Sam has closed his piano and gone to bed ... now we can talk about the real stuff of life ... love, liberty and games such as Janus, Capablanca Random, Embassy Chess & the odd mention of other 10x8 variants is welcome too
For posting: - invitations to games (you can also use the New Game menu or for particular games: Janus; Capablanca Random; or Embassy) - information about upcoming tournaments - disussion of games (please limit this to completed games or discussion on how a game has arrived at a certain position ... speculation on who has an advantage or the benefits of potential moves is not permitted while that particular game is in progress) - links to interesting related sites (non-promotional)
Véčet klobu na mloveni
Néni tě dovoleny datlovat do toďteho klobo. Abes mohl datlovat do toďteho klobo, mosiš mit némiň členstvi Brain pinčl.
Anencephal: well this additional rule has two reasons: a) to have more balanced starting arrays, b) to avoid a need for a 7-choice, if the position would be created by the use of traditional dice. 48000 is the number of possible CANDIDATES for starting positions, but only those could be selected with protected Pawns. SMIRF would do that for you. Or you could start a CRC game at BrainKing.
SMIRF Engine: Sorry, I didn't know the rule about queen and archbishop, so calculated possible start position to be 84000
I thought 48000 is number of valid starts, my first manual selection (760) was illegal
Anencephal: How did you get this number? SMIRF is selecting valid candidates among those 48000 numbers. Almost every second one would be illegal. Thus the selecting process is essential.
Pythagoras: Well, there is an alternative method for experienced users. After having SMIRF installed once you could expand the file http://www.chessbox.de/Down/TestPackB.zip into your SMIRF program folder. This ZIP will contain the new non DLL parts of the project. Simply overwrite everything there. But be aware, that all is still beta. Version 1.21 probably will be released tomorrow. (P.S.: now it exists.) (P.P.S.: now 1.23.) (P³.S.: now 1.24.)
The DLLs are packed into a (probably) constant file http://www.chessbox.de/Down/ConstDLL.zip. This would enable you e.g. to install SMIRF onto a memory stick by expanding both ZIP files into one new folder.
Because is not convenient at all to download each version, uninstall the old and then installing the newer, can you invent a simpler method?
Also is the above procedure i'm doing the most easy? I mean, is there any other way of installing the newer versions......?
Přetvořeny oževatelem Chicago Bulls (5. řína 2005, 20:57:50)
What i would like to see in future Smirf versions:
a)Play the 34...Cj4+ move and then 35...Bg2! in the below game.
b)Not play early in the opening Bxc6 or Bxh6 giving its Bishop for a Knight.
c)Stop exchanging a Chancellor or an Archbishop for a Rook and a Knight or Bishop, without seeing any combination that gains immediate advantage.....
Pythagoras: you can of course use that version, you want to test. But because SMIRF's development is going on, there will exist new versions each time I fixed some errors or I implemented new ideas. So in short there will be one with better fork handling and slightly improved speed (about 5%). Thank you very much for your tournament. I always take some experiences from that!
Přetvořeny oževatelem Chicago Bulls (5. řína 2005, 17:25:41)
Smirf 1.19 has been updated to Smirf 1.20. Although updating engines in the middle of a tournament, is not an appropriate way of testing the programs, i will make this update. For any new updates i will first finish this tournament and then include the newer versions in a new one and compare the final results.....
Oh my, oh my! Smirf 1.20 blew it! In its game against G.V it had a winning position but it didn't
managed to find the winning move and not only this but it lost at the end.....The opening phase wasn't
the best for both and Smirf seemed a bit better. After some nice moves by Smirf, that GV didn't expect, Smirf took a small advantage but GV managed to equalize and it even thought it was slightly
better. After a good move by Smirf (25...Bd5!) followed by a nice plan to attack the white's King, GV started to worry and at move 34 thought it was losing. The only thing Smirf had to do was to find 34...Cj4+ and then after 35.Ki1 Bg2! white is clearly losing.....But it played some moves that was out of what game required, so it lost the advantage and at the and it lost the game too. After Smirf lost its attack, GV easily outplayed Smirf especially at the endgame. The opposite happened in the middlegame, but that was not enough for Smirf.
In the other game, although at the start Smirf didn't let me use my anti-comp strategy of: creating a strong quiet attack,let it prevail in the non-King side and then unlease my attack, i've managed to take advantage that its King was exposed and with a poisonous Rook sacrifice i've created an
unstopable attack, so i won......
