A new website for Shredder ...

[Andrew]

I also think it was Shredder 12 that had position learning (done at every move) which was removed
in 13. Hopefully any new versions will have this restored!

Andrew

[mehmet123]

Arena helps here a lot with around 10 million downloads in the time I am working with Martin Blume on all important ideas!
3.5 million downloads alone in the last year before I made other things as Arena.

It seems that Arena is the most purchased/downloaded chess program of all time, along with Stockfish.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hello,

I hope of a further development from the "3-Hirn" idea from Prof. Althöfer.

Very interesting to mixed engines for eng-eng fights.

Can be interesting to see:
Wasp / Koivisto / Winter vs. Ethereal
Example only, here Stockfish can be the "decision maker"!
If the idea used for weaker chess engines vs. a stronger engine!

Mix from Ethereal / SlowChess / Booot can be better as Stockfish!
With 3-Hirn ideas possible!

Prof. Althöfer wrote for many years a very nice book about it.
Today the idea made more sense as for 20 years.

UCI protocol can be improved and I am sure that Stefan generated interesting own / new ideas.

Stefan Meyer-Kahlen is a good team player also ...
Most success in the time he is working with Ossi Weiner (Millennium).

Often I am thinking best combination in computer chess should be restore.

Best
Frank

PS: Maybe I should start again with Martin Blume to make Arena better!
But my time for such things are over if I am thinking on all the mails I got daily (around 200 very often).

[Ras]

UCI protocol can be improved

One of the key points in UCI is that it doesn't get "improved" all the time because then you'll end up with a fragmented ecosystem and shaky support. SMK didn't try to please everyone and had the courage to say "no" to including everything and the kitchen sink.

PS: Maybe I should start again with Martin Blume to make Arena better!

Arena suffered the fate of all such projects that aren't OSS. The developer eventually loses interest, the bugs don't get ironed out, the project becomes stale, and nobody can fork it.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi,

Christopher Conkie would like to play webmaster around Arena.
But on the new PHP site I saw a kalender and a clock and all my old material.
Nothing more ...

So many people with strong words and nothing more.

Michael Diose was for me the strongest helper around Arena.

I think I know Martin Blume very good!
Martin is a "picture book programmer" but he need strong testers and good and logical ideas!
Give him an idea and he is able to top the idea with own things!
That's the strong point from Martin Blume!

Arena was made with an old and free Delphi programming language.
I think the reason that Martin not give sources for free.
And he have no interest on web presentation.
More interest on programmings in the time he need for web presentation, answers of questions and so one.

Not that what Martin Blume like to do!
And a reason more that he lost interest, think so!

In my opinion Arena was very important for computer chess and have served its purpose!

With Banksia, Nibbler and Cutechess new and interesting GUIs are available.

Arena was important for the connection of free things (WB and UCI, FRC / Chess960 / DGT, PGN standards and so one).
And to give all a free and strong software for testing with better possibilites the commercials do.

Best
Frank

[AndrewGrant]

"Most successful chess program ever".

Yeah, that would be Stockfish.

Money pushes them to deceive. They ask for 50$ more to get access to the multi-threaded version of Shredder 13. This is a borderline scam, SMP has been a standard feature for many years and is present in the 8-10 free engines stronger than Shredder.

I'll also throw in there that I put little faith in engines that have sudden massive leap in strength after many years without any news and that have suspicious simex results...

With NNUE (original or unoriginal), plus a simple upgrade of c++ versions, I'de not be surprised to see Shredder slightly under Komodo

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Andrew,

yes, absolutely possible.
But programs like yours, Komodo, Booot, Stockfish, Slowchess are to strong in the earlier middlegame.
Shredder need much more aggressivity to play with the strongest available engines in the same group.
Stefan know that and try to fix the bad king safty with many pieces on board from version 12 to 13.

You will not like to hear that:
In times today it's more the secret to create for humans the perfect computer chess program.
Humans like the first playing phase most.

With DGT Pi and Wasp I have here a lot of fun.
I can set 1500-2700 Elo.
The Wasp style is great for humans!
So I made my 40% in good hours against Wasp with 2200 Elo.

Which engine can play most interesting chess with max. 2850 Elo?

That's what I like to see in newer chess computer for the mass market.
Ossi Weiner goes with King Performance the right way.
I like it more to see other programs as TheKing in such a chess computer.
User can set the level in Elo from 1500-2800 without the chess program produced blunders (chess program should play with full level). Can we do if we reduced nps.

For that what _we do_ here we need stronger graphical user interfaces as that what we have.
User interfaces with a lot of statistic features and more tournament features.
We need such talents like Ferdinand Mosca for an example ... Ferdinand can do (hope Ferdinand will not read that or I have a problem).
Cute Chess is really great, I like Cute Chess a lot but I missed important features.

Without statistics we are not able to understand what chess programs with 3200 Elo or higher play.

Such things I await from persons like Stefan Meyer-Kahlen.
Means, if Stefan have interest to offer new versions for us!??

Best
Frank

To Rasmus:
Yes, if others have interest to make Arena stronger it would be better if Martin give the sources free on GitHub.
Others can build a fork and can start a new Arena Ära.
I have since more as 10 years no contacts to him but after all I know ...
Martin was not the biggest fan from open-source ideas.
We had in the past the same opinion ... free available but not open source!
On the other hand I can see the advantage from open source!

[Frank Quisinsky]

Again to Rasmus ...

you know that Fizbo sources are available on GitHub?
Where are all the forks for such a great speculative engine Fizbo is?
Programmers can find here many intersting stuff, absolutely sure!

That's what I never understand.
x fork to Stockfish and Co. updated very often but no Fizbo fork!?

Maybe a programmer can explain why Fizbo is not interesting enough?!

Best
Frank

[Guenther]

While doing my regular link checking for the XB/UCI chronology, I noticed now that with the new Shredder site,
the last trace for buying Zappa Mexico there is gone.

https://www.shredderchess.com/chess-pro ... exico.html

Nothing anymore here either

https://www.chesscentral.com/zappa-mexi ... -download/

I found no place for it anymore in a google search (wayback won't help). May be it is abandonware now.

[Ras]

Maybe a programmer can explain why Fizbo is not interesting enough?!

It doesn't even have an open source licence attached. Putting it on Github allows others to look at the source code, but nothing else. Forking it would be a copyright violation, i.e. illegal to begin with.

On top of that, the CCRL doesn't list it as open source so that most people won't even know the source code is available, the CCRL links to homepage, not to the Github repo, the homepage doesn't link to the Github repo either, the engine is Windows-only to the point of absolute hardcoded c:\ paths, it's tied to Visual Studio, and the documentation is sparse.