Posts

RedQueen Chess Engine

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I compiled Ben-Hur Carlos Langoni's UCI engine RedQueen for Android (ARM), and put the binary on UCI engines for Android . Below screenshots and results of a few quick matches against other engines on a Nexus One (1GHz Snapdragon) with 32MB hash and Nalimov/Gaviota/Scorpio endgame tablebases on SD card. RedQueen 0.9.5 - Stockfish 2.0          0.0 - 10.0 +0/-10/=0    0.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - Toga II 1.4.1SE        0.0 - 10.0 +0/-10/=0    0.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - IvanHoe-Beta v999947c  0.0 - 10.0 +0/-10/=0    0.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - Rotor 0.6a             3.0 - 7.0  +3/-7/=0    30.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - GNU Chess 5.07.170.7b  3.0 - 7.0  +1/-5/=4    30.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - gaviota v0.80.0.107    3.5 - 6.5  +3/-6/=1    35.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - BikJump v2.1P          8.0 - 2.0  +8/-2/=0    80.00% RedQueen 0.9.5 - ZCT-0.3.2500           8.5 - 1.5  +8/-1/=1    85.00%

Chess for Android 2.8

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I just released version 2.8 of Chess for Android, available from the Android Market or as direct download . New features include: full PGN support (clipboard import/export, file load/save) improved layout for xlarge screen sizes (api 9 and up) bug fix in draw detection after FEN import To load a game from a file in PGN format, long press the notation window, select "Load Game from SD", and navigate to the file. This opens another window with the actual games in that file. Then select the desired game. Very large PGN files may take a while to download (or even run out of memory), but the idea is that future versions will be able to navigate quickly between successive games. I have tried to make the PGN parser reasonably robust (it accepts sloppy SAN for instance), but certain non-standard constructs are rejected. Please let me know if you encounter bugs though.

Chess for Android as Client of a Chess Server

User PJ+ at the OpenChess forum implemented a nifty client utility that converts Chess for Android to a client for a remote chess server. To make this work (assuming you already have a remote chess server running at some hostname and port), simply do the following steps. Download the version of Chess for Android that grants network permission to its UCI clients (the default version at the market does not do this for obvious security reasons). Download PJ+'s client-android-cli utility. Construct a file, for example uci_client , that contains the single line ./client-android-cli <hostname > < port > for the hostname and port of the remote chess server. Copy 2. and 3. to SD card, then install these from SD just like the first-time install of UCI engines. Finally, the single line file uci_client can now be imported as any other UCI engine, and will connect to the remote chess server. I tried this method myself connecting Chess for Android as client to a remote c

Rotor on Android

Jan Brouwer ported his UCI engine Rotor  to Android. Below the results of a few matches against other engines on a Nexus One (1GHz Snapdragon), one second-per-move, 16MB hash, and Nalimov/Gaviota/Scorpio endgame tablebases on SD card. Rotor 0.6a - Stockfish 2.0           0.0 - 10.0    +0/-10/=0      0.00% Rotor 0.6a - Toga II 1.4.1SE         0.5 -  9.5    +0/-9/=1       5.00% Rotor 0.6a - gaviota v0.80.0.107     5.5 -  4.5    +5/-4/=1      55.00% Rotor 0.6a - GNU Chess 5.07.170.7b   7.0 -  3.0    +7/-3/=0      70.00% Rotor 0.6a - BikJump v2.1P          10.0 -  0.0    +10/-0/=0    100.00% Rotor 0.6a - ZCT-0.3.2500           10.0 -  0.0    +10/-0/=0    100.00%

Tablets are Coming!

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I don't have a tablet myself yet, but Roel from Belgium kindly emailed me this picture of Chess for Android running on a 7 inch tablet. As you can see, he was running an engine-engine match between UCI engines at the time. Thanks Roel!