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Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Sep 25, 2009 08:17 PM EDT:
Very interesting discussion!  I've been away too long ...

First of all, thanks go out to H. G. for adding code to make ChessV compatible with WinBoard.  I'm rolling these terrific improvements into the main code base as well as fixing the problems that resulted in version 0.9.x being so much worse than 0.9.  Update will be released this weekend (with full source code.)

Secondly, thanks go out to Sam for putting on this tournament.  I look forward to the sequel, especially since my next-generation engine will be ready for Schoolbook Chess play very shortly, and with a playing strength that will beat up on ChessV like a body-builder beating up on a cripple :)  Regarding inclusion of Zillions-of-Games, since it is a commercial product, I don't see any problem... If you've actually paid money for it, don't you have a right to use it?

Also, H. G., you mentioned that ChessV might not evaluate the pieces correctly.  This is, of course, true :)  But you can change ChessV's piece evaluations (without re-compiling the source code.)   You use a save-game (SGF) file.  To the extent that there's different opinions about the relative values of the pieces, it would be very interesting to try the alternate values and re-run Sam's opening move analysis and see if it makes any significant difference.

Also, regarding the Schoolbook chess castling rule, I refer to this rule as 'flexible' castling.  That's the name Fergus gave it because the name 'free' castling was already used by Aberg in his Capablanca variant in which not only can the king travel as far as it likes, but the rook can choose any square that the king has passed over...  (I don't personally like the free castling rule, but ChessV supports both, and some other variations, as described in the file extensability.doc.)

Will post an update soon, as soon as ChessV 0.9.4 is ready!

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