1.
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March 09th, 2005
About Naum, Interview with Aleksandar Naumov

79, FQ

v. 1.6
UCI / WB compatible
Home of Naum
Interview with Aleksandar Naumov by Frank Quisinsky
Hint: Naum is 41 in ATL-1 Rating-List, in reality number ~ 14-20 !!!

Aleksandar Naumov about Arena News-Ticker:
By the way Frank, your interview with developers is a great idea. I really like finding out who is the person behind the engine (even when the person is a crazy guy with a knife ;). Engine info you ask about is interesting, but I would also like to know more about the person (age, birth place, profession, education,...).

Frank Quisinsky:
Thanks Alexander, this comment will give me more energy for the future. And now let us start!
Age, birth place, profession, education ...
Your move :-)

Frank Quisinsky:
The idea is so far unorganised by myself. I like your wishes and will organise the idea a little bit. I hope that the programmers will give me the information for Arena page. If Frank write a mail the programmer can be not sure that a little interview will be the result :-)

Aleksandar Naumov:
I am sure the other guys wouldn't mind giving you a small info about themselves. I would like to know more about, for instance, Tord, Fabien and Uri, so guys, don't be shy. Of course, some of them might be a horribly disfigured monsters, so in that case they may not want to send their picture, and I suspect that Uri is some kind of artifical inteligence living in cyberspace, since he seem to reply instantly to all messages posted in chess forums :)

Frank Quisinsky:
Do you work on Naum at the moment?

Aleksandar Naumov:
Yes, but I am not sure when I am going to release a new version. I am working on improving time management, and didn't improve engine's strength too much. For instance, I fixed a bug Naum had for fixed time for the whole game. Naum would lose on time in a position that is EGTB draw, because it will try to think instead of playing instantly. New version of Naum will almost never lose on time.

Frank Quisinsky:
Do you look in the ATL-1 games. I can't explain the results. If I look on other ratings I find on WWW Naum have clear better results then on my Dual Xeon 2.8 GHz system. This is a pity because in a test tourney I played "France vs. The World" the Naum results are better. This tournament I played on Athlon 3.2 with ponder = off and with a second machine Pentium IV 2.67 GHz, ponder = off.

Pentium IV 2.67 GHz, 40 moves in 20 minutes
France vs. The World I

Rank	Engine	Country	Score	Ph	An	Ta	Na	ET	Th	Ki	Kt	Fr	Za	Pa	Th	Dr	Mo	Ne	Fa	Ca	Kn	S-B
01	Pharaon 3.1		24.0/34	· ·	11	10	=1	00	01	10	11	1=	10	=0	11	11	=1	01	11	11	11	379,25
02	AnMon 5.50		21.5/34	00	· ·	11	=1	11	00	11	=0	10	11	11	=1	=1	=0	01	=1	10	=1	355,25
03	Tao 5.7 Beta		21.5/34	01	00	· ·	00	11	11	11	0=	=0	=1	1=	11	==	0=	11	11	1=	=1	341,50
04	Naum 1.4		21.0/34	=0	=0	11	· ·	11	=0	=1	11	01	=0	0=	11	==	=1	=1	=1	=1	==	346,00
05	ETChess 22.10.04 Beta		20.5/34	11	00	00	00	· ·	==	0=	11	==	10	01	1=	01	1=	11	11	11	11	312,75
06	The Baron 1.50		19.0/34	10	11	00	=1	==	· ·	1=	10	00	10	11	10	0=	1=	01	00	11	11	313,00
07	King of Kings 2.56		19.0/34	01	00	00	=0	1=	0=	· ·	1=	11	10	10	=0	=0	11	1=	1=	11	11	291,75
08	Ktulu 6.0		18.5/34	00	=1	1=	00	00	01	0=	· ·	01	1=	10	=1	=0	11	10	1=	11	11	281,50
09	Fruit X 07/05 Beta		18.0/34	0=	01	=1	10	==	11	00	10	· ·	00	10	0=	10	11	1=	1=	1=	10	293,50
10	Zarkov 4.70		18.0/34	01	00	=0	=1	01	01	01	0=	11	· ·	0=	=1	01	0=	01	11	01	11	285,50
11	Patriot 1.30		16.5/34	=1	00	0=	1=	10	00	01	01	01	1=	· ·	0=	10	11	==	==	00	11	275,00
12	The Crazy Bishop 0052		15.5/34	00	=0	00	00	0=	01	=1	=0	1=	=0	1=	· ·	11	00	1=	11	11	0=	235,25
13	Dragon 4.6		15.0/34	00	=0	==	==	10	1=	=1	=1	01	10	01	00	· ·	00	=0	11	01	0=	253,25
14	Movei 00.8.291 Beta		15.0/34	=0	=1	1=	=0	0=	0=	00	00	00	1=	00	11	11	· ·	00	01	11	1=	237,25
15	Nejmet 3.07		14.5/34	10	10	00	=0	00	10	0=	01	0=	10	==	0=	=1	11	· ·	01	0=	1=	234,25
16	Fafis X 0.01 Beta		10.5/34	00	=0	00	=0	00	11	0=	0=	0=	00	==	00	00	10	10	· ·	==	11	159,00
17	Capture R1		10.0/34	00	01	0=	=0	00	00	00	00	0=	10	11	00	10	00	1=	==	· ·	01	158,00
18	KnightX 1.86		8.0/34	00	=0	=0	==	00	00	00	00	01	00	00	1=	1=	0=	0=	00	10	· ·	131,00

