UCI Engine Update: BikJump v1.8

Some newspages beat me to my own accouncement (how do you guys do that? :-)), but version 1.8 of the UCI engine BikJump is now available at http://www.aartbik.com/MISC/chess.html for Windows 32-bit, Windows 64-bit, and Linux 64-bit.

Modifications:

(1) revised panic time
(2) added more chess rules to evaluation function
(3) revised various search methods
(4) added Nalimov endgame tablebases probing for 6-piece as well
(5) bug fix on missing \n in engine output when tablebases cannot be found

I installed a large number of 6-piece Nalimov endgame tablebases, and after preliminary testing I am now confident to remove the artifical restriction up to 5-piece that was present in v1.7. A preliminary tournament showed an increase in strength, but as a few games were won due to the ability to probe 6-piece Nalimov during search, only time will tell what the overall impact is.

Cheers,
Aart

Aart J.C. Bik wrote:Some newspages beat me to my own accouncement (how do you guys do that? :-)), Aart

Hi Aart,

We go every day and each hour on your homepage

I think it was just a coincidence that I visited your site just after you updated it.

Regards,
Patrick
Le Fou numérique

I am running a test tournament between all major BikJump versions, time 3'+1'', on the Nunn opening test set, with access to the 3-4-5-6 Nalimov endgame tablebases during the endgame (supported at "root" by GUI, used during search by last two BikJump versions only).
In the unlikely event you are interested :-), games are posted live on http://www.aartbik.com/MISC/TOUR

I have posted a binary for Mac OS for BikJump v1.8 on www.aartbik.com/MISC/chess.html

Supported now are:
32-bit Windows
64-bit Windows
64-bit Linux
64-bit Mac OS (new)

So, note, no new release, just an additional OS for version 1.8.

Aart J.C. Bik wrote:I have posted a binary for Mac OS for BikJump v1.8 on www.aartbik.com/MISC/chess.html

Supported now are:
32-bit Windows
64-bit Windows
64-bit Linux
64-bit Mac OS (new)

So, note, no new release, just an additional OS for version 1.8.

Thanks Aart,

I will use the x64 version next test, sofar I used the x32 version!

Best wishes,
Leo.

Leo Dijksman wrote:
I will use the x64 version next test, sofar I used the x32 version!
Best wishes,
Leo.

Thanks Leo! I have not observed a strength difference going from 32-bit to 64-bit with this version (same nodes-per-second), but as I am (very slowly) working on a bitboard-based version of BikJump, and therefore hope to get real improvements in the future, I simply want my "64-bit release lines" to be fully operational!