New engine releases 2020

[mhib]

Combusken 1.2.0 released
https://github.com/mhib/combusken/releases/tag/v1.2.0

Changes:

• Sending Time and NPS to UI
• ProbCut pruning
• Staged move generation
• Save best move in TT, even if it did not exceed alpha

Unfortunately the binary for android does not support syzygy.

Should be ~100 ELO stronger than Combusken 1.1.0 .

[CMCanavessi]

100 elo! wow...

[Graham Banks]

Bagatur 2.1a

https://github.com/bagaturchess/Bagatur ... ads/Engine

[fabianVDW]

I've released a new version of FabChess at https://github.com/fabianvdW/FabChess/releases.


Version 1.15 comes with a significant strength increase over the last released version 1.14.1
Changes include:
-A lot of background refactoring to make the code cleaner and faster
-All in all speed improvements of around 20%, more coming in the future
-Use tt info for avoiding null moves
-Reset killer heuristic for grandchildren
-More LMR,
-Late move pruning
-SEE Pruning of quiet moves
-Simplification of qsearch
-Fix of endgame evaluation for most common endgames. FabChess will no longer report bogus evaluation and lose games because of that (hopefully).

Selfplay tests show:
ELO | 62.80 +- 5.19 (95%)
SPRT | 60.0+0.6s Threads=1 Hash=64MB
LLR | 0.07 (-2.94, 2.94) [0.00, 0.01]
Games | N: 8160 W: 2666 L: 1207 D: 4287

I didn't do enough testing against other engines to confirm that much of a gain, but It should be close to that.

A new type of executable will be available next to "normal" and "popcnt" namely "BMI2", which will use PEXT, so don't use that executable if your hardware does not support this instruction set natively. BMI2 will be the fastest exectuable, followed by popcnt and then normal will be very slow. Please let me know if there are any problems with the executables.

[Gabor Szots]

Thanks Fabian.

[MOBMAT]

Bagatur zip file isn't recognized as an archive.

[MOBMAT]

Combusken 1.2.0 released
https://github.com/mhib/combusken/releases/tag/v1.2.0

Changes:

• Sending Time and NPS to UI
• ProbCut pruning
• Staged move generation
• Save best move in TT, even if it did not exceed alpha

Unfortunately the binary for android does not support syzygy.

Should be ~100 ELO stronger than Combusken 1.1.0 .

Does Combusken support UCI analysis mode? I tried to analyse a position in arena and the engine locked up. I tried the .exe from the command line, entered UCI and then 'go' and the program exited. i was using the x64 version

[jorose]

Winter v0.8 has been released!

For unclear reasons, clang is giving a huge N/s boost in this new release. As a result of not having this boost, it is actually a regression compared to v0.7 on my test system. That being said, I am confident you will find this new version to be a nice improvement.

I think stylistically Winter has become more positional and not quite as agressive, which many will not like. That being said I feel its style is still very appealing to me and I am interested in what your impressions are.

Tomorrow, I might make a more in depth post as I did for early Winter versions, especially as I kind of was under the radar for a couple months.

https://github.com/rosenthj/Winter/releases/tag/v0.8

[mhib]

Combusken 1.2.0 released
https://github.com/mhib/combusken/releases/tag/v1.2.0

Changes:

• Sending Time and NPS to UI
• ProbCut pruning
• Staged move generation
• Save best move in TT, even if it did not exceed alpha

Unfortunately the binary for android does not support syzygy.

Should be ~100 ELO stronger than Combusken 1.1.0 .

Does Combusken support UCI analysis mode? I tried to analyse a position in arena and the engine locked up. I tried the .exe from the command line, entered UCI and then 'go' and the program exited. i was using the x64 version

I'll look into it.

[matejst]

Jonathan,

Winter 0.7 was positionally excellent already, and I liked its evaluation. I use it to analyze my opening repertoire and whole games in these openings, and its output makes sense. I guess it is because it doesn't reach absurd depths too fast, so I can understand it. On the other hand, I do not use it for matches, so I am not influenced by the rating things etc.

The evaluation is at times a bit optimistic, but I thought it was mainly at lower depths. With enough time, I thought it was quite reasonable. It missed (misevaluated) tactical shots from time to time, but the alternatives were OK. It reminds me of Komodo 7 and 8. I missed the fact that it was not user friendly enough (no multi-pv, no learning, no real options), but it was all right nonetheless.

I followed the 2. league of the TCEC and I liked Winter's play. It was impressive in the last round win against Booot.

Winter opens a new path for chess engines development, and I hope you will continue to work on it.