Round 4 SM0.59 - Me = 0-1
G.V - SM1.20 = 1-0
ZoG bye....
Přetvořeny oževatelem Chicago Bulls (4. řína 2005, 23:24:15)
Round 3 continued with an easy win for me against Zillions of Games and a long game that ended with a win for the newer Smirf 1.19 against the older version Smirf 0.59. In this game SM0.59 played better the early middlegame after also a slighly better opening play, but SM1.19 managed to outplay it in the long run and get into a clear won endgame, that managed to win easily.......
Round 3 Me - ZoG = 1-0
SM1.19 - SM0.59Z = 1-0
G.V bye....
I should note that the above PGN, in order to be pasted into Smirf has to be "fixed" first, as the Brainking posts-system breaks the line with the FEN......
Pythagoras: you have started an interesting testing approach! It has already helped me to identify a bug. So I wonder for what I should hope - at least to find more bugs?
Unfortunatelly i didn't managed to finish the 3 round, but this will be done tomorrow. I've played only 1 game: Smirf 0.59 - Gothic Vortex = 0-1 That was an easy win for Vortex.........
Round 2 ZoG - SM1.17 = 1-0
SM0.59 - G.V = 0-1
ME bye....
Table after the 2nd round of 40:
PLAYER |POINTS/GAMES
G.Vortex | 2.0/2.0
Me | 1.0/1.0
ZoG | 1.0/2.0
Smirf1.17| 0.0/2.0
Smirf0.59| 0.0/1.0
Pairings for Round 3:
SM1.19 - SM0.59 (There will be an update on Smirf 1.17 promoting to 1.19 version)
Me - ZoG
G.V bye......
Pythagoras: I have tried it with the initial low cache setting ... the cache size you mentioned is not possible in 1.17, check it within the options menu.
Přetvořeny oževatelem Chicago Bulls (3. řína 2005, 00:38:46)
Round 2 ZoG - SM1.17 = 1-0
SM0.59 - G.V = will follow tomorrow along with 3 round........
Me bye....
ZoG - SM1.17 = 1-0
This game came as a surprise to me partly because although at one moment Smirf 1.17 seemed it will take the win, it finally lost, but mainly because i had highly overestimated its strength and this game showed to me that Smirf has a long way to travel before it can become the way i have imagined it was..........
3 VERY IMPORTANT things:
1)Smirf once again (like in its game on the GC forum with Gothic Vortex) gave one of its major pieces for a combination of 2 minor pieces. Specifically it gave its Chancellor for a Rook and a Bishop. As Ed Trice said and i completely agree, this exchange is completely wrong if there are no immediate advantages. I definitely advice Reinhard to give a penalty for such an exchange, if there is no tactical trick in the horizon that gains immediate advantage.......
2)Smirf even after having 2 Rooks against a Rook and a Chancellor of ZoG, it evaluated the position as unclear or even at some moments as its advantage!!!!!!!!Not a really trustworthy evaluation......
3)The time control can be characterized as a rather rapid game or even blitz game, so as Reinhard has already said about Smirf, having problems with non-slow controls, this is definite "excuse"
for Smirf for answering the bad play after one point. But it's definitely no excuse for the above
2 things i mentioned........Slow or blitz, even thinking to give a C for a R+B without an immediate gain, but for stretegical reasons, is completely wrong.....And having an drawing evaluation in a game you have 2R versus R+C is again completely wrong.......
jolat: because SMIRF consists of two parts (GUI + Engine) there are different version numbers for both. The version number of the Engine is displayed in the caption of the GUI, the version of the GUI could be found via Help -> About ...
But you don't have to worry. You have the same! I just used as a version NOT this shown in the "about" box but that in the starting page that says: Ver. BC 117. My "about" says what your about says.....
Pythagoras:
You quote a version Smirf 1.17 beta.
Since the site of Smirf, the last version that I downloaded is the 1.1.1
Can you say to me how you obtained this version 1.1.7 ?
WhiteTower: You are wrong. Castling is a well defined process. To do it in a performant way (generating / executing) needs a matching environment and data structure. SMIRF is able to also support Fischer castlings in 8x8 and 10x8, also symmetrical castling like in Janus Chess already is supported. But the inverse castling of MBC does not match into those optimized structures. Remember, in SMIRF there is only ONE engine flexibly able to play a lot of 8x8 and 10x8 variants. If performance would be irrelevant, including new variants might be easy. But such is not the current challenge.
