Doch 1.2 update (uci) by Don Dailey available

[swami]

This version has 534/700. Previous version scored 500/700.

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... hlight=sts

So, 30-60 elo is to be expected.

I think "Offer of Simplification" is greatly improved in Doch 1.2.

I guess the knowledge or code regarding "offer of simplification" or "placing pieces in direction of trade" has been significantly improved upon.

I expect it to be 100-120 elo stronger actually. 34+ score ahead of previous version would obviously make it 100 elo or so.

[swami]

it would be nice to be able to work on chess full time instead of working for the man

Good one!

[Joerg Oster]

Thanks for great engine. One missing thing: current move under analysis is not visible.

Jouni

I'll try to get that into the next version. I'm just lazy that way

And how about a brief description of all the engine parameters?
Do you think there is still potential in tuning those, ore are they well tuned by Larry and you?
Thanks for another interesting engine!

Regards,
Joerg.

[mhalstern]

The earlier 32 bit version of Doch is one of the most impressive new engines that I have seen in a while.

Currently in a 19 engine tournament that I am running, it is in 4th place.

Check the Tournaments and Matches forum this evenings for the final crosstable.

[DomLeste]

All the changes like SMP, open source code and going commerical will all be answered in due time. Give Don time to ironout the bugs first and enjoy his comeback to computer chess alittle

[Don]

Thanks for great engine. One missing thing: current move under analysis is not visible.

Jouni

I'll try to get that into the next version. I'm just lazy that way

And how about a brief description of all the engine parameters?
Do you think there is still potential in tuning those, ore are they well tuned by Larry and you?
Thanks for another interesting engine!

Regards,
Joerg.

The first release had a LOT of parameters most of which were the positional weights used in the program.

This latest release does not have that. I did not remove them just to remove them, but I converted the entire evaluation function to use packed weights for the 2 game phases and interpolation. This gave less than 2% speedup but the code is cleaner. Also, some GUI's cannot handle that many UCI options because they don't fit on the screen.

The answer to tuning is that I don't know. We spend a lot of time tuning the weights of the program and it's at the point where it is very difficult for us to find improvements just by adjusting a weight. This version has less than 10 ELO based purely on better weights in the evaluation function. Essentially this version of the program is not revolutionary, it's just the old version with a handful of minor improvements that total something close to 30 ELO.

I have always thought it would be fun to have a contest where I expose all the weights used in the program to the world, perhaps in a config file, let anyone who wants to try to improve these and then have a massive tournament.

But I doubt such a tournament would generate enough interest to make it worth it - I find it hard to believe more than 1 or 2 people would be willing to go to the trouble to attempt to tune my program!

[DomLeste]

People for years have been customising Chessmaster settings its loads of fun squeezing 30-50 elos more out of the default settings

Im sure you can get at least 10 guys interested from this forum alone.

Give us 1-2months and the winners name or personality can be added to your next Doch version as long as the parametrers are easy to understand like Chessmaster, Shredder etc...

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Do I have even to mention that I'm in

[Graham Banks]

People for years have been customising Chessmaster settings its loads of fun squeezing 30-50 elos more out of the default settings

Im sure you can get at least 10 guys interested from this forum alone.

Give us 1-2months and the winners name or personality can be added to your next Doch version as long as the parametrers are easy to understand like Chessmaster, Shredder etc...

The beauty with Chessmaster though is that the settings are very easily understood.

[Vinvin]

Hello Don, I've 2 little questions for you : where the name "Doch" come from ? and what's the pronunciation : dosh or dok ?

Thanks for your nice engine !

Vincent

So.... Why did we go from 09.980 to 1.2?

Thanks for the new version, even if the numbering is kinda odd.
I hope it does well in my tests; I like Doch.

Peter

To make things more confusing we went to a different version scheme!

Seriously, the ??.???? format is what I use internally and I never intended to use that for release versions as it's more difficult to remember.