Jul 26, 2007

[Other] New Jim Ablett compile of Mediocre 0.332

Jim Ablett has compiled Mediocre 0.332 using Excelsior Jet and the results are fantastic. I almost want to call this a new version. My test results shows almost a doubling of the nps.

Many thanks to Jim Ablett. Try it out! (for Windows only)

mediocre_0332_win32jet.zip

[Other] ChessWar XI Group F Finished

Mediocre placed 5th in Group F in Oliver Deville's ChessWar XI and will play next in Group E. Fairly easy group with no real surprises.

Group E is a lot harder, but it should not be impossible for Mediocre to place in the top 20 to qualify for group D. At least with some luck.

These are the 20 qualified engines from Group F:
1 ERENDAL 1.2          8.5
2 JOKER 1.1.08 8
3 HECTOR FOR CHESS 8
4 ROTOR 0.2 8
5 MEDIOCRE 0.332 7.5
6 FLUX 2.1 7
7 ADAM 3.1 7
8 MRCHESS 2.1 7
9 BIBICHESS 0.5 6.5
10 TIMEA 4a12 6.5
11 WARRIOR 1.0.3 6.5
12 ALF 1.08 6.5
13 CLARABIT 0.25d_x64 6.5
14 FEUERSTEIN 0.4.5.1 6.5
15 PLYWOOD 1.7.3 6.5
16 CELES 0.77c 6.5
17 DIRTY 070511 6
18 AX 0.8 6
19 COUNTER 0.3 6
20 GULLYDECKEL 2.16pl2 6

Jul 22, 2007

[Other] 2007 WCRCC Recap and results

Amazing result by Mediocre, I am extremely happy with it. More than 50% and a nice placement, 'tied' with crafty for example.

Of course the swiss system does not show anything near the truth since Mediocre lost the first few games and got to start from the bottom, working its way through weaker engines.

But all in all it is a very good result. Considering my weak hardware, no ponder etc.

Very nice and educational tournament. I got quite a few ideas what to work on now.

Impossible Rybka won of course. However it was not a clear as some might have thought, a loss against Hiarcs made it interesting. Hiarcs lost the last game which really was a draw, but failed to claim the 50-moves rule. Would not have made a difference in the standings though.

Vicki got a nice 1.5 points, impressive for such a new engine in this field. Jaco had hoped for 0.5 points so I guess he is happy. :)

 1 Rybka           13.0
2 Hiarcs8x 12.0
3 IkarusX 10.0
4 Erdo 10.0
5 DIEP 9.5
6 TerraPi 8.5
7 Frenzee 8.0
8 Ktulu 8.0
9 Rascal 8.0
10 thebaron 8.0
11 ArasanX 8.0
12 DirtyX 8.0
13 QuarkX 7.5
14 crafty 7.5
15 Weid 7.5
16 BertaX 7.5
17 Independence 7.5 (Mediocre)
18 PetirX 7.0
19 Symbolic 7.0
20 NowX 7.0
21 HfC 7.0
22 DeltomateX 7.0
23 LearningLemming 6.5
24 danasah 6.5
25 Tinker 6.5
26 Horizon-x 6.5
27 DeuteriumChess 6.5
28 Neurosis 6.5
29 parrotC 6.5
30 JokerX 6.0
31 Telepath 6.0
32 BirdEng 6.0
33 microMaX 6.0
34 HomerX 5.5
35 Buzz 5.5
36 Clarabit 5.0
37 Timea 5.0
38 Matilde 2.5
39 roce 2.5
40 Vicki 1.5
41 NoonianChess 0.0

[Other] Game 14 Mediocre - Horizon 1-0

Oh my goodness! This was so exciting. :)

Mediocre went for doubling Horizon's center pawns which turned out to be a big mistake. I am not sure if I have any code for awarding doubled pawns in the center, I have to look into that.

Of course Horizon got a massive advantage in the center and open files for the rooks, and it did not take long before Mediocre's king was in trouble.

Around move 29 Mediocre missed the obvious attack which cost the queen vs. a rook, and I thought the game was over for sure. But just a few moves later Horizon slipped up and let a passer run away followed up by a tactical shot that evened out the game again.

It still looked bleak however. Horizon up a pawn with a dangerous passer. But a couple of bad moves and Mediocre was ahead. Then the trade of queens looked suspicious but I guess Mediocre had it figured out.

Very very exciting game, with a lot of luck for Mediocre.


[Other] Game 13 Neurosis - Mediocre 0-1

Mediocre got a knight stuck on the edge of the board on the queenside in the opening. Did not hurt too much and Neurosis passed pawn got weak. Nice end game by Mediocre and a comfortable win.


[Other] Game 12 Mediocre - Joker 0.5-0.5

Joker held on to the queen's gambit pawn and got dangerous looking passed pawns on the queen side. I do have quite a bit of code to detect the danger of passed pawns, but it seems it fails from time to time.

However, Joker's king got quite open and with Mediocre's queen running around behind its defences it looked dangerous. I do not think there was any mating chances since there were just too few pieces in the attack, perhaps with a few kingside pawn pushes something could have happened.

The repetition draw seemed quite logical. There were going to be material gains for Mediocre one way or another, but nothing enough to give a winning edge.


