reza: I do not know whether you have followed the development process of Smirf, which has been first released as a very weak beta to participate at Ed Trice's GC event in November 2004, where it has reached place four of eight. Since that moment Smirf has been improved further step by step, actually being some hundreds of Elo stronger than then.

You should understand that I am not using Smirf here for to get a maximum BKR, but to experience some program properties. Thus the results are very different. E.g. when playing Janus Chess mostly very experimental variants of Smirf have been used, bearing the risk to be beaten, what has been done e.g. by Walter Montego several times. It also had been of interest to learn, whether Smirf would be recognized immediately as a playing engine or not. It seems to play more like a human being, and my opponents hardly were able to distinguish whether I or Smirf have been playing.

I think that the improvements and overall behaviour of Smirf might be of special interest to Ed Trice, especially within tough tournaments. There are only few other Gothic Chess enabled programs still under development. Smirf of course is of interest in the scene because it is able to play a lot of 10x8 and 8x8 different chess variants using ONE super small engine for all.

I am still searching for competent beta testers. If you might be interested, send me a message on your personal testing goals. Those testers will get an individual key to make the Smirf beta play without any restriction.