Engine Updates

Arabian Knight 1.0.7 (WB)
Java source; own GUI; Win32
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/ArabianKnight.html

Myrddin 0.83 (WB)
Win32/64
- Only search to depth 1 when there is only one legal move and pondering is off
- No longer clearing the hash table before starting a depth 1 search
- Improved hash replacement strategy
- If a search depth was reduced by late-move reductions, and that search improves alpha, now researching at proper depth
- Reductions are now less aggressively implemented
- Adjusted the second aspiration window from 300 to 110 centipawns
- Doubled (or worse) passed pawns after the leading pawn no longer get the passed pawn bonus
- Will now play a move in a checkmating line as soon as it is confirmed to be optimal
- Removed “Result” from checkmate reporting
- Rook and minor vs rook (with no pawns) is now hard-coded as a draw – should be safe in 99.99% of cases
- Re-removed bad king safety code
- Now using piece square table for knight outposts, rather than a hard-coded bonus
- Modified piece square table for kings in opening and middlegame
- Added penalty for having no pawns, to help avoid trading down into pawnless endgames (e.g. rook vs. minor)
- Sending the '.' command during analysis no longer restarts the analysis from depth 1. The '.' command is still not implemented, though
- Fixed a bug in which most hash moves were not getting placed at the beginning of the move order
- Fixed a bug evaluating Black doubled and passed pawns
- Fixed a bug in which the initial position was not being checked for draw by repetition
- Fixed a bug maintaining wood tables when unmaking a promotion move
- Fixed an asymmetrical problem in the bishop piece square table
- Fixed a problem with determining if a rook or queen was behind a passed pawn
- Fixed a problem with calculating the pawn shield of a king on column h, or a king not on his home row
- fixed a bug updating the board signature after making a null move when en passant was possible
- king+rook vs. king+minor is now being scored as a draw
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:engines:myrddin:index

Chess News

Gaviota Endgame Tablebases Probing Code 0.1.6.1
Miguel Ballicora's open source probing code for engine programmers (in C language)
http://github.com/michiguel/Gaviota-Tablebases

Down/Problem chess websites
Amundsen homepage down for 3 days
Ares homepage down for 30 days
BabyChess homepage down for 11 days
Betsy homepage down for 48 days
BikJump homepage down for 3 days
Colossus homepage down for 54 days
Frank homepage down for 7 days
Italian Engine List down for 7 days
Kenny Dail (Mac) builds site down for 26 days
Lyapko utilities homepage down for 14 days
Neurone homepage down for 7 days
Sinobyl homepage down today
Typhoon homepage down for 32 days
ZChess2 site down today

Wiki Changes

Chess Engine List
- added Skaki
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:chess_engine_list

Bonus Notifications (recent releases of free stuff)

Warnings:
- do not install unwanted toolbars, etc.
- alpha releases have new features; crashes and bugs are to be expected
- beta releases have new features; they may contain bugs or occasionally crash
- release candidate software may contain minor bugs; crashes are rare

BitComet 1.19
free peer-to-peer file-sharing compatible with BitTorrent
http://www.bitcomet.com/

KDiff3 0.9.95
open source cross-platform diff program. Recommended!
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kdiff3/

Notepad++ 5.6.7
open source programmer's editor. Recommended!
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm (homepage)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/files/ (download)

Prado 3.1.7
open source programming framework for developing Web applications in PHP 5
http://www.pradosoft.com/ (homepage)
http://code.google.com/p/prado3/downloads/list (download)

Team Foundation Server Power Tools 2010 RC
free Microsoft beta tools for Visual Studio 2010 RC
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/a4f8a47e-1f6b-49d6-8f6e-34f705a2001b

Meaning of Colors

Red = New or Warning
Green = Updated
Gray = Info Only

Engine List: http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:chess_engine_list
Chess News: http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:chess_news_list