Fruit - Oldie Goldie

[Dariusz]

On the occasion of approaching 20 years since the publication of the Fruit 1.0 chess engine, I invite those interested to read

https://www.chessengeria.eu/post/fruit-oldie-goldie

[Frank Quisinsky]

Dariusz,

oh yes, and how proud Fabien Letouzey was.
Chrilly Donninger (Nimzo) gave the information that he had never seen such a logical source code before.

So GnuChess, Crafty, Pepito, Phalanx are no longer alone in the field of very strong available and free sources.
In this time also the sources of Tord Romstad are open (Gothmog, Glaurung). Also such a mega talent, like Fabien.

From time to time I have nice contacts with Fabien. He had hard years after Fruit.
What he tries to explain to me (I am not a programmer) is very easy to understand and he is full of ideas. I often thought he thought like a chess program. An incredibly interesting person, who has also worked on GnuChess before. John Stanback also worked on it for a while and later many of the TOP engines used the sources from GnuChess. At least I know that Comet or Shredder are based on GnuChess.

Fabien is one of the computer chess "super VIPs".
I am not talking about the Novag chess computer Super VIP.

All the nice contacts I had with him and enthusiasm from Fabien I will never forget.
So Fabien dance with sources ... around the same Martin Blume dance with GUIs.
HIGHLIGHTS in computer chess!!

Best
Frank

PS: Congratualtion to the inteview with John Stanback.
I read it ... typical John, also SUPER VIP in computer chess, like Fabien or Tord.

Try to make an interview with the SOS programmer Rudolf Huber.
Most of Germans programmers in that time (example: Stefan Meyer-Kahlen and many others) are thinking that Rudolf Huber was the most talented German programmer.

[Frank Quisinsky]

And congratulation for your site.
Thinking on older works I do with interviews and so one in the past and my winboard site, Arena site ...

You do really a great job and such sites are important for so many reasons!
I am to old for all this and lost my interest to work on internet sites.

But I am very happy if I can see such things you do.
Very strong work!!

[AdminX]

On the occasion of approaching 20 years since the publication of the Fruit 1.0 chess engine, I invite those interested to read

https://www.chessengeria.eu/post/fruit-oldie-goldie

Fantastic images you created with Bing! Great write up. Thanks for sharing.

[dkappe]

On the occasion of approaching 20 years since the publication of the Fruit 1.0 chess engine, I invite those interested to read

https://www.chessengeria.eu/post/fruit-oldie-goldie

I hope you don‘t unearth the Rybka fracas again. I don‘t have a dog in that fight, but the conclusions, then and subsequently, are far from clear and free from controversy.

[Ajedrecista]

Hello Dariusz:

On the occasion of approaching 20 years since the publication of the Fruit 1.0 chess engine, I invite those interested to read

https://www.chessengeria.eu/post/fruit-oldie-goldie

Excellent article! I enjoyed reading it and I even solved the first puzzle. I am not totally sure, but I would say that Fruit was one of my first engines when I got interested in computer chess. It was definitively a game changer regarding open source and Elo boost of following years.

I have seen at CPW that there were earlier versions of Fruit, such as 0.98a, 0.98b and 0.99b, which I was not aware. According to the 0.98b CCC link, those earlier versions were available at old Dann's FTP, but I could not find anything saved by The Wayback Machine. I finally found other CCC posts with the full path inside the FTP (here and here), still without luck through The Wayback Machine.

OTOH, Fabien's post releasing Fruit 1.0 pointed to Leo's web, only to find that the original ZIP of Fruit 1.0 is still available for download!

https://web.archive.org/web/20040603183 ... uit_10.zip
(Source, Windows, Linux and Mac OS X executable included, no opening book!)

Fabien posted on 15th March, 2004 that 'Fruit was written last year [...]', so it took him few time to reach the top, starting around 2003; nevertheless, his interest in computer chess started way before: I found an old post by him about Othello that pointed to a website. Well, there is a mention to an own chess program called Chessy no later than 16th December, 2001 in that website.

Regards from Spain.

Ajedrecista.

