Maverick is Available for Download!

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You can download the first release of Maverick on the Download page.

I decided to make this release as Maverick seems to be stable.  But don’t expect anything special.  I’d estimate the strength to be about 1700 ELO on the CCRL scale (which us about 300 ELO weaker than Monarch, my previous engine).  I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s even weaker than 1700 ELO.  If you’re interested in a fast but dumb engine, then Maverick will be perfect.

Here’s what it does:

  • Magic bitboard structure which would seem to be quite fast (the 64 bit version runs at about 8 million nps in the middle game on my Core-i7 4900QM at 2.8 GHz)
  • Fully UCI compatible (tested in Shredder and Fritz)
  • Basic PVS search
  • Move ordering – captures (mvv/lva ordered), killers and history move count
  • Basic Quiescent – all SEE positive moves played
  • Basic evaluation function which is little more than piece-square tables
  • Draw by 50 move rule
  • Draw by 3 times repetition (Maverick is quite “smart” and requires 3 time in appropriate positions – see here for discussion)
  • Ponders in opponent’s time
  • Polyglot compatible opening book (selectable from Maverick’s options menu!)

And that’s it!  Maverick doesn’t even have null move pruning or hash tables (so room for improvement!).

At this point Maverick seems to be stable; having played a few hundred games against Monarch.  Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

P.S. I started writing Maverick five months ago to the day!