Big Ballz

[kranium]

Many thanks to Tomass Sobczyk (Sopel97) for his huge NNUE!, and the inspiration to create this engine.

This is a FREE UCI-compatibile chess engine. It is a fork of FatTitz, which is a fork of Cfish, which is a fork of Stockfish, which is a fork of Glaurung.

This engine uses a HalfKAv2-2048x2-64-64-1 evaluation network, which contains whopping 4 times the knowledge of Stockfish 14. It was trained partially on Lc0 data, which gives it a unique positional style, while still preserving the tactical sharpness of Stockfish. The network was trained using a modification of the state-of-the-art NNUE trainer, utilizing publicly available datasets 1, 2, 3.

Changes/Improvements:

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nuue net embedded
search changes
clang-tidy checks, clang diagnostics, etc.
resharper c optimizations
const added to vars & parameters
vars moved to innerscope
compile warnings resolved
lowplyhistory & other search changes added
compile info printed at startup
obfuscated node count/nps corrected
anarchy (forced enpassant) mode removed
persistent transposition table removed
unused includes removed

code change details: https://github.com/FireFather/BigBallz/ ... changes.md

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engine 		elo 	games	+ , = , -	(%)	Diff,	SD,	CFS (%)
big_ballz	3405	1500	313, 916, 271	51.4 %	+10	6	95.1
fat_titz_2	3395	1500	271, 916, 313	48.6	-10	6	4.9

Due to international interest in this project, Fat Titz included a readme translated to Chinese & Hindi... so to help that effort, I've added documents in Japanese & Russian (and will add more later as time permits).

https://github.com/FireFather/BigBallz

[dkappe]

Nice! I’ve always loved these kid friendly names that the Stockfish project has spawned. You are marching in their footsteps.

+1

[AndrewGrant]

Very proud of you, putting out an official Stockfish fork this time instead of a covert one. Congrats on the release.

[BrendanJNorman]

Quick someone! Add water to the soup.

This one is getting too salty.

[peter]

Many thanks to Tomass Sobczyk (Sopel97) for his huge NNUE!, and the inspiration to create this engine.

This is a FREE UCI-compatibile chess engine. It is a fork of FatTitz, which is a fork of Cfish, which is a fork of Stockfish, which is a fork of Glaurung.

Thanks for that, Norman

Yet what I liked most with Fat Titz 2 was the persistent transpostion tables- feature.
Could you maybe add that to next version of BB again too?

Best regards

[Sylwy]

BB will be tortured with SpectralByLOBO-bmi2.....he will suffer.......

THANK YOUUUUU ! Titzy-Flaming(o )-Ballz-...what's next ?....a nice family.....

[kranium]

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Games Completed = 1500 of 1500 (Avg game length = 14.146 sec)
Settings = Gauntlet/32MB/1000ms+100ms/M 500cp for 6 moves, D 120 moves/EPD:book.epd(31526)
Time = 1396 sec elapsed, 0 sec remaining
 1.  big-ballz_010922         	811.0/1500	377-255-868  	(L: m=3 t=0 i=0 a=252)	(D: r=580 i=95 f=62 s=23 a=108)	(tpm=107.9 d=13.58 nps=300968)
 2.  Flamiing Titz 230822     	689.0/1500	255-377-868  	(L: m=8 t=0 i=0 a=369)	(D: r=580 i=95 f=62 s=23 a=108)	(tpm=108.9 d=13.15 nps=328932)

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1) big-ballz_010922      3473 :   1500 (+377,=868,-255),  54.1 %
   vs.                        :  games (   +,   =,   -),   (%) :   Diff,  SD, CFS (%)
   Flamiing Titz 230822       :   1500 ( 377, 868, 255),  54.1 :    +29,   6,  100.0

2) Flamiing Titz 230822  3445 :   1500 (+255,=868,-377),  45.9 %
   vs.                        :  games (   +,   =,   -),   (%) :   Diff,  SD, CFS (%)
   big-ballz_010922           :   1500 ( 255, 868, 377),  45.9 :    -29,   6,    0.0

[kranium]

Flaming Titz changes:

fat-titz

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 int scale = 898 + 24 * popcount(pieces_p(PAWN)) + 33 * non_pawn_material() / 1024;

flaming-titz

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 int scale = 905 + 32 * popcount(pieces_p(PAWN)) + 32 * non_pawn_material() / 1024;

fat-titz

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  PawnValueMg   = 126,   PawnValueEg   = 208,
  KnightValueMg = 781,   KnightValueEg = 854,
  BishopValueMg = 825,   BishopValueEg = 915,
  RookValueMg   = 1276,  RookValueEg   = 1380,
  QueenValueMg  = 2538,  QueenValueEg  = 2682,
  MidgameLimit  = 15258, EndgameLimit = 3915

flaming-titz

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  PawnValueMg   = 62,    PawnValueEg   = 102,
  KnightValueMg = 382,   KnightValueEg = 418,
  BishopValueMg = 403,   BishopValueEg = 448,
  RookValueMg   = 624,   RookValueEg   = 675,
  QueenValueMg  = 1242,  QueenValueEg  = 1312,
  MidgameLimit  = 7476, EndgameLimit = 1918  

Piece values cut in half, scale formula tweaked...unfortunately this results in a significant regression.

This post is not to discredit Eduard in any way, I'm sure Eduard was experimenting and intending to improve the 'style' of play...
instead of strength, and perhaps he has succeeded in that regard.

[Eduard]

That's not all the changes, but ok.

My intention was to change the style of Fat Titz 2 - and I took a little inspiration from Blue Marlin. I hope that your "Ballz" plays differently than Fat Titz 2, otherwise it would be pointless to do anything.

[Eduard]

The only thing I find funny is:

It's a fork of fork of fork....hahahaha. What is the purpose? Serious question: Don't you have anything better to do? I'm a beginner, all forks are new to me. Don't you have your own engine? Is there nothing to do?

Sorry,
Eduard