Tournament with the same participant engines on
Athlon 3.2, 40 moves in 20 minutes!
France vs. The World II

Platz	Motor	Land	Punkte	Ta	Pa	Fr	Na	Ph	Za	An	Kt	Th	ET	Ki	Mo	Dr	Ca	Fa	Ne	Th	Kn	S-B
01	Tao 5.7 Beta		25,5/34	· ·	00	10	11	10	11	01	1=	11	=1	1=	11	11	=1	11	11	=1	01	404,00
02	Patriot 1.30		24,0/34	11	· ·	1=	10	=1	1=	11	=0	00	=1	00	01	1=	11	11	11	11	11	388,75
03	Fruit X 07/05 Beta		23,5/34	01	0=	· ·	11	01	=0	01	1=	11	11	11	1=	11	=1	=0	==	=1	11	381,50
04	Naum 1.4		22,5/34	00	01	00	· ·	11	11	=0	11	=1	=1	=0	11	11	11	10	11	=0	11	348,75
05	Pharaon 3.1		19,5/34	01	=0	10	00	· ·	1=	11	01	=0	==	11	00	01	=0	1=	11	11	11	306,25
06	Zarkov 4.70		18,0/34	00	0=	=1	00	0=	· ·	10	11	=0	01	=0	=1	11	11	11	01	01	10	277,25
07	AnMon 5.50		17,5/34	10	00	10	=1	00	01	· ·	10	01	1=	10	11	0=	11	11	==	=0	0=	284,75
08	Ktulu 6.0		17,5/34	0=	=1	0=	00	10	00	01	· ·	=1	==	11	11	00	=0	1=	11	=1	10	277,50
09	The Baron 1.50		17,0/34	00	11	00	=0	=1	=1	10	=0	· ·	11	0=	0=	10	1=	01	10	11	=0	276,00
10	ETChess 22.10.04 Beta		16,5/34	=0	=0	00	=0	==	10	0=	==	00	· ·	=1	=1	=1	11	11	0=	=1	10	251,00
11	King of Kings 2.56		16,0/34	0=	11	00	=1	00	=1	01	00	1=	=0	· ·	10	=1	01	00	01	=1	=1	268,00
12	Movei 00.8.291 Beta		14,5/34	00	10	0=	00	11	=0	00	00	1=	=0	01	· ·	01	=1	01	01	1=	1=	225,25
13	Dragon 4.6		14,5/34	00	0=	00	00	10	00	1=	11	01	=0	=0	10	· ·	00	11	1=	10	11	217,00
14	Capture R1		12,5/34	=0	00	=0	00	=1	00	00	=1	0=	00	10	=0	11	· ·	0=	=1	1=	==	193,50
15	Fafis X 0.01 Beta		12,0/34	00	00	=1	01	0=	00	00	0=	10	00	11	10	00	1=	· ·	11	00	01	194,00
16	Nejmet 3.07		12,0/34	00	00	==	00	00	10	==	00	01	1=	10	10	0=	=0	00	· ·	11	=1	185,00
17	The Crazy Bishop 0052		11,5/34	=0	00	=0	=1	00	10	=1	=0	00	=0	=0	0=	01	0=	11	00	· ·	10	191,00
18	KnightX 1.86		11,5/34	10	00	00	00	00	01	1=	01	=1	01	=0	0=	00	==	10	=0	01	· ·	186,50

