Engine Updates

Arabian Knight 1.1.3 (WB)
Java source; own GUI
- free pawn award changed from 18 to 50
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/ArabianKnight.html

DoubleCheck 1.1 (UCI)
C source; Win64, Linux64
- UCI option Draw. This is the score of a draw, from the point of view of DoubleCheck. Default value is -20, meaning that DoubleCheck will (slightly) try to avoid draws, and assume that the opponent seeks draws
- UCI option NullMove: recursive null move pruning
- Internal Iterative Deepening, with a UCI option to enable/disable it. It doesn't make a significant difference in blitz; the benefit kicks-in at longer time controls (improves move ordering)
- UCI option "Hash" to set the size of the hash table in MB. Now defaults to 64 MB instead of 16.
- 7-th rank extension: when the move is a pawn to the 7-th rank, with a >= 0 SEE, then I extend by 1 ply. There was no evidence of either improvement or regression after testing this. But, intuitively, it makes sense. And it seemed to play better in the endgame, so I kept it.
- fixed a bug in the hash table: I was potentially using results from the search in the quiescent search, which is never a good idea
- modified the material values, and added a bishop pair bonus
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/DoubleCheck.html (new Leo page)

GreKo 8.2 (WB/UCI)
C++ source; limit strength; Win32
- search code refactoring: global functions and variables converted to class members
- history counters scheme changed
- use history condition in LMR
- king-pawn distance in endgame
- knight mobility
- trapped bishop
- evaluation weights tuned
- small optimization in hash table
- hash overwriting logic changed
http://greko.110mb.com/index.html

DoubleCheck 1.0 TM (UCI)
- rebuit old version to include missing msvcr100.dll file
http://www3.telus.net/tmokonen/DoubleCheck10_Windows.rar

Chess News

Olivier Deville's PGN collection
also a Polyglot book based on the 45,338 PGN games
"Games from 2001 to 2011"
- minimum Elo = 2530
- only long time control games
- no annotations
- no computer games
- no games under 20 moves
http://www.open-aurec.com/chesswar/download.html

Down/Problem Chess Websites

Bubble homepage down for 2 days (this site is down often)
Dann Corbit homepage down for 36 days (broken computer!)
Matacz homepage down for 3 days (a highjacked 110mb.com site)
Smaug homepage down for 7 days
Superchessengine homepage down for 50 days (Bibi, Fruit, GambitFruit, Movei, Naum, Patzer, Smash & Toga II)
Toledo Nanochess homepage down today (a 110mb.com site)
Crafty (webkikr.com site) homepage back up

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

LibreOffice 3.4.2
cross platform open source fork of OpenOffice project; word processing, chart, spreadsheet, database, etc.
http://www.documentfoundation.org/ (homepage)
http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/ (download)

NetBeans IDE 7.0.1
open source cross-platform IDE for many programming languages; many, but not all, are Java-based
(includes Java, C/C++, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, JavaFX, JavaScript, Ajax, Scala, Groovy, etc.)
supports normal syntax highlighting, code completion, namespace completion, etc.
all languages have debuggers, profilers and unit testing plus support for collaborative programming
http://netbeans.org/ (homepage)
http://netbeans.org/community/news/show/1532.html (announcement)

Parted Magic 6.5
open source partition editor, virus/rootkit scanner, hard drive cloner, and hard drive & RAM tester; recommended
http://partedmagic.com/

Python Tools for Visual Studio RC 2
free, open source Python IDE plugin supporting CPython and IronPython; NumPy & SciPy;
parallel & clustering support; debugging; profiling; more
- this is a *release candidate*
http://pytools.codeplex.com/

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