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.

[Other] Mediocre on CCRL

Mediocre is currently fighting for a place in Division 5 of the 4th Amateur Championship on CCRL.

Right now Mediocre, Flux 2.0 and Joker are in the top. Quite exciting. :)

You can follow it more close on the CCRL Discussion Board.

[Plan] Something to work on

So it is time to start looking at some future changes for Mediocre again. Since I have taken a break for the last few weeks it is hard to just jump right back into it again without any clear tasks to work on.

Here are some things I will be looking at:

• End game - I recently played a 300 game 1+1 minute match against an old version of Rybka and the result was 300-0 to Rybka. :) However I noticed that Mediocre surprisingly often came out of the middle game with an even or slightly worse score, and rarely (very rarely :) even slightly better. Only to be annihilated in the end game.
  
  To be honest I have worked extremely little with the end game in Mediocre and I think it is time I look into that. Some simple end game knowledge should make a big difference. And it is probably worth looking into some more separation of the evaluation to make better calls in the end game.
  
  Perhaps the next match could end 299.5/0.5 instead... :)


• Transposition tables - When I wrote the transposition tables class in January I basically only tried to make it work. I am sure there are tons of things to improve in there and I would not be surprised if there is a bug or two as well.
  
  Since the class itself is quite small a complete rewrite is probably in order, and also cleaning up the repetition detection while I am messing around in there should be worth it.


• Check history - As it is now the search checks for checks in three or so places. While this might not be that much of a slowdown since the check detection is quite fast it could obviously be better. I have made a few attempts at making the board remember if the position is check or not, and even had it in a version I was about to release but removed it at the last minute since it was so messy.
  
  This takes some major restructuring to work as I want, but hopefully it should help a bit atleast.


• Definitions - This is a rather 'cosmetic' change to the code but the way I am using the definitions interface is just wrong in every way. :) A Java interface should not contain any real code, it is just not supposed to work like that. Java does not have .h-files like C and there is a reason for it, so using the Definitions file like I have done just has to go.

Well that should get me started. :)

[New Version] v0.332 - Bugfixes, fen-strings in UCI and move legality check

Changes:

• Fixed a problem regarding fen-strings using the UCI protocol (thanks to Phokham Nonava)
• Mediocre now checks for legality of inputted moves in both the UCI and Winboard protocol (thanks to Volker Pittlik)

Note: I am releasing these two bugfixes now to get it out of the way so to speak. They have been ready for quite a while, but I have not had the time to finish up on some of the other changes, so by releasing this I have a fresh version to work on.

mediocre_v0.332

[Other] WBEC Ridderkerk edition 15 delayed

The next edition of WBEC was delayed to the beginning of August (instead of July) so that gives me some more time to get the changes done for it.

[Other] Busy times

I have been quite busy the last couple of weeks and have not had much time over for pretty much anything. Sadly it looks like this will go on for a while, plus summer is here. :)

My goal for now will be trying to squeeze in some time to implement ponder and new time management before July 21 when the World Computer Rapid Chess Championships starts. There are also a few small bugs I will be looking at.

Also Volker Pittlik has been having trouble with the executables for Linux, but I have no idea where to look for the problem. So if anyone else is experiencing this please let me know, preferably with some debug information about the error.

If I get the time I will try to setup up the Jonatan vs. Mediocre match sometime soon. Will probably be a couple of weeks until then though.

[New Version] v0.331 - Bug fix for Winboard and Chessbase interfaces

Changes:

• Fixed a bug that caused the feature command not being recognized by Winboard, and the first id command not being recognized by Shredder and Chessbase

Note: As I said in my previous post I think this should take care of the problems with both Winboard and Chessbase. (it takes care of the Winboard problem for sure)

mediocre_v0.331

[Bug] Both problems solved with one change (hopefully)

I found the problem with the Winboard interface, and I think it is the same with the Chessbase GUI (I will have to wait for Jim Abletts compiles to be sure, guess it is time I get a Java native compiler soon :).

In v0.32 and earlier when starting Mediocre without interface the welcome message and prompt did not show up until a dummy command was entered. This was due to Mediocre waiting for either uci or xboard to come as the first command to determine what protocol to use. If the first command was neither of those it went into line input mode.

I fixed this by always going into line input and if at any time uci or xboard was entered at the prompt, Mediocre switched to the protocol input instead.

But I forgot that I used print and not println for the prompt. This resulted in the feature line starting with the prompt (->feature ... instead of just feature ...), and apparently Winboard did not understand this and hence never received the feature command.

Which in turn resulted in the moves sent by the interface to the engine were on the form e2e4 and not usermove e2e4, so Mediocre could not recognize them.

The same happens in the UCI mode, only the second id command is received (the author one), while the name of the engine (id name Mediocre) is ignored since it is started with the prompt as well.

Hopefully this is why Chessbase GUI is having trouble. Shredder Classic only gives the author name and you have to input the engine name manually but at least it runs the engine afterwards.

Let us hope this takes care of both problems. :)

[Bug] Chessbase GUI problems

Seems I managed to seriously mess something up. :) Apparently Mediocre isn't running under the Chessbase GUI either at the moment.

Hopefully I will be able to fix it today.

[Bug] Winboard problems in v0.33

I have gotten a few reports that Mediocre is not running on the Winboard interface (but works with winboard protocol in Arena). I am trying to track down the bug, posting a fix as soon as I find it.