Fizbo version 1.6 released

[ymatioun]

Fizbo version 1.6 has just been released, and can be downloaded from https://sites.google.com/site/fizbochessengine/

Changes in version 1.6:
1. fixed a timing bug - now engine should no longer time out.
2. fixed a bug in EGTB logic - now engine should work when only 4-piece (and not 5-piece) syzygy tables are present.
3. fixed a bug in main transposition table - now it can be made larger than 2Gb.
4. added option "UseEGTBInsideSearch": when set to false, engine will only use EGTB in root position, not inside search. This allows EGTBs to be used when they are stored on hard drive and not on SSD.
5. various small modifications to search and evaluation, resulting in approximately +30 ELO for 1 core play.
6. multiple changes to parallel search, which now should work as intended. Estimated benefit from running on 4 cores is around +90 ELO.

Youri.

[Graham Banks]

Thanks Youri.

[Jack]

Thanks, Youri, it is great to see Fizbo making good progress.

Sorry that again I have to report a possible bug. I tried playing a few games (human vs engine) against Fizbo 1.6 (Win 7 64-bit, 2 cores, 512 MB hash, i5 processor) in Arena 3.5, but the engine stalls out after a certain number of moves. The last 2 games lasted 27 and 20 moves, respectively. The engine unexpectedly stops running with no error given. This happens regardless of ponder on/off.

Jack

[archship]

I am not very impressed with Fizbo at all. Every time an engine gets over 3000 in the 40/4 list, I add it to my computer and test it versus the others in a two game round robin format. Fizbo 1.6 would not download from the homepage due to a trojan virus coming with it. When I did finally find a third party site to download a clean version, I was very disappointed with the performance. Arena 3.5.1 couldn't run the normal version, and the no_pc version lost to every other program in the top 20 best free versions (from Senpai 1.0 and Rybka 2.3.2 to Komodo 7 and Stockfish 7). Most of those were due to timeouts. Even Rybka, as old as it is, gets some draws on those stronger engines.