New UCI engine - Critter Chess 0.34

[Tony Mokonen]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/critterchess/

By Richard Vida, Slovak Republic

[Graham Banks]

Hi Tony,

any idea as to Critter's strength?

Cheers,
Graham.

[Tony Mokonen]

Quick reply Graham, I barely had time to try it out

This critter seems pretty scrappy, hmm in the 2300's on the UEL scale, from the few quick 3/0 tests I tried:

Critter 0.34 - Glass 1.1 1-0
Critter 0.34 - Gibbon 2.52a 1-0
Philou 2.7.0 - Critter 0.34 0-1
GreKo 6.30 - Critter 0.34 0-1
Critter 0.34 - Arasan 11.3 1-0
Yace 0.99.57 DC - Critter 0.34 1-0

[Graham Banks]

Quick reply Graham, I barely had time to try it out

This critter seems pretty scrappy, hmm in the 2300's on the UEL scale, from the few quick 3/0 tests I tried:

Critter 0.34 - Glass 1.1 1-0
Critter 0.34 - Gibbon 2.52a 1-0
Philou 2.7.0 - Critter 0.34 0-1
GreKo 6.30 - Critter 0.34 0-1
Critter 0.34 - Arasan 11.3 1-0
Yace 0.99.57 DC - Critter 0.34 1-0

Hmm - not too bad if those early results can be considered a good indication. Thanks Tony.

[Olivier Deville]

Nice find Tony !

Olivier

[Graham Banks]

[Guenther Simon]

Nice find Tony !

Olivier

I have it losing on time a lot here in move 40 in x/y time control. It seems it often tries
to finish the last ply when failing high or low and ignores the time then?

Guenther

[rvida]

I have it losing on time a lot here in move 40 in x/y time control. It seems it often tries
to finish the last ply when failing high or low and ignores the time then?

Guenther

It doesnt try to finish the last ply even when failing low. The problem is probably that search termination has a latency about 40-60 ms (at least on my machine). Arena seems to tolerate that. I'll try to fix it in the next release.

[Olivier Deville]

Welcome to the Winboard Forum Richard, and congratulations for this very promising new engine

Critter got a wildcard for my E group that will start in a few days.

Olivier

[Guenther Simon]

I have it losing on time a lot here in move 40 in x/y time control. It seems it often tries
to finish the last ply when failing high or low and ignores the time then?

Guenther

It doesnt try to finish the last ply even when failing low. The problem is probably that search termination has a latency about 40-60 ms (at least on my machine). Arena seems to tolerate that. I'll try to fix it in the next release.

Hi Richard,

That could be the wellknown problem in Arena, which even allows to reach the cut with negative time
on the clock(which is a bug)! WB doesn't forgive any 10th of milliseconds. I have a lot of logs here with Polyglot
timestamps which show that CritterChess doesn't move at the given time in move 40.
I will happily await your next version

Guenther

[rvida]

Critter chess 0.36 released, timing issues hopefully fixed