Engine Updates

Arabian Knight 1.24 (WB)
Java source; own GUI
- now it prints best path while thinking
- now it prints depth/nodes/etc in standard way recognised by most of GUI's
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/ArabianKnight.html (Leo page)

Arasan 13.0 (WB/UCI)
C++ source; mp; Win32/64, Linux
- history pruning and see pruning are implemented
- fixes to history code
- code cleanup and parameter tweaking in evaluation, especially to isolated pawns, pawn center scores, passed pawns, mobility, king safety
- fixed bug in adjacent passer code
- potential passer code is more accurate
- material scoring changes: queen value is higher, re-introduced some special case adjustments for bad trades
- check extensions have been reduced to 3/4 ply
- hash table code cleanup & bug fixes
- Intel C++ supported under Windows
- GUI edit menu allows paste of PGN and FEN from the clipboard into the GUI
- fix GUI memory leak
- by default, Arasan will play a somewhat wider variety of openings (the book selectivity option can be used to change this)
http://www.arasanchess.org/

DoubleCheck 1.3 (UCI)
C source; Win64, Linux64
- DoubleCheck is able to display a correct PV. The code was much simplified, as I simply retrieve it from the TTable
- fixed a major bug with 3-move repetition
- fixed bugs in the search, also leading to code simplification, and significant elo increase
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/DoubleCheck.html (Leo page)

Chess News

Arasan Test Suite (v.13)
epd testsuite from Jon Dart
"chess problems, drawn from a variety of human and computer games. They range in difficulty, but most are non-trivial and some are quite hard"
http://www.arasanchess.org/testsuite.shtml

JavaPairing 2.1
open source cross-platform chess pairings manager for Swiss events
http://sourceforge.net/projects/javapairing/ (project page)
http://javapairing.sourceforge.net/ (homepage)

XBoard Alpha News
by HG Muller
new features:
- setting the other side to move in analysis
- piece fonts and figurine fonts
- searching a position in a PGN file
- playing games in pairs
http://hgm.nubati.net/news.html (homepage)

Down/Problem Chess Websites

Bubble homepage down for 4 days (no response in 60 seconds)
Dann Corbit homepage down for 53 days (broken computer!)
Matacz homepage down for 20 days (a 110mb.com site)
Smash homepage down for 3 days (no response in 60 seconds)
Smaug homepage down for 24 days
Superchessengine homepage down for 67 days (Fruit, GambitFruit, Movei, Naum, Patzer & Smash)
Typhoon homepage down for 2 days (no response in 60 seconds)

Wiki Changes

GUI Protocol List
update by Norbert Raimund Leisner
- revised Chessmaster info and added an extra link
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:gui_protocol_support_list

Variants Engine List
update by Norbert Raimund Leisner
- added Mac Shogi and Shogi
- added Shogi Viewer
- expanded some comments
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=computer_chess:wiki:lists:variants_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

MariaDB 5.2.8
open source fork of MySQL; completely compatible w/MySQL; w/extra db engines & extra features
"MariaDB is a binary drop-in replacement for MySQL"
MariaDB restores several significant features that Oracle has dropped from MySQL
http://kb.askmonty.org/ (homepage)
http://kb.askmonty.org/v/mariadb-versus-mysql-features (extra features)
http://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-528-release-notes (release notes)

PHP 5.3.7
PHP is a very popular open source scripting language mostly used for web applications
http://php.net/ (homepage)

PyPy 1.6 (Python)
cross-platform, open source Python implementation; choose JIT (default), no JIT, stackless, or sandboxed;
also available: back ends for .NET and Java (see: 'Features' page);
other languages that run in the JIT: Prolog, Smalltalk, JavaScript, Io, Scheme and Gameboy
"The ... average of all [PyPy] benchmarks is ... 4.3 times faster than CPython"
"Note: windows binaries are not ready yet"
- PyPy 1.6 implements Python 2.7.1
http://pypy.org/ (homepage)
http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/08/pypy-16-kickass-panda.html (announcement)

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