Aleksandar Naumov:
I found a big bug that can explain why Naum performed bad in ATL when ponder is on. Naum will actually reset itself every time there is a ponder miss (when it doesn't predict opponent's move correctly). This means that Naum will waste time cleaning all hash tables, and then it will waste more time filling them again, and of course with empty hash tables it will have to think much longer to reach the same depth. I am sure this reduced Naum's strength by around 100 ELO points. This happens only for UCI, so it was better to run Naum as WinBoard engine, but it's too late now :)

Frank Quisinsky:
Naum is in my opinion a little sensation! The first version of Naum was really strong and today, only one year later, the users like Naum and you can find a lot of tournaments with your engine. How long are you working on Naum? Could you write a little bit about the main improvements to Naum, better ... could you give us the information which programming technics you used is the reason for the high ELO jumpings since Naum 1.0?

Alexandar Naumov:
The reason for the first version already being strong is simple. I waited until I reached the playing level I was happy with. I hate to lose, and didn't want to release version that will be beaten by everyone. I also wasn't aware until a year ago that there are so many engines and tournaments. I started developing Naum in 2001 for Palm. There is still a Palm version available on my web site that I am proud to say fits it's code, data and transposition tables in less then 256KB of memory. It was hard to develop and test the Palm version, so I decided to create a PC version in 2003. This first version lost nunn match against Gerbil 11:3, but it was very basic and full of bugs. On the PC, development went much faster, and with the info I found on the web, it was easy to implement null moves, IID and other standard stuff. At the end of 2003 I already had a version that was close in strength to Arasan. Naum 1.0 already had all standard search techniques (quiescent search, TTs, extensions, null moves, IID,...) except SEE which I added in version 1.4. Naum wasn't using bitboards (now I use only two bitboards for piece location for both sides). The 1.6 is the first version after 1.2 that I worked hard on (probably 6-8 hours a day while at work :), because I felt that many competing engines are closing in.

Frank Quisinsky:
From Canada there are three very strong programs available. Naum, King of Kings and Thinker. Do you know the programmer of King of Kings and Thinker, perhaps you have a friendship with the programmers and from time to time you have a meeting with the programmers? This question have a reason Aleksandar. Such a friendship can be the result of a new Canada-ch, perhaps in co-operation with the programmers from USA.

Alexandar Naumov:
I don't have any contact with other canadian programmers. I think it would be cool to meet them in person at some kind of North American championship just like German Paderborn or Dutch-ch. Any sponsors?...organizers?

Frank Quisinsky:
Unfortunately, I dosen't try with full power to find out sponsors in the latest years. I have a very interesting contact to a cosmetic concern. This company have intereset on our area and in my opinion is the combination Cosmetic / Chess very interesting. Yes, it's possible to find sponsors for such events, why not! Which such talents I saw in your person and many other engine programmers we can make a lot. For years I organized a "bigger" event -> Deep Shredder vs. The World <-. I wrote mails to Intel and Sparkasse Trier for sponsoring. Both companys had bigger interest and I made a little deal. This is one example only. Such an organization need many time and must be really an event for users. I can give my knowledge and helps persons which try to organize such an event. Unfortunately, I have to give my bad English too :-)

Frank Quisinsky:
The programmer of Gandalf, Steen Suurballe, like the time control 40 moves in 20 minutes. I am sure you look in the Naum games you can find in WWW. What is the time control you like for testing? I am sure you haven't many interest to search in blitz games Naum errors!

