Android UCI engine update: Zurichess Geneva

Zurichess keeps travelling through Switzerland. Latest station is Geneva and we've just received an Android version compiled by Jim Ablett. I guess it's an arm5 build but i'm not sure as the binary did not disclose any trace like previous ones.

Regarding the strength, some 30-50 ELO more may be expected according to the improvements mentioned by the author. I would be glad to test and verify this quickly but i'm too close to a new Rapidroid release including Fribourg version. That's why Geneva will be replacing Fribourg later on.

In the meantime, you may download and try Geneva: HERE

Fritz 15 powered by Vasik Rajlich: Coming on November, 25th

Most of the computer chess freaks were not yet born when Fritz 1.0 was released. After decades, the oldest trademarks in computer chess is about to come to 15th version.

In contrast to Arasan which is not only as ancient as Fritz but always maintained by the same author, Fritz has seen different authors behind the curtain.

The last version is powered by Vasik Rajlich who dominated an era with his famous Rybka until the so-long criticized ICGA act, after which Rajlich lost motivation and stayed away from the chess world for a while!

Now he's back on track and i hope the new probably "Rybkatized" Fritz will bring fresh air to the field.

Regarding the strength, if you were to force me to speculate, i would say it ahould be slightly better than Houdini but not as high as Komodo or Stockfish.

The bad news is that no Android port is in the schedule.

You may read more about Fritz 15 on related ChessBase page

News from the Rapidroid labs

Unless there are new engines or updates, Rapidroid is a non-stop and unlimited tournament running by divisions, in up runners and down runners basis. There are basically 11 divisions of 9-10 or 11 engines in each and after each round 3 winners go up, 3 losers go down and the roulette turns again.

When there are newcomers to introduce or updates, things slow down and get complicated because the strict rule (Why the heck did i invent it?) tells "Only one version of each engine must be included".

That means any updated engine requires that all previously played games are removed and replayed with the new version. All related PGNs, as well as all previous rankings, graphs, stats etc. must be also updated.

This is exactly an erase and rewind scenario. I know it's hard to do when there are dozens of rounds already played but i'm sure the final result is the most trustable one without rating distortion.

In case of a new engine to introduce, it's still complicated because i have to find the correct division to introduce it without losing the balance between the number of players in each division. It may happen that no place is available in the most suitable division. In such case, the first or the last engine of that round must be ported to the neighbor divison. More and more games to replay!

The number of ECO lines played by each engine must be also monitored and kept well balanced to avoid the effects of sensibility to a given opening category. An engine should not always play ECO A for example.

After October-2014 release, i'm currently working on November rankings which will integrate below changes:

Arasan 18.1 will replace Arasan 18.0 (+20 ELO expected)

Cheng 4.39 arm5 will be replaced by arm7 (+30 ELO expected)

Deep Saros 2.3f arm7 will replace arm5 (+10 ELO expected)

Galjoen 0.31 will replace 0.30.2 (+30 ELO expected)

Maverick 1.5 Leiden will replace Maverick 1.0 (+60 ELO expected)

Floyd 0.6 will be added

Mini Rodent 1.0 will be added (Yes, it may distort for a while but that Mini and Rodent 1.7 will be both gone when Rodent 2 will step in)

Due to above updates, i delayed the introduction of the second dedicated computer Excalibur LCD Express. Hopefully noone would cry out for that :-)

Now, back to digging it deep!

Must have tools for chess with Android

Referring to an expression i like very much which says "Better be late than sorry", my status here is a little bit paradoxal because i must say: "I'm late and i'm sorry too".

In short, this post should come months before!

This is about three system utilities i always keep continously running in the background on all my Android devices during Rapidroid games.

Without these three muskeeters in place, i would feel blind and unsafe.

1) CpuTemp in Statusbar

This tool shows the cpu temperature in the status bar and not in the notifications panel like many others do. The temp info is crucial and it must be visible on the status bar because pulling down the panel to read the temp needs a touch on the screen which is risky for me when two engines play chess, especially if case the GUI is Chess for Android. You simpy don't want to interrupt a tournament accidentally!

Another nice option is three temperatıre thresholds in Fahrenheit or Celcius and relevant colors fully customizable.

The app is free HERE as a tiny module which requires the installation of Xposed Framework to work. You need luck too because not all processors are equipped with temp sensor (Rockchip for example) or the app may simply not be compatible with yours.

2) CpuStats

Monitoring the running state of the cpu cores is as vital as checking the temperature. Nothing else can tell you whether a multi core engine is really using the expected number of cores. Another issue it comes to help is when an engine refuses to stop and exit when requested by the GUI. This is dangerous for any testing environment as the faulty engine remains running in the background and hogs one core or more depending the config. Once this occurs, in the next automated game, a multicore engine may start running without one of the cores vs a single core engine. This is simply unfair.

CpuStats freely available at Google Play, will help you figure out something goes wrong by showing the load of each core on-the-fly, every x seconds. Once again, the icon is pinned on the status bar and NOT in the notifications panel.

If monitoring the state of the cores is not enough (it's not enough of course), the app will show the current frequency as well, in readable numbers, next to the cpu load icon. This feature is extremely useful in case too much temp forces your cpu to throttle and your engines to play weaker.

3) Memory Bar

If you think the temperature, the load and the frequency are enough, think again. What about the RAM usage when you try to allocate as much hash memory as possible to the engines? What about the memory eaten by tablebases? Monitoring current free RAM becomes even more crucial. That's where the third free tool, Memory Bar Simple comes to help. It has a nice icon to reside in the status bar showing the amount of free RAM in MB. Although it will show 999MB beyond 1GB free, that should not be a problem as we know enough free RAM is available for chess.

New Android UCI engine: Floyd 0.6 JA

Floyd is a new engine to Android but don't think it's the first attempt of a candidate chief cooker.

Marcel van Kervinck is highly experienced in programming, not only chess but other stuff too. Those who remember MSCP and Rookie, two older engines from the same author, should have already heard about Marcel.

Floyd 0.6 is still experimental, probably under 2000 ELO on Android. We'll see about that soon when it gets ranked in Rapidroid.

Those who don't wanna wait for ages for me to get it rated, can give a try now: HERE

Android UCI engine update: Cheng 4.39 JA for arm7

The most recent version of Martin Sedlak's Cheng was previously compiled by Jim Ablett for arm5 and posted here in parallel.

After finally getting equipped with an arm7 device, JA started to recompile for arm7, not only the latest development versions of Stockfish but also some other popular engines. Truth to be told, we are not against arm7, given that arm5 got too old already vs arm8-64bit, the latest instruction set.

Bearing in mind that 64-bit Android, namely Lollipop, is NOT the most compatible environment for handheld chess, i still suggest arm7 as the optimum unless a limited variety of arm8 compiles like Stockfish and Komodo will suit your needs. 

Thereafter, the last arm-7 gift from JA is Cheng. I hope this version will add some more fuel into the tank.

Download Cheng 4.39 arm7: HERE

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Android UCI engine update: Stockfish Dev 2015-11-09 JA

Without doubt, this one will make many Android fishers quite happy. I'm sure about it because the official Stockfish 7 compile will not come before TCEC-8 ends.

This time and for the first time we have a working arm7 compile of the Stockfish development version compiled by Jim Ablett and that's good news indeed.

The generation i'm grown within is much more patient and less hungry for daily updates. That's why  i prefer to wait for the photo finish of TCEC-8 superfinal to sail away to any new version.

For the ones who don't agree with me, HERE's the daily medecine for arm7 devices and another one HERE in arm5 devices.