Third day without any new engine

This post is made to confirm everything works normally in the blog. If nothing new is posted, it's not because i skipped any release for Android but rather because there nothing new on western front! Maybe Jim Ablett is a human being and he needs to take a breath from time to time.

I don't think he's done yet with compiling the computer chess history, though... 

Android chess engines compatibility list: 1 of 3

Here is a selection of the engines i have to exclude from RAPIDROID experiment. Even though they are compatible with fixed time per move setting of Chess for Android, they can't play play Fischer clock time controlled tournaments. Most frequent symptoms are instant moves and excessive time usage.

I've tested them rigorously, wasting a lot of time because it's a bit tricky to produce the situations where they flag. This requires a lot of balanced games against opponents of close ELO and they must often extend beyond 60 moves.

Besides, we need time controls short enough to stress at maximum but also long enough to extract bad time usage tendency. What i've been using was 1'+0" in a first step and for the engines which failed the first try, 2'+1" in a second step . Of course, i had to replay many games and final verdicts changed on-the-run. I didn't save any pgn to prove the facts but be sure that i've got my ears wide open to objections, if you have any counter remarks.

THESE ENGINES COULDN'T USE FISHER CLOCK WITH INCREMENT ON MY DEVICES:
BetsabeII_1.47.JA_xb
Danasah_5.07.JA_xb
DanasahZ_0.4.JA_xb
Dirty_030411.JA_xb
GreKo_12.5.JA_uci
Jester 0.84
KmtChess_1.21.JA_xb
Leonidas_r83.JA_xb
Myrddin_0.86.JA_xb
Natwarlal_0.14.JA_xb
Olithink_5.3.2.JA_xb
Olivechess 0.2.7.JA
Phalanx_XXIV.JA_xb
Rattatechess Nosferatu
Scidlet_2.61b2.JA_xb
Scorpio_2.7.7.JA_xb
Sjeng_1.12.JA_xb
Sloppy_0.23.JA_xb
Sungorus 1.4 JA
Tscp_1.8.1.AB_xb
Tucano_5.00.JA_xb
Typhoon_1.0.r358.JA_xb
Woodpecker 2.11.JA
Zzzzzz_3.5.1.JA_xb

Though some of these engines can pass the test with my Rapidroid setting of 10'+2", i have to come back to this later on. Now, i must rather proceed quickly with the good ones.

First two rounds of Rapidroid feature ~1000 games of which ~900 are played already. These are all based on fixed time control. From 3rd round on, i'm intended to switch to Fischer clock.

Anyways, i hope i can figure out a solution for above engines. Maybe additional fixed time per move rounds as gauntlets...

What piece to trade for a banana?

New Android XB engine: DanChess 1.04.JA

You may know DanChess but you probably remember Scorpio, one of the strongest WB/XB engines which played at TCEC. They both belong to the same author Daniel Shawul and DanChess was  superceded by Scorpio in 2005.

DanChess is not rated by CCRL. However, to give an idea of the level, i've found a few sites with ratings around 2550 on a PC where Scorpio, thanks to SMP feature, could climb higher around 2700+.

On Android, we can expect roughly 2300 ELO from DanChess.

Enough said, collectors may download DanChess 0.4 compiled by Jim Ablett: HERE

Stockfish 6 standalone binaries

For those who prefer using Stockfish 6 versions bundled with Droidfish under different Android GUI's such as Chess for Android, i've extracted different versions compiled for various cpu architectures.

After Intel CPU's, 64-bit Android added even more variety. We have now a chaotic portfolio of compiles such as:

Stockfish 6.RC by Jim Ablett for arm5

Stockfish 6 by Jim Ablett for arm5

Stockfish 6 by stockfishchess.org for arm7

Stockfish 6 by Peter Österlund for arm5 (pie & non-pie versions): DOWNLOAD HERE

Stockfish 6 by Peter Österlund for arm7 (pie & non-pie versions): DOWNLOAD HERE

Stockfish 6 by Peter Österlund for arm8 (pie & non-pie versions): DOWNLOAD HERE

Stockfish 6 by Peter Österlund for x86 (pie, non-pie and 64 bit versions): DOWNLOAD HERE

OMG this makes 12 versions already. Search and find the one that suits you better and use it. I will just remind you that if you need to choose PIE version or non-PIEs first try PIE and if it fails go for non-PIE.

What is that PIE by the way? Never heard before. After a quick search, i've learnt it means "Positional Independent Executable" but that still doesn't mean anything to me. I'm not and won't be a programmer.

True 3D Chess?

When i've encountered the screen capture of the not very famous 3D chess scene from the original Star Trek series, where Spock is deeply searching for a "logical move", i asked to myself why such variant has never been popular. Indeed, it could open a new dimension, the third one, in order to delay the rise of the perfect chess playing engines.

Some state perfect chess will need 4500 ELO. I didn't wanna calculate this and i'm fully relying on the info coming from colleagues who spent time for this.

What's certain about it, is that i will never dare to play such torturous game versus that kind of  engine. 

When Emmental plays vs Gouda

Do you recall the chess sets featuring 32 shot glasses which promise games that never come to an end but satisfy both players? If yes, now you can think about an cheezy alternative like the one seeen in the photo above. I guess we have emmental against gouda playing here. Bon appetit then.