Winboard Forum

After a period of inactivity (almost three years!), I'm pleased to announce a new version of my chess playing engine, Francesca.

It's available from my home page www.silentshark.co.uk

There's clearly been a lot of progress in the last few years. Lots of new, strong engines have appeared. I hope that this version is some 50 ELO points stronger than the last public release, v0.09. This doesn't put Francesca up with "the big boys", but should allow her to climb up some of the rating lists a little. At least that's what I hope.

ttfn.

Tom King

Tom King wrote:After a period of inactivity (almost three years!), I'm pleased to announce a new version of my chess playing engine, Francesca.

It's available from my home page www.silentshark.co.uk

There's clearly been a lot of progress in the last few years. Lots of new, strong engines have appeared. I hope that this version is some 50 ELO points stronger than the last public release, v0.09. This doesn't put Francesca up with "the big boys", but should allow her to climb up some of the rating lists a little. At least that's what I hope.

ttfn.

Tom King

A long-awaited present for SzG Swiss. I'm eagerly looking forward for the new Francesca. Thank you, Tom!

Best wishes,
G?bor

G?bor Szots wrote:
A long-awaited present for SzG Swiss. I'm eagerly looking forward for the new Francesca. Thank you, Tom!

Best wishes,
G?bor

No problem. Let's hope the new version plays better!

Tom King wrote:

G?bor Szots wrote:
A long-awaited present for SzG Swiss. I'm eagerly looking forward for the new Francesca. Thank you, Tom!

Best wishes,
G?bor

No problem. Let's hope the new version plays better!

One wish, if I may. Will you please publish here the WB2UCI.eng file which suits Francesca best to playing as a UCI engine?

G?bor

To use francesca mad in F9 gui, I found that you have to use its own book. It will not accept a ctg book. It freezes after it leaves a ctg book.

To use its own book:
1. in wb2uci set OwnBook=true
2. create "empty.ctg" with no games imported, and select it as the book when selecting the engine.

Here is my wb2uci.eng

[ENGINE]
Name=Francesca Mad
Author=Tom King
Filename=Wb2Uci.exe

[OPTIONS]
Program=mad.exe
WhiteScore=false
TerminateHard=true
OwnBook=true

Norm Pollock wrote:To use francesca mad in F9 gui, I found that you have to use its own book. It will not accept a ctg book. It freezes after it leaves a ctg book.

To use its own book:
1. in wb2uci set OwnBook=true
2. create "empty.ctg" with no games imported, and select it as the book when selecting the engine.

Here is my wb2uci.eng

[ENGINE]
Name=Francesca Mad
Author=Tim Mann
Filename=Wb2Uci.exe

[OPTIONS]
Program=mad.exe
WhiteScore=false
TerminateHard=true
OwnBook=true

Thanks, Norm. However, if I were you, I would change the author's name to Tom King.

Regards,
G?bor

G?bor Szots wrote:

Norm Pollock wrote:To use francesca mad in F9 gui, I found that you have to use its own book. It will not accept a ctg book. It freezes after it leaves a ctg book.

To use its own book:
1. in wb2uci set OwnBook=true
2. create "empty.ctg" with no games imported, and select it as the book when selecting the engine.

Here is my wb2uci.eng

[ENGINE]
Name=Francesca Mad
Author=Tom King
Filename=Wb2Uci.exe

[OPTIONS]
Program=mad.exe
WhiteScore=false
TerminateHard=true
OwnBook=true

Thanks, Norm. However, if I were you, I would change the author's name to Tom King.

Regards,
G?bor

Hi Gabor,

Oops! I edited above in 2 places and changed it on my PC. Perhaps you can also edit your quote of my original post so that no one gets the wrong idea. My apologies to Tom and Tim!
-Norm

Hi Tom

Thanks for the new version of Francesca. I tried to add it to a a Nunn tourney I am running now using Arena. I couldnt get it to work as it ket coming up with an illegal move? The earlier version is also running in the same tourney without a problem.

Is it a problem with the way I have set it up maybe, I did do this after spending this evening in the pub, so stands a chance it could be.

I wasnt sure what the 3 Exe files were, I used "mad.exe" as the exe under Arena.

Anyone else tried this ?

Geoff

I wasnt sure what the 3 Exe files were, I used "mad.exe" as the exe under Arena.

