Entries by Steve Maughan

Python Chess

I’m delighted to give you this guest post by Niklas Fiekas, the creator of Python Chess. You may think Python Chess is just another chess engine. It isn’t. It’s a library of routines which can manipulate and analyze chess data using Python.  After I learnt about Python Chess I immediately went to Code Academy and took their […]

Maverick 1.0 Released

I’m pleased to be able to release Maverick 1.0. This version adds considerable selectivity to the search. It has a basic implementation of Late Move Reduction and Beta pruning. In my tests it is about 2500 ELO on the CCRL scale, so it’s time to give it the 1.0 version number. A full list of […]

Maverick 0.60 Released

Today I’m releasing Maverick 0.60. The main changes are as follows: Added support for Chess960 Added basic king safety (this makes the playing style much more attractive) Fixed a problem with using the opening book with Arena Fixed an obscure bug which could crash the engine after a stop command Transferred source code to Github […]

Free Version of Visual Studio Professional 2013

Last week Microsoft release a Community Edition of Visual Studio 2013.  This is a free version of the Professional edition of Visual Studio 2013. Previously Microsoft’s free edition was Visual Studio Express. This only compiled to 32 bit and didn’t include a Profiler or Profiler-Guided-Optimization.  The new Community Edition includes all of these goodies and can generate 64 bit executables. […]

Automatic Tuning of Evaluation Function

When it comes to Maverick’s evaluation function I’m frustrated and excited in equal measure! My focus over the last couple of months has been to improve Maverick’s evaluation function.  However I’ve found it quite difficult to improve on Maverick 0.51’s actual playing strength.  Adding extra knowledge (e.g backward pawns) seems to add little in terms […]

New Bitboard Viewer (Now with Hexadecimal)

After stuffing myself silly with a scrummy Christmas dinner, I felt I need to work it off a little with a bit of programming. I have had a number of requests to add hexadecimal support to the Bitboard Viewer. The original version also had a nasty overflow bug which showed up if bit 63 was […]