Engine Updates

Myrddin 0.85 (WB)
Win32/64
- builds by Jim Ablett
- almost complete rewrite of the evaluation, in particular:
--- pawn structure evaluation and king safety
--- added mobility factor
--- significantly adjusted many piece table values
- added SEE (thanks, Andrés!)
- added futility pruning
- added resign; see Myrddin's INI file for instructions, as this is off by default
- added second aspiration window at 150 centipawns
- cleaned up code for how reductions/extensions are used to modify depth in search calls
- will now claim draw by insufficient material, but only checking for bare kings or at most one minor on board
- now generating all moves in quiescent search if side to move is in check
- now searching all moves in order of their move score order, instead of just the first four moves and then taking the rest as they were generated
- some changes to the transposition table replacement strategy
- fixed a bug in which the en passant square was not being passed to the Gaviota tablebase probe
- fixed a bug in which the 50-move draw check was not checking that the drawing move was also checkmate
- fixed a bug in which the flag for a mate threat found during null move was not being stored in the hash table
- fixed a bug in which a hash entry could be saved when the engine was forcibly bailing out of a search
- fixed a bug that could cause Gaviota tablebases folder to not be read properly from the INI file
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:engines:myrddin:index

Chess News
Nothing new today

Down/Problem Chess Websites

Aristarch homepage down today (no response in 60 seconds)
BabyChess homepage down for 23 days (404: page not found)
Cecir homepage down today (no response in 60 seconds)
Elf homepage down for 6 days (domain expired)
Frenzee homepage down for 256 days (purposely down until new engine release)
Grizzly homepage down for 16 days (homepage is moving)
Loop homepage down for 4 days (serious clone accusation may have ended Loop)
MFChess homepage down for 10 days (no response in 60 seconds)
Typhoon homepage down for 3 days

Wiki Changes

SMP Engine List
update by Norbert Raimund Leisner
- added Redqueen
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:smp_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 crash
- release candidate software may contain minor bugs; crashes are rare

Ghostery for Chrome 2.3.0
free browser addon; alerts you about web bugs, ad networks and tracking widgets
on every web page you visit; "See who's tracking your web browsing and block them"
- Chrome version can do blocking, but it isn't perfect due to Chrome API design
http://www.ghostery.com/ (homepage)
http://www.ghostery.com/download (download + browser comparisons)

PostgreSQL 9.1 Beta 1
open source SQL database for high performance and high availability applications
http://www.postgresql.org/ (homepage)
http://www.postgresql.org/about/news.1313 (announcement)
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/release-9-1.html (release notes)

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.
ron _at_ computer-chess _dot_ org