Engine Updates

Amyan 1.72 (WB/UCI)
versions 1.7 & 1.71 were available briefly and then replaced with bugfixed versions
- FRC supported as Winboard engine
- MultiPV support as UCI engine
- "Very short PVs" problem fixed in part
- Search improvement mainly using reductions
- Eval changes, which don't seem to make much difference anyway:
--- attacking/pinning other pieces slighty higher again
--- decreased slighty some mobility bonus (ouch)
--- center pawns bonuses are zeroed now in late endgame instead of just scaled
- bug-fix for FRC
- bug-fix for multipv mode
- another bug-fix for FRC
- adjustment of king position bonus in late endgame when there are pawns only at one side of the board
http://www.pincha.cl/amyan/amyane.html

Magnum 1.01 (UCI)
- Several bug fixes related to time controls
http://code.google.com/p/magnumchess/

Protector 1.2.8 (UCI)
revision(s) to the source code today (current = rev. 88), no new build
http://sourceforge.net/projects/protector/ (project site)
latest builds are here (updated often):
http://protector.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/protector/bin/ (bin files)

Jim Ablett Win builds
- Magnum 1.01 JA (UCI) for Win32
Magnum version 1.00 (r13) JA was available briefly
http://homepages.tesco.net/henry.ablett/jims.html

Down chess websites
Averno geocities site down permanently, no more homepage
Chaturanga geocities site down 4 days, maybe gone forever?
Crafty Chess Interface site down for 3 days
DanChess geocities site down permanently, no more homepage
Fianchetto site down for 6 days
Frenzee site has no content for 10 days
Zebra Chess down for 11 days
ChessBd/Slics site back up
Smash site back up

Note: GEOCITIES is closing on October 26, 2009.
There are a lot of free engines hosted there that might disappear forever!

Warning: Fimbulwinter site is reported as an attack site!
Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.
3 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent.
Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 2 time(s) over the past 90 days.
Malicious software includes 9 exploit(s), 1 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 1 new process(es) on the target machine.

Chess News

SCID
update(s) to the source code today (patchset = 502)
no build for this version
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scid

Bonus Notifications (recent releases of free stuff)
None