Aart's Blog

Richard Vida released Critter 1.4 , including a version for Android. This ARM binary imports well into Chess for Android . A quick 1-second-per-move tournament from both sides of all opening lines in the Nunn test suite on a Nexus S ended in favor of the previous version though.

Lucas Braesch released DoubleCheck 2.3  and I put an ARM binary on UCI and XBoard engines for Android  (you can find another binary for ARM on Jim Ablett's website ). Below, I show the results of a quick one-second-per-move tournament played from both sides of all lines in the Noomen test suite 2012  between some recent versions (32MB hash size, Nexus S).                   1         2          3                             1 DoubleCheck 2.3     *     36.5-23.5  39.5-20.5  76.0/120 2 DoubleCheck 2.0 23.5-36.5     *      35.5-24.5  59.0/120 3 DoubleCheck 1.3 20.5-39.5 24.5-35.5      *      45.0/120

Another engine for ARM-based Android devices! Tony Hecker kindly made ARM binaries of  Tjchess  available as either an UCI engine or a XBoard engine. Both import well in Chess for Android . Some screenshots below. With so many new engines, is it time for yet another Android chess engine tournament ?

The list of chess engines compiled for ARM-based Android devices keeps growing. Someone pointed me to Borko Boskovic's Umko engine. I tested this UCI engine in Chess for Android , and it works well. Some screenshots below.

Group A has finished a complete thirty seconds-per-move tournament in Chess for Android , played from both sides of all positions in the Nunn opening suite under the conditions described earlier. Congratulations to Richard Vida for Critter 's victory in this tournament! All games can be downloaded from the tournament page . This completes the Android tournament with longer time controls (although since many more engines are available now, perhaps another one is already necessary!).                        1         2        3         4         5                     1 Critter 1.2 32-bit       *     11.5-8.5  9.5-10.5  15.0-5.0  11.5-8.5  47.5/80 2 Stockfish 2.1.1 JA    8.5-11.5     *    13.0-7.0    9.5-10.5 ...

Jim Ablett kindly compiled Jon Dart's Arasan engine for ARM-based Android devices so that it can be imported in Chess for Android . The engine supports multithreading, Nalimov endgame tablebases, and clocked at about 100Kns out of the opening on my Nexus S.  

As posted earlier, Jim Ablett posted an Android Chess Engine Bundle , which various UCI and Win/XBoard engines that can be imported in Chess for Android . Because the Win/XBoard protocol feature is still relatively new in Chess for Android and conducted a test tournament between all the XBoard engines (except gfc-08-rev5-ja which often claims a mate without actually making the move; I am not sure if the standard allows this, but it seems weird that the GUI should verify the claim). During this tournament I found a few opportunities for improving the GUI's handling of the protocol, which will be released soon. Also, the next release will add the much requested pondering feature (also called permanent brain ). Games available on request.                           1  olithink-530-ja          34.5/38 2  crafty-234-ja            32.0/38 3  phala...

Group B has finished a complete thirty seconds-per-move tournament in Chess for Android , played from both sides of all positions in the Nunn opening suite under the conditions described earlier. Regrettably I found that Crafty was put at a slight disadvantage (not something that would have changed the outcome though) due to a misinterpretation of XBoard's resign plus move command, causing a resign by illegal move in the next game. This issue has been fixed now. Congratulations to IvanHoe for its promotion to Group A. All games can be downloaded from the tournament page . The games of the final group A have started!                        1        2        3         4        5                     1 IvanHoe-Beta 999947c    *     15.0-5.0 17.0-3.0  19.0-1.0 19.0-1.0 ...