Alexandar Naumov:
Even blitz games can point to some big problems in the evaluation, but I can easily run them myself. Getting the long time control games is much harder, because I don't have enough free CPU time available for that. That's why I download from WWW and keep only games with 40/20' and up. Long time controls in my oppinion point better to more sophisticated evaluation, king safety and endgame problems. I consider 40/20' to be a perfect level in between blitz (high margin of error) and long (too slow and boring to watch) time controls, but of course the longer time control and faster the hardware, the more value the game has for me as a developer.

Frank Quisinsky:
Back to Naum. What is your main interest in questions of playing styles? Do you like to create a tactic, strategic or positional engine? After all I can see, your engine are very balanced. The endgame seems to be a problem for Naum too but the most of all available engines have here the same problems. It would be better to have strong chess player in the team? A strong chess player can give a lot of tips for endgame improvements. Are hints from chess players improtant for a programmer to make the endgame better? Do you have a good test team or do you test your engine in self work?

Alexandar Naumov:
My favourite engine is Hiarcs. I really like positional play of this engine and the way it squeezes the life out of opponent before launching a crushing king attack. I would like to make Naum play like that. I don't think Naum's endgame is worse then in other engines, but, yes, it's bad. Endgame is very hard to evaluate, because I don't think there are many general ideas that apply in all endgame positions. For instance, it's possible to have a position where king on e4 means win and king on d4 loss, because of some zugzwang or specific pawn structure. It's impossible to evaluate something like that. Sometimes you just have to do the deep search, so I think smart extensions are as important in endgame as a good eval. Even something as well known as opposite color bishops works in limited number of positions, and when I tried the simple version of it, I actually got slightly worse blitz results, so I decided not to use it for now. I like when people send me email and point to some problem with the engine, but mostly I do the testing myself. I usually don't have time to go over Naum's games, because I can't have chess board on my screen at work :) (I work on Naum at home only during vacations). Having a strong player to help would be nice, but i don't think it's essential.

Frank Quisinsky:
I have to see Naum in my new ATL-2 tournament and I believe in around 4-6 weeks I can add your engine.
Now an user typical questions?!
Is the next Naum version with the improvements you gave us in perhaps two months available?

Alexandar Naumov:
Before releasing a new version, I want to test history pruning that I added recently and improve my king safety. The king safety is currently very fast, but too simple and gets Naum in trouble quite often. I hope I will have time to do some of this and produce at least a beta version by the end of the month.

Frank Quisinsky:
The latest question for the moment :-) What is your opinion about all the strong free sources? Pepito, Fruit, Phalanx and much others are free available. Do you look in the sources from the stronger available chess programs? If so, could you explain why Phalanx is so strong in King attacks :-) Other programmers find nothing to explain it. I believe its not easy for a programmer to look in other sources and I believe the complete sources understand only the programmer which made the programming, or?

Alexandar Naumov:
I think that open source programs provide shortcuts to some authors, and I would be happier without them. On the other hand, nothing can replace experience and knowledge you get when you do something yourself rather then just take it from other person's code. You may be able to create a strong engine quickly, but you will never make the top engine that way. Nothing can replace creative thinking. I think a good programmer with chess programming experience shouldn't have any trouble understanding other people's code. I took a quick look only at the search algorithm of the Fruit and Glaurung. Never looked at Phalanx code. Actually I would like to know why is Fruit so damn strong. I didn't see anything special in its search algorithm, so it must be the evaluation. I really have very little interest in other people's code. I have so many ideas of my own that it will take years before I run out of them. I have a great respect for early engine authors (Phalanx, Arasan, Comet and Crafty come to mind). There is so much info about chess programming right now (even without the open source programs) making it much easier to create a strong program.

Frank Quisinsky:
Thanks Aleksandar for this very interesting interview.
I am sure we alll wish you good luck with Naum for the future!!
Yes, one sympathic programmer more ... loud thinking, sorry!

