (fairy-stockfish_x86-64-modern) 10.3 version works with any variant perfectly in Winboard.

This points again towards my initial suspicion that it could be UCI2WB adapter. I am just a bit confused why it did not work after you replaced it by my version of the adapter. Can you please try to call the UCI2WB adapter directly without the "-fUCI" option? I am not entirely sure whether this is the correct way to write the command on windows, but it should be something like the following (adjust path if required):
"fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" -fcp "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\UCI2WB.exe 'C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish\fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe'"

(to check that the "fcp" command is correct, you can also first run it on the command line, and if it opens, you can enter "protover 2" to get the variant list)

[George Tsavdaris]

This points again towards my initial suspicion that it could be UCI2WB adapter. I am just a bit confused why it did not work after you replaced it by my version of the adapter. Can you please try to call the UCI2WB adapter directly without the "-fUCI" option? I am not entirely sure whether this is the correct way to write the command on windows, but it should be something like the following (adjust path if required):
"fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" -fcp "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\UCI2WB.exe 'C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish\fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe'"

Nope this doesn't work either, but for another reason. It must be a bad Winboard command as Winboard unloads the engine saying engine exited unexpectedly.

Same error by using the more logical(but similar idea) command:
"fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" -fcp "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\UCI2WB.exe" -fd "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish\fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe"


Using this also makes Fairy-SF 10.3 to crash on Winboard(like the initial report i gave so it must be a largeboard SF problem only):
"UCI2WB -var capablanca fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" -fd "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish" -variant capablanca -firstOptions "UCI_Variant=capablanca"

[Fabian Fichter]

This points again towards my initial suspicion that it could be UCI2WB adapter. I am just a bit confused why it did not work after you replaced it by my version of the adapter. Can you please try to call the UCI2WB adapter directly without the "-fUCI" option? I am not entirely sure whether this is the correct way to write the command on windows, but it should be something like the following (adjust path if required):
"fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" -fcp "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\UCI2WB.exe 'C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish\fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe'"

Nope this doesn't work either, but for another reason. It must be a bad Winboard command as Winboard unloads the engine saying engine exited unexpectedly.

Same error by using the more logical(but similar idea) command:
"fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" -fcp "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\UCI2WB.exe" -fd "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish\fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe"

Sorry for this longish debugging session. This all will get better as soon as I implement XBoard protocol support in https://github.com/ianfab/Fairy-Stockfish/issues/37, then the error prone adapter will no longer be required.

Can you please try to get the command "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\UCI2WB.exe 'C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish\fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" to work on the command line (e.g., some quoting might be missing). It should stay open without printing anything, and then you can enter "protover 2". I suspect that it will then (among others) print a messed up line containing the variant names.

[Nordlandia]

Cutechess GUI supports many of the SF Fairy supported variants. I recommend that with fairy stockfish.

[George Tsavdaris]

Can you please try to get the command "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\UCI2WB.exe 'C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish\fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe" to work on the command line (e.g., some quoting might be missing). It should stay open without printing anything, and then you can enter "protover 2". I suspect that it will then (among others) print a messed up line containing the variant names.

Doing that it says:

UCI2WB.exe fairy-stockfish-largeboard_x86-64-modern103.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinBoard-AA\WinBoard\WinBoard\Stockfish"
protover 2

feature variants="normal,xiangqi" setboard=1 usermove=1 debug=1 ping=1 name=1 reuse=0 exclude=1 pause=1 sigint=0 sigterm=0 done=0
feature option="UCI2WB debug output -check 0"
feature myname="Fairy-Stockfish 10.3 64 POPCNT (UCI2WB)"
feature option="Protocol -combo uci /// usi"
feature option="Debug Log File -string usi"
feature option="Contempt -spin 24 -100 100"
feature option="Analysis Contempt -combo Both /// Off /// White /// Black"
feature option="Clear Hash -button"
feature option="MultiPV -spin 1 1 500"
feature option="Skill Level -spin 20 0 20"
feature option="Move Overhead -spin 30 0 5000"
feature option="Minimum Thinking Time -spin 20 0 5000"
feature option="Slow Mover -spin 84 10 1000"
feature option="nodestime -spin 0 0 10000"
feature option="UCI_LimitStrength -check 0"
feature option="UCI_Elo -spin 1350 1350 2850"
feature option="SyzygyPath -string <empty>"
feature option="SyzygyProbeDepth -spin 1 1 100"
feature option="Syzygy50MoveRule -check 1"
feature option="SyzygyProbeLimit -spin 7 0 7"
feature option="VariantPath -string <empty>"
feature oocastle=0
feature variants="3check,5check,ai-wok,almost,amazon,antichess,asean,breakthrough,cambodian,capablanca,capahouse,caparandom,chancellor,normal,chessgi,chigorin,clobber,clobber10,codrus,courier,crazyhouse,dobutsu,embassy,euroshogi,extinction,fairy,gardner,giveaway,gorogoro,gothic,grand,hoppelpoppel,horde,janus,jesonmor,judkins,karouk,kinglet,kingofthehill,kyotoshogi,loop,losalamos,losers,makruk,micro,mini,minishogi,modern,placement,pocketknight,racingkings,seirawan,shako,shatar,shatranj,shogi,shouse,sittuyin,standard,normal,fischerandom"
feature smp=1 memory=1 done=1