Hi Geoff, from the readme:

Code: Select all

This release has three versions - "diet", "standard", and "lardy". The only difference
      is the memory used for hash tables. diet uses about 15Mb, standard uses about 110Mb,
      and lardy uses 580Mb. If you have sufficient memory, the versions with larger hash
      tables should play slightly stronger chess. The three versions are all bundled
      in the zip file, named dietmad.exe, mad.exe, lardymad.exe for diet, standard and
      lardy.

Guenther

Norm Pollock wrote:To use francesca mad in F9 gui, I found that you have to use its own book. It will not accept a ctg book. It freezes after it leaves a ctg book.

To use its own book:
1. in wb2uci set OwnBook=true
2. create "empty.ctg" with no games imported, and select it as the book when selecting the engine.

Here is my wb2uci.eng

[ENGINE]
Name=Francesca Mad
Author=Tom King
Filename=Wb2Uci.exe

[OPTIONS]
Program=mad.exe
WhiteScore=false
TerminateHard=true
OwnBook=true

Well, under HIARCS 10 (which is, I presume, is the same as Fritz 9) there is no need to create an empty book nor a line with ownboook is needed. You can simply uncheck "use book" at book options and MAD will use her own book.

Also, without the Terminator line MAD seems to exit all right.

I use WinXP SP2.

G?bor

Hi Gabor,

It's good to know different ways to do things.

The terminator is something I use for all wb engines with the wb2uci adapter. Some engines need it, some don't. Some engines need a line for initial time and start time, some don't. So I just put it in for all.

I found that there is an important issue about using own books in F9/H10 but it does not apply to Francesca.

Own books report a position evaluation. If they report "0.00" when making a move, there is a problem. Because if 2 such books are being used in the same game they can cause a faux draw within 3 to 6 moves if the draw detector is on. Therefore I only use "own books" in F9 if they report an evaluation of "-0.01" or "0.01". That way they avoid the faux draw. Fortunately most books, including Francesca's do just that. However some do not such as: Zappa, Aristarch, Queen, and Pepito. With them, and with engines without their own book, I use a generic ctg book that I cooked myself.

-Norm

Norm Pollock wrote:Hi Gabor,

It's good to know different ways to do things.

The terminator is something I use for all wb engines with the wb2uci adapter. Some engines need it, some don't. Some engines need a line for initial time and start time, some don't. So I just put it in for all.

I found that there is an important issue about using own books in F9/H10 but it does not apply to Francesca.

Own books report a position evaluation. If they report "0.00" when making a move, there is a problem. Because if 2 such books are being used in the same game they can cause a faux draw within 3 to 6 moves if the draw detector is on. Therefore I only use "own books" in F9 if they report an evaluation of "-0.01" or "0.01". That way they avoid the faux draw. Fortunately most books, including Francesca's do just that. However some do not such as: Zappa, Aristarch, Queen, and Pepito. With them, and with engines without their own book, I use a generic ctg book that I cooked myself.

-Norm

Hi Norm,

This is interesting and important information. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
For engines without an own book I use that of Harry Schnapp, with book optimization.

G?bor

Hello Norm,

If the engine display and thinks that it's remis because he see 0.00, you can use the option Noise=3 with wb2uci.exe and wb2uci is going to send 0.01 to the engine.

Best wishes.

Claude

GeoffW wrote:Hi Tom

Thanks for the new version of Francesca. I tried to add it to a a Nunn tourney I am running now using Arena. I couldnt get it to work as it ket coming up with an illegal move? The earlier version is also running in the same tourney without a problem.

Is it a problem with the way I have set it up maybe, I did do this after spending this evening in the pub, so stands a chance it could be.

I wasnt sure what the 3 Exe files were, I used "mad.exe" as the exe under Arena.

Anyone else tried this ?

Geoff

I'd be very surprized if you did get a nunn tournament running with Francesca. Which version did work?

Hi Tom

Aha, yes you are correct the earlier version is also having the same problem. What was throwing me was I looked at the Arena results table and it was showing as 8 wins 13 losses so I had assumed it was running OK. For some reason even though it was Francesca that was causing the problem Arena sometimes gave it as a win for Francesca.

Any chance of a fix for this please ? Not sure how easy or tricky that would be for you ?

Regards Geoff