March 07th, 2005
Little News-Ticker break!

78, MD

From Frank Quisinsky:
Thanks for your helps Michael. I will add News-Ticker message 79 only. An interview I made with the programmer of Naum for different days. I believe end of the next week I can work here with more power. At the moment I am ill and be happy with my rusk. All is OK, but I am not able to sitting to long on the PC.

March 05th, 2005
Matacz CCT7 released, short interview with Maciej Pestka

77, FQ

v. CCT7
WB compatible
Home of Matacz
Interview with Maciej Pestka by Frank Quisinsky
Hint: Matacz is not tested by myself yet.

Frank Quisinsky:
I saw that you have released a new version of your engine. The CCT-7 results are very impressive and we all have to check your engine.

Maciej Pestka:
I think I was a little bit lucky the firs day of CCT7. I also noticed that Matacz seems to be better at long time controls.

Frank Quisinsky:
For some days Grezgorz wrote a little bit about chess in Poland in our News-Ticker. Your program is one of the strongest engines from Poland. For the moment the wishes by users are more engine protocol support in Matacz! WB feature: Edit mode, analyze mode or Nalimov endgame database support. UCI support is just great and for users more easy to handle. Do you have interest to add more protocol support in the near future?

Maciej Pestka:
First of all I'm very happy that somebody noticed my program :) I will add more protocol support as soon as I find some time (My 2nd child was born the day of MPPS 3 final - 5 months ago - and since then I have almost no time for my Engine). But my priority number one is now a new opening book which is the weakest point of my engine.

Frank Quisinsky:
Could you write a little bit to the program structur of Matacz?

Maciej Pestka:
The program is written in C++ (or rather in C using C++ syntax). The most detailed description you can find at my webpage. You can find there are all commonly known techniques that Matacz uses. I can only add that Matacz has very small eval (almost the size of Lazy Eval comparing to other engines). It's mainly because of my lack of knowledge about position evaluation at chess (I'm very weak chess player). If you look at the webpage you can notice that many standard techniques are missing (futility pruning, extensions, reductions etc...) some of them are very easy to implement add but needs time to test & tune.

Frank Quisinsky:
With a logo by Wilhlem Hudetz your program is 50 ELO stronger :-)
I will send Wilhelm a copy of this mail!
Thanks for your nice engine!

Maciej Pestka:
Thank you for your interest.
It's good to know that somebody uses my program :)

March 01st, 2005
Review by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, IPCCC 2005 Paderborn

76, FQ

Stefan Meyer-Kahlen (Germany, programmer of the number 1 'Shredder') added today an very interesting review on HIS OWN News-Ticker. Yes, all what you read is right, Stefan takes time to create a Shredder News-Ticker for his customers. Here you can read the information about his developements.

F A N T A S T I C
I hope other programmers of commercial engines exemplify and will follow!

I hope Stefan will find a lot of translators for his Shredder Classic GUI. In Shredder News-Ticker you can read that a French translation is available. Perhaps one of the hard working Arena "Translators" can give the Shredder Classic GUI the first look and help Stefan too. In my opinion we all have to give the programmer of UCI the max. possible support.

We are very happy that the strongest chess program today 'Shredder' works well under Arena Chess GUI!

And now ...
Sprint to the webpage of Stefan!

Speedy Gonzales Links:
http://www.shredderchess.com (English, News-Ticker in English)
http://www.shredderchess.de (German, News-Ticker in German)

March 01st, 2005
SlowChess Blitz WV released, short interview with Jonathan Kreuzer

75, FQ

v. Blitz WV
WB / UCI compatible, own GUI
Home of SlowChess
Interview with Jonathan Kreuzer by Frank Quisinsky
Hint: SlowChess Blitz 0.4 is number 19 in ATL-1 Rating-List

Frank Quisinsky:
At the moment three different versions of SlowChess are available.
1. SlowChess 2.96, 2. SlowChess Blitz 0.4, 3. SlowChess Blitz WV
Could you explain a little bit the differents of these available versions?
I believe that the "Gladiators" don't know which of this versions is to add in a tournament.

