Slow Chess 2.96 source released

[Jon Kreuzer]

I changed the CheckingMove function when making 2.96, which turns out the be a mistake since I screwed it up (I forgot that since it's possible to create a horizontal check while castling, that when checking the ray the castling king must be removed.) I didn't encounter this because I only tested with fast Blitz games, but in longer games there's a very real chance of 2.96 exiting unexpectedly because of this, so I updated the .exe and source on the page. If you already downloaded the Slow296.zip before the fix, I added a tiny separate .exe download.

[Tony van Roon-Werten]

The opposite to open source is patents.
There is a shift going on about open source even by giants such as IBM, Sun and others. They have both participated in open source projects before but this is one step further. IBM had berfore the most rigid view of patents of the whole pack

/Peter

Personnaly I prefer something in the middle. Like Ed Schr?der did with his Rebel pages.

His explenations should be enough to give you ideas for your engine, but you still need to think about it.

I don't see the extra value of publishing source code. It will never fit in my engine anyway, so it might as well have been pseudo code.

At least I'm sure that if people would only publish pseudo code, I don't run the risk of losing a game to some moron, that just stole and recompiled someone else his code and claims it his.

If you can't grasp the idea from the pseudo code, you won't from the real code. But with pseudo code you can't decide to include it in anyway.

Tony

[Olivier Deville]

Hi Jonathan

Should this new version replace SlowChess Blitz 0.4 in tournaments ?

Olivier

[Norm Pollock]

Hi Jonathan,

For my private tournaments, should I consider SlowChess 2.96 and SlowChessBlitz 0.4 to be two different engines by the same author as I do for Gothmog/Glaurung and Shredder/ShredderClassic?

Btw, I played a 12 game match between SlowChess2.96 v SlowChessBlitz0.4, and 2.96 came out ahead 7.0 v 5.0. I used fritz8 gui, amd 3000xp+, 128M each, same book (no learning), no pondering, 3-4-5 egtb, at 4'+2".

-Norm

[Jon Kreuzer]

Olivier:
It's up to the tournament director which version to use, but I'd guess that SlowChess Blitz 0.4 is stronger (not by a large amount.) For people using 2.94 in tournaments, I'd recommend replacing with 2.96.

Norm:
My idea when creating Slow Blitz was that it would be a separate engine, however the released version ( 0.4 ) is an intermediate version that's still like Slow Chess 2.94/2.96 in many ways, so I don't have any reccomendations here.

[Uri Blass]

Jon,
It is simple

If you took Slowchess and changed it then Slowblitz is not a new engine
like Gothmog/Glaurung
If you started from scratch to build slowBlitz then it is a new engine.

I guess based on what you write that slowBlitz is not a new engine
but modified version of Slowchess2.94.

Uri

[Jon Kreuzer]

Uri:

By your definition it is simple and the answer is that they are the same because Blitz 0.4 started from the 2.94 code.
However if Norm shared your views, then Shredder/ShredderClassic would definitely be considered the same engine.

I myself consider the unreleased Slow Blitz a different engine even though it shares code with 2.96 (almost all movement & board & winboard/uci, much endgame eval & hashing, some search.) The released Blitz 0.4, though changed in many ways, shares a lot more evaluation and search code with 2.96 that I consider more important to the playing style.