[tmokonen]

Fruit certainly is one of the all time greats in computer chess history. What a wonderfully clean code base to study and learn from. There weren't even any special tricks in the code. It was the thoughtful design and engineering and lack of obvious bugs that gave Fruit its strength. I remember purchasing Shredder mere days before Fruit 2.1 came out, and how I was annoyed that this free program seemed to be stronger than the rating list topping Shredder that I spent money on. Such is life. Fruit raised the bar for everyone else and forced the commercial authors to up their game.

I too would love to try out those pre 1.0 versions. They were released before I went into hyper OCD engine collection mode and I missed out.

[Dariusz]

Thank you for your comments. I read them with great interest.

Frank, who knows maybe, someday I'll be able to do some other interesting interviews

Ajedrecista, thanks for the links! I'll definitely check out the older versions of Fruit, those released even before version 1.0.

AdminX, these images also appealed to me.

[chessica]

[d]5k2/pp3N2/5K2/5B2/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1 Fruit 1.0:

Code: Select all

 1	00:00,000	 2	9	+4,29	Lf5-b1
 1	00:00,000	 3	13	+4,38	Lf5-c2
 1	00:00,000	 4	18	+4,43	Lf5-d3
 1	00:00,000	 6	25	+4,46	Lf5-e4
 1	00:00,000	 17	68	+4,52	Kf6-e6
 1	00:00,000	 19	76	+4,56	Sf7-e5
 2	00:00,000	 36	136	+4,45	Sf7-e5 Kf8-e8
 2	00:00,000	 55	208	+4,60	Sf7-d6 b7-b6
 3	00:00,000	 138	492	+4,81	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Kf6-e5
 4	00:00,000	 814	3k	+5,53	Sf7-d6 a7-a5 Sd6xb7 a5-a4
 5	00:00,000	 3k	11k	+5,57	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Sd6-c8 Kf8-e8 Sc8xa7
 6	00:00,000	 12k	41k	+5,56	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Lf5-d3 a7-a5 Sd6-c8 a5-a4 Sc8xb6
 7	00:00,015	 39k	2.592k	+5,64	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Sd6-c8 b6-b5 Sc8xa7 b5-b4 Kf6-e5
 8	00:00,047	 123k	2.608k	+5,65	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Lf5-d3 Kf8-g8 Sd6-c8 Kg8-f8 Kf6-e5 Kf8-g7 Sc8xa7
 9	00:00,125	 367k	2.935k	+5,67	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Lf5-d3 a7-a5 Ld3-b5 Kf8-g8 Sd6-c4 Kg8-f8 Sc4xb6
 10	00:00,625	 1.806k	2.889k	+6,54	Sf7-d6 Kf8-g8 Sd6xb7 Kg8-f8 Sb7-a5 Kf8-e8 Sa5-c6 a7-a6 Lf5-c8 a6-a5 Sc6xa5
 11	00:01,484	 4.352k	2.932k	+6,66	Sf7-d6 Kf8-g8 Sd6xb7 Kg8-f8 Lf5-d3 Kf8-e8 Ld3-b5+ Ke8-f8 Sb7-d8 Kf8-g8 Sd8-c6 Kg8-f8 Sc6xa7
 12	00:04,187	 12.381k	2.957k	+6,79	Sf7-d6 a7-a5 Lf5-e6 a5-a4 Le6-f7 a4-a3 Sd6xb7 a3-a2 Lf7xa2 Kf8-e8 La2-e6 Ke8-f8
 13	00:08,359	 24.879k	2.976k	+7,00	Sf7-d6 a7-a5 Lf5-e6 a5-a4 Le6-f7 a4-a3 Sd6xb7 a3-a2 Lf7xa2 Kf8-e8 La2-e6 Ke8-f8 Kf6-e5
 13	00:13,781	 40.982k	2.974k	+7,16	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5 a7-a6 Lb5xa6 Kf8-g8 La6-b5 Kg8-f8 Sf7-g5 Kf8-g8 Lb5-c4+ Kg8-f8 Sg5-e6+ Kf8-g8 Kf6-e5
 14	00:17,265	 50.876k	2.947k	+7,19	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5 a7-a6 Lb5xa6 Kf8-g8 Sf7-g5 Kg8-f8 Sg5-e6+ Kf8-g8 La6-c4 Kg8-h8 Se6-d4 Kh8-h7 Kf6-e5
 15	00:30,031	 87.110k	2.901k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5 a7-a6 Lb5-a4 Kf8-g8 La4-b3 a6-a5 Sf7-g5+ Kg8-h8 Kf6-f7 a5-a4 Lb3-c2 a4-a3 Kf7-f8 a3-a2 Sg5-f7+
 16	00:45,719	 127.737k	2.794k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5 a7-a6 Lb5-a4 Kf8-g8 La4-b3 a6-a5 Sf7-g5+ Kg8-h8 Kf6-f7 a5-a4 Lb3-c2 a4-a3 Kf7-f8 a3-a2 Sg5-f7+