Jonathan Kreuzer:
Slow 2.96, is mostly the same as 2.94. (There were a few tiny changes, hence the new version name.) So it's the oldest of the three. I released it so anyone interested could look at the source code for an older version of Slow Chess. The Blitz versions are newer, and I would consider Slow Blitz WV as a new engine compared to the 2.0-2.96 series, as most of the code relevant to playing style (evaluation & search) has been changed. Slow Blitz 0.4 is an intermediate version. New in Blitz 0.4: New King Safety, many other evaluation changes, like passed pawn, bishops, etc. A few more threats & a few types of checks in the Qsearch. New in Blitz WV: Mobility, some square control (not used much though currently) more new King Safety, endgame knowledge changes, more highly selective search, more threats recognized by the search, etc. Also much slower nps.

Frank Quisinsky:
Which of your SlowChess versions you like it to see in engine - engine tournaments?

Jonathan Kreuzer:
For tournaments it's up to the the director. If they want to use the newest versions, then they should use WV. Otherwise they can run any version they want, it's okay with me even if they use 2.82. Or Blitz and 2.94/2.96 if they want to do more than one engine version by an author.

Frank Quisinsky:
What are your latest main changes in SlowChess? Could you give us more details about your latest versions of SlowChess? Since SlowChess Blitz 0.4 your program is a lot stronger. I think on around 100 ELO points more ...

Jonathan Kreuzer:
I'm guessing there will be less of an ELO change in new versions now that Slow Chess is stronger. I've noticed the difference in rating between versions varies greatly in different people's lists. I think I've covered the main changes in previous posts. By more selective search I mean more aggresive null-move with adaptive R, extended/futility pruning, some Q-search pruning. Threats are tactical things, like Mate-in-1 threats, or forks/skewers, seen 1-ply or more earlier thanks to detection, or in the case of mate threats additionaly used to extend the search. The only special type of move in the Q-search is possible backrow mates, so it's not as tactical as I'd like. There are also some new GUI were features in WV (such as analysis window with multi-variation analysis.) Internally in WV there's personality support with many different settings possible, but there's no personality editor yet, so that's something I hope to make.

March 01st, 2005
Little Mainbook 1.0 released

74, FQ

Opening expert Harry Schnapp (Germany) sent today the "Little Mainbook". Please read News-Ticker Message 18 and 51 for more information. The "Little Mainbook" is added in Arena Setup 2. Additional information to our mainbook can be found on the detail page!

News-Ticker Overview (it's easy to search a message, try it)

Arena mainbook

Arena Little Mainbook:
270.524 moves, depth = 25 plays!
Little Mainbook v. 1.0 (1.03 Mb, RAR format)

If two different engines will use this book in engine tournaments the book is very able.
The variants will be no longer as 16 - 25 half moves.

Thanks Harry!

March 01st, 2005
Engines: Ufim, Matacz, SlowChess, Spike

73, FQ

In the latest day many versions of stronger available WB / UCI engines are released.

01. UCI / WB Ufim 6.0
02. WB Matacz CCT 7
03. UCI / WB SlowChess Blitz WV

Links to the engine programmers can be found under Engins, Links

No possible to try to find out from all engines information in detail (the time to do that is the problem). But I wrote some mails to get more information for our News-Ticker system. From time to time you will find information to different engines. See the short interview with Jon Dart (Arasan) for an example.

04. UCI / WB Spike 0.9
The Spike programmers sent today a new beta of Spike 0.9 and an interesting text:

Volker Böhm:
Spike 0.9 is not yet fully finished as we still have a problem with the chessbase-GUI in ponder mode. We will try to fix this problem for the release. We will make a version availiable for download after our hollidays. This version plays exactly like the version we used in paderborn. There are only some improvements in the interface handling that bothered us while playing in tournament. Spike now has some new parameters that can be set in winboard (config-file) and in UCI (config-file and UCI-Parameters). These are search parameters like extensions and prunings.

Spike 0.9 will be available in around two weeks!

