TRACE 1.34 Released!

[Ross Boyd]

G'day all,

TRACE 1.34 is available from her homepage (just click on the www button below).

Unless a major bug is found, this is the LAST release of TRACE 1.

Now I can focus (as time permits) on version 2 which is a complete rewrite from scratch. There is some sketchy info on the homepage about the design goals. Currently, T2 passes all perft tests and is ready to have a search module bolted on. Whoooopppeeeee!


Here are the version notes:

Code: Select all

TRACE 1.34 - Aug 11 2005 RELEASE
- This is 'almost' the same version which competed at NC3 2005.
- Less likely to run out of time when using incremental time controls
- Pondering is now predictive. Prior versions simply pondered on
  the current position (to saturate the hash table).
- Improved move ordering, optimized history and killer table usage
- Tweaks to pawn scoring
- Threat extension tuning
- Hash pruning relaxed for PV nodes.
- Qsearch recognizes stalemates before standing pat.
- Hash table allows depth entries to be overwritten during deep searches
- Many evaluation changes. Some glitches fixed... 999,999 more to go...
- SEE (static exchange evaluator) performance improvements
- Piece values adjusted
- Two bishops bonus increased.
- Bad trade penalty adjustments.
- King shuffling in middle-game reduced
- Weak back rank detection
- Compiled for Athlon/P4 performance
- WacNew on P3-600Mhz scores 299/300 @ 15 secs/pos
- bench 7 on P3-600Mhz: nodes=278130, secs=1.28, nps=216780
                        pv=b2b3 c8a6 g5e4 d6c6 c2e2 f7f6 e2g4


Have fun everyone!

Ross

[Stan Arts]

Congratulations Ross,

Trace is a nice engine, a real tactical monster.
(especially at fast timecontrols it seems to be able to out-tactic everything. )

Greetings
Stan

[Ross Boyd]

Hi Stan,

Thanks for your kind words.

I like TRACE to find tactics but it probably weakens her overall. Clearly she's an awful positional player. Making a tactical engine is (imo) much much easier than making a good positional player.

With T2 I want to improve the tactics further and smooth out the evaluation between game phases. Also, I have a concept for late middlegame play. Its the idea of 'waypoints' to guide the search and allow for some extremely heavy tree pruning. Hope it works.

Good luck with Neurosis!

Ross