New version with regular eval released: rofChade 2.0

A preliminary version of rofChade with regular evaluation terms has been participating in TCEC season 14, so it’s time to release an “official” version which is entitled version 2.0.

Version is a slightly enhanced version compared to the one that was competing at TCEC. For more details see the release page.

The Windows and Mac versions can be downloaded from the download page.

TCEC Season 14, Div3 sixth place

During the Div4 tournament I had been experimenting with the search part of rofChade together with the added evaluation terms. Version 1.0 only had material and Piece Square Tables for evaluation, but with the added evaluation elements it seems that LMR reductions can be a more aggressive than without the eval terms. Probably the move sorting of the quiet moves becomes a bit more accurate with more eval.

The version with more aggressive LMR seemed a bit better and I had also been playing with the usage of the hash table in quiescence search. Because the TCEC tournament runs on a dual processor machine with 44 physical cores,  I thought that not using the hashtable in quiescence might be better. Testing on my Threadripper 1950X showed some elo gain.

So eventually I decided to play with the new version in Div3. In Div3 the new version performed fairly good. Not using the hashtable in quiescence made the NPS go up from 58M to around 73M in the opening phase, but with lazy SMP more NPS not necessarily means better. Eventually it lost too much games in the last round and ended sixth place. Lc0 and Komodo MCTC ended first and second and where too strong for the rest of the Division(also for Div2 in which they also finished first and second).

The difference between places 3 to 6 was just 0.5 point, and because rofChade crashed one time in a dead draw endgame against Arasan and the TCEC tiebreak rules it ended up sixth.

Fortunately I was able to find the bug that caused the crash, so that crash won’t happen again in the future.  

Sixth place ensured a stay in Div3 for the next season, so hopefully rofChade will do even better then!

TCEC Season 14, Div4 second place

Thanks to the great work of Graham Banks rofChade was able to participate in the TCEC Season 14 tournament. There was a small problem however, I was still in the middle of playing, testing and tuning of rofChade for the upcoming CSVN tournament, so there was not a rofChade version available and the expected start of  TCEC season 14 was the next days.

So overnight a tuning run was started, and after some testing of that version, it was send to the TCEC organisation. Turned out, it was just minutes before the start…. When I looked  at the TCEC site just minutes after sending the version to see when the tournament would start, it was already playing some games in the testrun!  

During the tournament rofChade played very good and ended second place, behind the Komodo MCTC version. It even managed to win one game from Komodo with an original checkmate on the board, which is a rare occasion at TCEC because of the adjudication rules.

Second place means promotion to Div3!

Rofchade split 1st place at 12th ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championships

On  October 20/21 2018 rofChade participated at the 12th ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championships, and finished 1st together with Komodo and Chiron. After 2 tie breaks, Komodo won the tournament, while rofChade finished 3th.

The participating rofChade version was a preliminary version with first experimental evaluation elements.

This great result was not without luck. The game against Erdo ended in an easy win because of a GUI problem of Erdo. 

The game against Komodo seemed to end in a draw (which would have been great already…) but suddenly Komodo lost because of an internet problem.

Automato 
 icctd version: 8.1192 (Compiled Jul 28 2018 15:03:58)
 # 2262   The 2018 Twelfth Annual World Computer Rapid Chess Championships Round Robin Standard 25 4 unrated manager 
 ******   12 players/11 round (of 11)
          Managed by .   (Sat Oct 20 18  8:42 - Sun Oct 21 18 12:18)
          System: main TD: Automato
          max_bye_points:1000
          max_best:3000 last_sort:score scheduled: no
     Name                   1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 Score  #g
   1 rofchade       (2762)  xx 1  1  =  =  1  1  =  =  =  1  1   8.5  11
   2 ChironX        (2784)  0  xx =  1  =  =  1  1  1  1  1  1   8.5  11
   3 Komodo         (3392)  0  =  xx 1  1  =  1  =  1  1  1  1   8.5  11
   4 BertaX         (2321)  =  0  0  xx 1  =  1  1  1  1  1  1   8.0  11
   5 ArasanX        (2437)  =  =  0  0  xx =  =  =  1  1  1  1   6.5  11
   6 Erdo           (2861)  0  =  =  =  =  xx 0  1  1  =  1  1   6.5  11
   7 WaspX          (2930)  0  0  0  0  =  1  xx 1  =  1  1  1   6.0  11
   8 NightmareX     (2712)  =  0  =  0  =  0  0  xx 1  1  =  1   5.0  11
   9 MarvinX        (2792)  =  0  0  0  0  0  =  0  xx =  1  =   3.0  11
  10 Goldbar        (2499)  =  0  0  0  0  =  0  0  =  xx 0  1   2.5  11
  11 TheBaron       (2606)  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  =  0  1  xx 1   2.5  11
  12 Telepath       (2285)  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  =  0  0  xx  0.5  11 

Thus, we have a 3 way tie for first. The first tie breaker is a double round robin G/10+1. The second tie breaker is a round robin G/3+1.

  
Automato 
 icctd version: 8.1192 (Compiled Jul 28 2018 15:03:58)
 # 2264   The 2018 Twelfth Annual World Computer Rapid Chess Championships Final Manual Blitz 10 1 unrated manager 
 ******   3 players/9 round (of 9)
          Managed by .   (Sun Oct 21 18 13:50 - Sun Oct 21 18 15:58)
          System: main TD: Automato
          max_bye_points:1000
          max_best:3000 last_sort:score scheduled: no
     Name                  R1    R2    R3    R4    R5    R6    R7    R8    R9    Score  #g
   1 Komodo         (3392) =w2   bye   =b3   =b2   bye   +w3   +w2   bye   =b3     4.0   9
   2 ChironX        (2805) =b1   =b3   bye   =w1   =w3   bye   -b1   +b3   bye     3.0   9
   3 rofchade       (2762) bye   =w2   =w1   bye   =b2   -b1   bye   -w2   =w1     2.0   9