HAL9000

HAL9000
"It just isn't conceivable that you can design a program strong enough to beat players like me."

January 18, 2015

New time controls of CfA v5 to heal problem engines

The new version of Chess for Android will be soon available in Google Play with minor corrections over 5.0.1.

5.0.2 is a nice candidate for exciting engine tournaments using game in x minutes + incerements per move, the way we are more familiar with.

This huge step forward means that, in addition to Jim Ablett's enourmous updates in january, we can bring back the engines labeled "Not good for use with CfA".

In most cases, these engines used to ignore the "go movetime" command and they were either moving instantly or using timers on their own.




I decided to give another try to the abandoned ones and the good news came quick:
* Fruit Reloaded: PASS
* Fairy Max: PASS
* Gödel: PASS
* Octochess: PASS
* Knight Cap: FAIL
* Pawny: FAIL unexpectedly. It still works with Droidfish.
* Sissa: Instant moves again. I checkmated it in 18 moves...
* Minko, GfC, some others: To test later.

These are the results of sample games i've played using 60+1. It's preliminary and longer time controls like 900+1 (the setting i'm planning for Rapidroid) may still reveal issues.

By the way, it must be noted that while some problem engines revive with new time control, many engines currently respecting fixed time per move may become bad boys with Fischer clock. To investigate later on.

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