[Other] Game 11 Berta - Mediocre 1-0

Mediocre got on the defensive fast in this game and had no chance to hold the position. Not sure what went wrong really. Good game by Berta.


[Other] Game 10 Timea - Mediocre 0-1

The game was forfeited by Timea since it did not start moving. Too bad since Mediocre should have a good chance at a legitimate win against Timea.

[Other] Game 9 Mediocre - Clarabit 1-0

Clarabit used book moves until move 16 which lead to a very dynamic position. Perhaps short castle looked a bit better.

A weak plan from Clarabit in the late middle game lead to what looked like a won ending, however BirdEng pointed out that tablebases said black had a draw on move 41 with Kd6. Neither Mediocre nor Clarabit uses tablebases, a bit lucky perhaps. :)


[Other] Sunday's games

Round 9 starts at 15pm CET tomorrow (today). I am hoping for a game against Vicki, should be interesting.

[Others] Game 8 Symbolic - Mediocre 1-0

Nothing too bad in this game. Mediocre held up well but was just not good enough in the end game. 36. ... Rc8 looks bad however, I have to analyze that move and see what Mediocre was really thinking. After that mistake there was not much that could have been done.

Decent game with one bad move that lost it.


[Other] Game 7 Mediocre - MicroMax 1-0

Mediocre played a very aggressive game where MicroMax never really stood a chance. MicroMax neglected development and payed the price. Considering the old version of MicroMax was one of the opponents I tested Mediocre against in the early stages of development I feel quite happy about the progress Mediocre has done.

MicroMax might only have 2000 characters of code, but atleast Mediocre can beat those characters without problem now. :)

(chesspublisher has problem with the 14. bxc8=Q+ again, just ignore the lingering queen)


[Other] Game 6 ParrotC - Mediocre 0-1

Nice game by Mediocre. Calm opening with a decent handling of the caro-kann for once. I guess the win was due to some easy tactical shot, and the king safety was more due to luck than good strategy. But not too bad overall.


Jul 21, 2007

[Other] Game 5 Mediocre - HfC 0-1

Erm... that was sad. Pawn up the whole game, then failed to convert by just moving back and forth. And finally a very weird end game bug I have not seen before.

Well at least a bug detected that should not be too hard to fix. Something positive out of it. :)

(there seems to be a bug with the chesspublisher, it does not remove the rook after 23. ... exd1=Q+, just ignore it :)


[Other] Game 4 Petir - Mediocre 1-0

Very bad game by Mediocre. A complete failure in the opening, underestimated passed pawns and general bad play.

Petir is a much stronger engine than Mediocre, but I had hoped for a bit better play. 16. ... b6 is about as bad as it can get when it comes to greediness and failing to understand the threats of the opponent.

Yuck. :)

One thing I could learn from this is perhaps try to work a bit with the development section. 3. ... c5 looks very fishy and should be easily avoided with some code discouraging moving the same piece (pawn) multiple times before the other pieces are out.


[Other] Game 3 Mediocre - Quark 0-1

Interesting game. Mediocre failed to castle and tried to attack. In the end the own king safety was too much to handle. I might have to do something about that. I want the evaluation of king safety to encourage castling instead of hard coding it (like for example Crafty does, i.e. penalizing loss of castling rights), but perhaps it has to be done.

Quark kibitzed its pondering moves and got it right mostly. Mediocre does not have pondering yet and of course it is a major flaw. It is on my todo-list. Also Mediocre does not move instantly when it only has one legal move. Against opponents that does not ponder this does not matter, however it is a severe weakness against those who does, since it basically allows them a free instant move.

Well, an exciting and educational game. Off to the next round.


[Other] Game 2 Bird - Mediocre 0-1

A bit more normal opening this time with quite some strategic play. Mediocre seems to handle these games quite well.

Mediocre probably got a bit too overenthusiastic on the kingside with a few pawn pushes but Bird could not pounce on it. And in the end it actually won the game.


[Other] Game 1 Mediocre - Frenzee 0-1

Mediocre opted for the King's Gambit and quickly got in trouble. I blame it on the new opening book. :) Trying to walk the king over to the queenside had little hopes of succeeding and Mediocre is not smart enough to go on an all out attack on the king side.

Better luck in the next game.

(Mediocre is playing under the handle "Independence")


[Other] Ready to roll

There was some trouble with the .ini file, that is why the book was not being used. I have no idea if this is a general problem or if it only occurs when using Winboard to play on ICS servers. Anyway I disabled the feature so the opening book can be used. I also switched to a larger book, compiled from a number of pgn-files. I have not tested it that much but hopefully it should help a bit.

The crashing upon game completion was of course the all existent memory overflow problem with Java, I had simply forgotten the -Xmx1024M flag in the Winboard batch file.

And finally I added kibitzes at the last ply of the search, and a note if the move is a book move or not.

So one hour to go and I am ready to see Mediocre getting lucky! :)

[Other] WCRCC 2007 Last minute fixes

So it is now two hours before the 2007 World Computer Rapid Chess Championships starts and Mediocre crashes upon game completion, does not kibitz its search and can not find the opening book.

Looking good. :)

Hopefully I can panic together a few fixes.

Jul 2, 2007

Chesswar XI

Mediocre is playing in Oliver Deville's Chesswar XI in section F. Looks to be a fairly easy group, but you never know. :) Will be fun to see how Mediocre does in games with a bit longer time control.