March 01st, 2005
Arasan 8.4 released, short interview with Jon Dart

72, FQ

v. 8.4
WB compatible, own GUI
Home of Arasan
Interview with Jon Dart by Frank Quisinsky
Hint: Arasan 8.1 - 8.3 is number 47 in ATL-1 Rating-List

Changes in Arasan 8.4:
1. Bug fixes in pin detection.
2. Scoring changes.
3. Better lazy eval in scoring module.
4. Improved pawn race scoring, handles more cases.
5. More liberal use of null move in endgames (but less aggressive use of R=3).
6. "make install" target added to Linux Makefile.
7. use feature done=0/done=1 to bracket tablebase initialization.

Frank Quisinsky:
Arasan is one of the first available amateur engines, one of the first five engines I found in WWW in the time I started with my first internet connection end of 1996. How long are you working on Arasan? In which year your program made the biggest jumping in playing strenght and which new idea by yourself can be the reason?

Jon Dart:
I wrote an earlier chess program even before Arasan (first in Pascal but then ported to Modula-2), but I never released it. I started Arasan partly to help me learn C++, in the early 90's I think. It was first released in 1994.

I am not sure when the greatest jump in strength occurred. It has been gradual. Anything before version 5.0 was pretty buggy. By version 5.4 (May 2000), I was doing a lot of automated testing and the code was a lot more stable. I think that's the first version that was respectable in terms of quality and playing strength. Version 6.0 added tablebase support, which doesn't often matter, but sometimes helps a lot.

Frank Quisinsky:
Today over 250 amateur engines are freely available. Much of this engines started directly with a very high ELO performance in a _shorter_ time of developing. What do you think about all the "young stars" and the amazing hight ELO performance by others? After all, do you think that the available information about chess programming for around 8 years are not enough for young programmers to create such monsters? Means, that in the latest years more sources are free available and more pages about chess programming. I am sure this made it today possible to create in a short time a strong program?

Jon Dart, programmer of Arasan (USA)

Jon Dart:
I am surprised and occasionally discouraged when very new programs show up and are very strong. But I think it is easier now to make a strong program, since there is more information available - when I started out there were some academic articles and books that were mostly short on practical details, plus there was source to Gnuchesss and a very few other programs, mostly not very strong.

I mostly don't know what the new programmers are doing, unless they release source or technical details. I have looked at Pepito, which is a strong program, but don't see anything that is particularly unusual about it - so I am not really sure why it is so strong. Aristarch from its web pages seems to have some unusual forward pruning ideas, as do a few other programs.

Frank Quisinsky:
The older guard of testers like more the older guard of engines. Many testers have the opinion that a good program can regulary "only" stronger and stronger with time. Many little improvements are more authentic and we can be sure that the programmer try to use really the own ideas. Arasan is perhaps the best example we have today. Many little improvements and today in additional a strong program. With each new version of Arasan we can be sure that you found a little bit to make your program stronger. Do you know that a chess program loosed personality if the first release version is directly with a high ELO performance available?

Jon Dart:
Not sure I know what you are asking. Arasan has changed a lot over the years and I am not sure it has maintained a consistent playing style, although it has generally been more solid than aggressive - I can tune the eval so it attacks more readily, but I haven't found a way to do that and also make it not play stupid sacs sometimes.

Frank Quisinsky:
What are your main ideas for Arasan in the future of developing? With years the programmers write big parts of the code again and have long time ideas for make the programs stronger! Any programming technic Arasan must have in your opinion? Example, many programmers I spoken means that MTD is an art of chess programming and not easy to implement. What is in your opinion not easy in chess programming and very interesting to have it in the own program?

Jon Dart:
I would like to implement SMP support, especially with the new dual-core chips coming out. But from comments I have heard from Bob Hyatt and others, that is not easy to do without also introducing bugs.

Frank Quisinsky:
I believe you test Arasan yourself with positions only and don't like to play eng-eng matches (not sure). Testers like it to play engine-engine matches. Do you look in such matches by testers? Or do you wish that the users search himself in engine-engine matches and send results / analyses to you. The most programmers have bigger problems to found good and long time beta testers. In my opinion are all the available engines the reason!

