Arasan 10.2

[jdart]

Arasan 10.2 is available from http://www.arasanchess.org.

This is not quite the same version that played in CCT10, but close (some additional search enhancements and bug fixes have been made).

Changes in Arasan 10.2:
1) Fix possible crash bug: check for previous illegal move before hash
cutoff.
2) Forced move extension in q-search removed - caused some searches to
blow up (excessive nodes searched).
3) Limited razoring removed - in its place, wider use of LMR. Consolidate
reduction + pruning code. Disable recapture extension by default.
4) Some pawn scoring changes. Fixed asymmetric king center score in endgame.
5) Bug fixes in bad trade scoring.
6) Greater use of R=3 in null move.
7) Linux bug fix: free semaphores on exit.

[Yannik Snoeckx]

Hi Jon !

Many thanks for your very fine engine which has been developped for more than 10 years.

I'm building a "dinosaur league" which takes in account games by old engines, starting from 1998. Best versions of an engine at the end of all given years will be entering the league, but I am having a problem with Arasan 4.1 who should compete for 1998 : the own GUI version works fine but not the winboard one (which is of course the one I would like to use).

ArasanX.exe crashes both in console mode and in Arena 1.1 straight after loading. I have tried it on 2 computers, one with XP the other with W98. Both are Intel Pentium, though. I can post the error report if you want to, but the problem has been fixed since 5.0b in february 1999!

I found version 4.1 on the university of Pittburgh's site, but there was no source with it, so I can't ask one of compilers specialist to try to do one that should would work today.

Many thanks if you can help by providing the source.

Best wishes.
YS

Edit : if someone else has the source, he is of course much welcome too.

[jdart]

Anything before version 5.4 is pretty buggy and I wouldn't recommend it. 5.4 should work ok with Winboard and is available from http://www.arasanchess.org.

--Jon

[Yannik Snoeckx]

Hi !

Thanks for the answer.

Arasan 5.4 is competing for the year 2000 category and 5.3 (which works very finely too) for 1999.

I was just curious to see how much improvement there was compared to 4.1 as I am starting with the year 1998.

Without 4.1's source it's not possible to see if it is adaptable to play with XP on an Intel processor, but it is of course not the end of the world if this particular engine isn't playing.

Best wishes.
YS