I actually argue for the SIMPLE solution, to play MBC the mirrored way, because that fits into SMIRF's structure. So the problem could easily be solved by changing the point of view. Otherwise you will have to define also new types of FEN and PGN, to make MBC games persistant.
SMIRF Engine: Sorry to butt in, but if your program is even half well-structured, no new code introduction should affect any core functionality... or your core needs redesigning! :)
Me = Me Time= 40/20' + 40/20' + 20' (around 30 sec/move)
On every series of rounds, every player will play against any other with black and with white.
There will be 4 series. Every serie will have 10 rounds. Every player will play 32 games, 16 with white and 16 with black.
Walter Montego: as I already have tried to explain, SMIRF is only able to play the mirrored MBC array, because of the intended unorthodox castling. I do not intend to implement a third method of castling yet, because that would affect very central parts of the program.
SMIRF Engine: Fencer says he's going to add Embassy Chess. Will you add it to SMIRF without having to play it mirrored imaged because of the castling difference?
andreas: thank you, Andreas, for your feedback! SMIRF is not designed to play Blitz well. It should develop positional ideas and therefore needs some time for a good answer. But technically it plays Blitz, too. I have read your suggestions, there will be an analyse mode soon. You will have noticed, that SMIRF is always making a sort of multivariant modus by its move-pair iterative deepening. If a second best move seems to be about as good as the best one, then in the PV it will follow the best move in "()". SMIRF GUI + Engine is still a one man project. So it will need time to enrich the package with new elements.
Reinhard: I played with Smirf several Blitz games in Janus, CRC and Bird's chess and two draws were the only I could achieve. I hardly hit any problems, it hang once, but there were no other serious problems. There are certainly some features which I miss in Smirf GUI:
* menu item "Resign" (I rarely want to play until checkmate)
* "Analyze" mode, which would allow me to play with myself (analize game) and Smirf engine would run in backround with infinite search time, suggesting the best moves
* In position editor selector of white/black piece set is tied with specifing which side moves after editing done. It would be better to separate this.
* It would be nice to have a collection of .pgn game for different chess variants supported by Smirf. Especially Janus chess games played by chess grandmasters would be interesting if you manage to find them (two games by Yusupov and Leko one can find on http://www.janusschach.de)
Pythagoras: what should I say? I am not a lawer. In any case Smirf will not automatically produce a GC starting array without having a GC license. Thus the GC button will be disabled then, too.
I assume that creating a starting Gothic Chess X-FEN in the variants.PGN and matching Smirf against G.V and posting the results is not something illegal right.......? I mean making Smirf play Gothic Chess with a indirect way, is not something illegal right.....?
Pythagoras: Actually a GothicChess key could not be published generally, before agreements with Ed Trice will have been made. But those things are in progress, so I hope.
But in a VARIANTS.PGN attached to the current beta there is a loadable alternative MBC (Embassy), but only in mirrored view because of its unusual original castling. Maybe it also could be an interesting starting array.
Now it works..........!
Only my old Gothic Chess key for playing Gothic Chess too doesn't work. Do you have any key to let it play against Gothic Vortex and Zillions........?
Pythagoras: I hope to have that fixed until tomorrow.
Concerning Gothic and Janus Chess: Smirf does not support an opening library yet. Thus a learning opponent will outperform SMIRF soon. It actually is optimized for CRC and Chess960.
Přetvořeny oževatelem Chicago Bulls (30. záři 2005, 12:49:45)
I have installed newer Smirf beta on a clean interface(never installed any Smirf before) and faced the problem Walter and others describe. No matter what time i set per move for Smirf to play, it plays in 1-2 seconds.........
So it's not a matter of INI files but it is general. Smirf beta has a bug not allowing searcch of more than 1-2 seconds....
And that's of cource the reason for losing against Zillions. From 0.55 beta Smirf was already crushing Zillions. So now, current version should be able to perform around 90%+ against Zillions.......
I should note that current Gothic Vortex perform around 98%+ against Zillions....
(do skréše) Jak potřeboješ večmochat staré vzkaz od orčityho špiloša, bóchni na plke o něm a na prvnim řádko za přehlašovacim ménem nandeš možnost okázat jeho zpráve. (konec) (okázat šecke vechetávke)