Fruit2.2.1:

Code: Select all

1/2	00:00,000	 19	633	+5,06	Sf7-e5
 2/4	00:00,000	 45	2k	+5,04	Sf7-e5 a7-a5
 2/4	00:00,000	 64	1k	+5,20	Sf7-d6 b7-b6
 3/4	00:00,000	 147	2k	+5,19	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Kf6-e5
 4/7	00:00,000	 781	13k	+5,51	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Sd6-c8 b6-b5 Sc8xa7
 5/10	00:00,000	 3k	43k	+5,51	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Sd6-c8 b6-b5 Sc8xa7
 6/12	00:00,000	 6k	68k	+M24	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Sd6-c8 b6-b5 Sc8xa7
 7/14	00:00,000	 10k	106k	+M24	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Sd6-c8 b6-b5 Sc8xa7
 8/16	00:00,016	 24k	1.485k	+M24	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Sd6-c8 b6-b5 Sc8xa7
 9/20	00:00,078	 67k	855k	+M24	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Sd6-c8 b6-b5 Sc8xa7
 10/22	00:00,172	 170k	991k	+M24	Sf7-d6 b7-b6 Sd6-c8 b6-b5 Sc8xa7
 11/24	00:00,391	 481k	1.231k	+M22	Sf7-d6 a7-a5 Sd6xb7
 12/26	00:00,812	 1.079k	1.329k	+M22	Sf7-d6 a7-a5 Sd6xb7
 13/28	00:01,656	 2.276k	1.374k	+M22	Sf7-d6 a7-a5 Sd6xb7
 14/30	00:03,469	 5.018k	1.447k	+M22	Sf7-d6 a7-a5 Sd6xb7
 14/30	00:05,156	 7.732k	1.500k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5
 15/30	00:06,172	 9.520k	1.543k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5
 16/30	00:09,969	 16.721k	1.677k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5
 17/30	00:15,906	 29.338k	1.844k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5
 18/30	00:23,703	 48.792k	2.058k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5
 19/30	00:32,672	 74.951k	2.294k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5
 20/30	00:41,781	 105.704k	2.530k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5
 21/30	00:51,875	 142.035k	2.738k	+M9	Lf5-d7 b7-b5 Ld7xb5

[BrendanJNorman]

On the occasion of approaching 20 years since the publication of the Fruit 1.0 chess engine, I invite those interested to read

https://www.chessengeria.eu/post/fruit-oldie-goldie

Great post bro.

I can remember somewhere around 2002 or 2003 I was deep into engine stuff.

Running tournaments between Fritz 7, Fritz in Bahrain, Hiarcs 8 Bareev, Shredder 7.04, Chesstiger 14, Gambit Tiger 2, Deep Junior 7 and so on,

Legends.

And my good friend send me a zip file with these free engines "Fruit" and "Rybka" both original versions.

For an entire night we drank beers and watched these free engines tear the commercial engines to pieces.

I remember one game where one of them *seemed* to be planning when it tied an opponent's pieces down to a weak pawn and then calmly walked the king over for the coup de grace.

Was an awesome time. I was young and full of energy back then....and chose to watch chess programs fight.

Computer chess has come a long way.