Engine Updates

Philou 3.51 (UCI)
Win32
- no info about update
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/Philou.html (Leo Dijksman page)

Supra 1.1 (UCI)
Win32
- no info about update, last release was buggy
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=pt&tl=en&...

Chess News

EPD Endgame Suite
by Martin Wyngaarden
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11904592/EG_MSa.epd (direct download)

FRCPerft
by Allard Siemelink
Fischer Random Chess perft, counts the number of legal moves at a given search depth
- for programmers only
C++ source; Win32/64, Linux32/64 & Mac32/64
http://members.ziggo.nl/allard.siemelink/spark/

Down/Problem Chess Websites

Aldebaran homepage down for 57 days (no response in 60 seconds)
Bearded homepage down for 3 days
Brutus homepage down for 5 days
Fianchetto homepage down for 34 days (configuration error)
Frenzee homepage down for 179 days (webpage down until new engine release)
Genesis homepage down for 32 days
SharpChess, Sharper homepage down for 7 days (domain expired)
Sorgenkind homepage down for 45 days (no response in 60 seconds)
Usurper homepage down for 44 days
Rybka homepage back up (see note below)
Rybka website is temporarily located at
http://rybkachess.com.www52.your-server.de/

Wiki Changes
Nothing new today

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 crash
- release candidate software may contain minor bugs; crashes are rare

HWINFO32 3.70-1153
free system hardware information tool, system health monitoring, and benchmarks
http://www.hwinfo.com/ (homepage)
http://www.hwinfo.com/download32.html (download)

Notepad2 4.2.25 RC 4
open source Win32/64 Notepad replacement based on Scintilla w/ syntax highlighting for many languages
- this is a *release candidate*
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html (homepage & downloads)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad2/ (project page)

Python 3.2 RC 3
popular open source scripting language
this is a *release candidate*
http://www.python.org/ (homepage)
http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.2/ (more info)

Vala/Genie 0.11.6
the Vala language resembles C# and the Genie language resembles Python
the common language compiler outputs OO C code using the GObject library
not yet at version 1.0, but some large apps are written in Vala/Genie
this is the *developmental* branch (beta)
- add parse and try_parse methods to boolean and numeric types
- add clutter-gtk-1.0 bindings
- add pixmap-1 bindings (Evan Nemerson)
- many bug fixes and binding updates
http://www.mail-archive.com/vala-list@gnome.org/msg06562.html (announcement)
http://live.gnome.org/Vala (Vala info)
http://live.gnome.org/Genie (Genie info)
http://download.gnome.org/sources/vala/0.11/ (source code)

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

NOTE: If you want me to track a website for you, please email me and I will add it.

I gave Supra 1.1 a try, and it seemed to work OK for me in Arena 3.0 and also in the Fritz 10 GUI. It's a basic engine, comparable to something like Sachy in strength, but it's more stable than the 1.0 release. It plays OK with an opening book. Fixed depth, it seems, plays fairly quickly no matter what the time control.

More stable, but not completely stable... seemed to have problems moving after a promotion.

Thanks for the info, Tony!