Skaki bugfix/update

[Jim Ablett]

Engine : Skaki 1.20
Authors: G.Lazarou / C.Phillippou


1. Fixed old "39th move timeout" bug from v1.19c (hopefully!).
(Thanks to Claude Dubois for help with info/testing/debug.)

2. Re-activated some eval functions in source code
and made some other modifications.

3. Disabled built-in random feature of eval which caused
Skaki to make some poor choices of move.

4. Increased hashtable size from 2mb to 16mb.

5. Resign function added.
(Four times below threshold (-16000) will cause Skaki to resign)

6. Pondering turned off by default.

7. Removed pop-up messages annoyance.

8. New bigger, better opening book.

9. Now using Winboard version 2 protocol.

10. Compiled fast Intel "all Cpu" and "SSE Cpu" versions.

11. New logo.


Available from my homepage.

Jim.

[Pedro Castro]

Hello Jim,

I have seen the program skaki and its new opening book. Finally I have been decided to create my own function for the book support and the format that I use is a format as the one of that book. Very seemed also to the format which you use in MSCP or that uses other programs, TSCP, faile. How do a book whith a file PGN? You use some tools standard or you have created some function?

The book of skaki, or the book of faile 0,6 (old) or others are free to use in my program? I suppose that no and I sould have do it or to ask permission the author.

In the book of skaki I have seen few characters #, instead of some letter, I believe that it is a small error, surely due to changing of PGN to that format.

Best wishes,

Pedro

[Jim Ablett]

Hello Pedro,

I use Bookbuilder 3.6b to create opening books. I import
Pgns, export to crafty type pgn, clean it up and there you are.

http://home.wxs.nl/~k.e.c/DreamHC/Pagina5.html

I left the '#'s in the Skaki opening book because I deemed them
to be harmless, as they occur at a very high ply number, one that
Skaki should never reach in the opening and should be skipped if it ever did.

Best

Jim.

[Jim Ablett]

I forgot to thank Dann Corbit for the Skaki source code
and some very helpful advice on compiling Skaki.

Thanks Dann.

Regards,
Jim.

[Pablo]

Hello Jim:
At my PC, apparently Skaki 1.20 do not read or do not use big.book file,
nevertheless at the skaki.ini I have "book=big.book" command and the big.book file is in the same folder of skaki.exe.
Please your comment,
Pablo

[Jim Ablett]

Hello Pablo,

The Skaki executable must be named 'SKAKI.exe' in order to read the
'skaki.ini' file correctly. Don't rename it to anything else.

After a whole day of testing with no 39th move timeouts,
I've started to get a few, so the '39th move bug' isnt
completely fixed. I'll post another update soon.

Regards,

Jim.

[Pablo]

Hello Pablo,

The Skaki executable must be named 'SKAKI.exe' in order to read the
'skaki.ini' file correctly. Don't rename it to anything else.

After a whole day of testing with no 39th move timeouts,
I've started to get a few, so the '39th move bug' isnt
completely fixed. I'll post another update soon.

Regards,

Jim.

Hello Jim,
Thanks for your hint.
After your comment, I remembered the peculiar procedure of this program, that you cannot change the name of Skaki.exe in order to use Skaki.ini commands. Anyhow I want to give you my hint.
For example if you rename Skaki.exe to Skaki120SSE.exe and also you rename Skaki.ini to Skaki120SSE.ini, then the program will read OK the configuration file. The hint is to name always the .exe and the .ini identically.
Best,
Pablo
Pablo

[Jim Ablett]

Thanks for the good tip Pablo.

I'll put it in the 'skaki-changes.txt' on next
update.

New Skaki update now available from my homepage.

Best,

Jim.