Jon Dart:
I have found that having Arasan play a wide variety of opponents on ICC has been a very good way to test it - I have found and fixed a lot of problems after looking at its games. I also use test suites and I sometimes play engine-engine matches offline. I'd be happy to have external testers send me games, although generally I also need the engine logs to get the most use out of the games. I have sometimes used beta testers, but not recently.

Frank Quisinsky:
You develops an own GUI. Today much good GUIs are available for testing, like Winboard, Shredder Classic and of course Arena. Do you try other graphical user interfaces? Maybe you test your own engine under your own GUI only? Do you have a bigger interest to improved your own GUI in the future or is the lion's share the engine?

Jon Dart:
Arasan's own GUI isn't anything I am particularly proud of, but I think it has helped make Arasan popular, because you can install the program and start using it right away, without any setup. So I maintain it. I do however spend most of my time on the engine. I use Winboard also and Arasan supports that well. I don't use Arena myself. I do use commercial programs such as Chess Tiger with their own UIs.

Frank Quisinsky:
Today we have two "standard protocols", Winboard and UCI are very popular. Arasan have an exessively good support to Winboard. I believe this is enough for you (of course should be enough for the group of testers) but UCI have some interesting features. To reduce ELO in strenght is a nice option for beginners. What do you think about the UCI protocol by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen? Do you give UCI a first look?

Jon Dart:
I do think the Winboard protocol is not very easy to make work properly and reliably (at least I had trouble with it) - UCI may be better. However, I have Winboard working ok now and Winboard supports the features I need myself. If I get enough requests for UCI support, I may implement it, but right now it is not a priority for me.

Frank Quisinsky:
In times you have no interest to play chess or to made improvements on Arasan what do you do if you are sitting on your PC? Do you have a favourite other game or other main interests? I like Kyodai Mahjongg, to work a little bit on webpages and find out information to computer chess, like hardware and to test different new tools I can find on Freeware / Shareware pages.

Jon Dart:
I don't really play other computer games besides chess. I keep some music on the PC, and download some from iTunes and other sites. I try to keep up with technology and general news on the Net.

Frank Quisinsky:
At last, we need more information about your latest version of Arasan. What do you try to improved in detail in the latest available Arasan versions, perhaps since version 8.0? You know that we all like to hear the details which must come direct from the programmer :-)

Jon Dart:
Compared to earlier versions, version 8.0 had a re-written and simplier eval, which gave it a pretty large speed boost. I have also started using the Intel C++ compiler for builds, which gives some additional speed advantage. Version 8.0 also introduced a small evaluation cache.

More recently, I have made quite a few endgame scoring bug fixes and improvements over the last few releases, and implemented KPK bitbases in version 8.2. Version 8.4 has some other scoring changes, including a larger penalty for uncovering the king (or bonus if the opponent's king is uncovered) and a larger bonus for rooks on open files. In addition, 8.4 has some changes to lazy evaluation, which improve speed. Overall, compared to version 7.4 (early 2004), version 8.4 is about 33% faster on a typical middlegame position, although the speed improvements have been gradual and there was no one thing except the eval simplification that helped a lot.

February 28th, 2005
SOS 5.1 for Arena best Freeware on CEGT

71, FQ

The most problems in all the available ratingslist is, that the results based on ONLY one hardware. Shredder 9.0 will be 20-30 ELO stronger on Athlon hardware compare to Intel hardware for only one example. This made testing of engines not easy. After all I saw in the latest time is the CEGT ratinglist the most interesting ratinglist we have today. CEGT based on results on five machines! Different actual systems and a very good time control made this list in my opinion to a reference. Heinz van Kempen and Christian Koch tested at last SOS 5.1 for Arena by Rudolf Huber. SOS 5.1 is after a short time of testing with more as 300 games the strongest available freeware. This is the advantage of many systems.

CEGT Heinz   CEGT Christian

THE  NEW  REFERENCE ?!!

February 27th, 2005
Hydra won IPCCC 2005

70, FQ