Posts

Opening Test Suites

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To eliminate the effect of opening books, it is a common practice to test the strength of chess engines by letting them play from both sides of a pre-selected set of opening positions. Earlier versions of Chess for Android already supported the option to play engine tournaments from both sides of 50 positions of the built-in book (yielding 100 games total between each engine pair). The upcoming 3.0 release will add the option to play both sides of any external book in PGN format, such as the famous " Nunn Positions " (published by GM John Nunn) or the " Silver Opening Suite " (published by Albert Silver). To use this feature, long press the notation window, and select "UCI Engine Support", followed by "Engine Tournament". Then select the "all games from both sides of external book". This will open a file navigation window, starting at the root of the SD card. Navigate into the directory and file of the desired opening suite. This

Komodo 3 for Android

Don Dailey and Larry Kaufman's Komodo version 3 is now available for Android (ARMv5TE) at UCI engines for Android . A quick one second per move tournament ended in favor of the previous version 2.03 (possibly because Don fixed the movetime command to honor the given time exactly; previous versions would sometimes use more time, which may have skewed estimates of their strength a bit). 1   Komodo32 2.03 AB  +50/-18/=32 66.00%   66.0/100 2   Komodo32 3 AB     +18/-50/=32 34.00%   34.0/100

Chess for Android 2.9.4

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I just released version 2.9.4 for Chess for Android, available from the Android market or as direct download . This version introduces the much requested "infinite analysis" mode for an imported UCI engine, in which the engine reports its analysis of positions without actually making moves. To enable this mode, change the level to free play, as shown in the following screenshots. If an UCI engine is imported, its analysis of the current position will appear below the board. The user can freely play through previous games or make new moves. When at the end of a game still in progress, pressing the ">" button will play the best move found by the UCI engine. Changing the level, or unloading the UCI engine will exit the "infinite analysis" mode. Although the feature may seem simple, it was actually far from straightforward to implement, also because not all UCI engines behave the same for the "go infinite" command. Please let me know if yo

DoubleCheck 1.1 Results

Lucas added the  movetime command to DoubleCheck (the stop command is still lacking) which enabled conducting a few quick 1-second per move matches to determine the strength of the engine. DoubleCheck 1.1 - Komodo32 2.03 AB  +0/-10/=0  0.00% - GreKo 8.0         +0/-10/=0  0.00% - gaviota v0.83.0.3 +0/-9/=1   5.00% - RedQueen 0.9.8    +0/-9/=1   5.00% - Jazz v444 JA      +1/-7/=2  20.00% - BikJump v2.1P     +2/-4/=4  40.00% - ZCT-0.3.2500      +4/-5/=1  45.00% - Chess for Android +6/-0/=4  80.00%

DoubleCheck 1.1 for Android

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I compiled Lucas Braesch's DoubleCheck 1.1 for Android (ARM) and put it on the UCI Engines for Android website . The engine works reasonably well in Chess for Android. However, because the UCI command movetime is not implemented yet, it plays almost instantaneously, making matches to determine its strength less useful at the moment.