Plisk 024o release

[vladstamate]

Hi all,

I've made available a new Plisk release (024o). This version plays stronger than Plisk023h. The STS tests results have improved from 583/1000 (in 023h) to 596/1000 so an increase of 13/1000.

Among the changes I have done is improved the search such that Plisk now searches deeper and faster. For example, thanks to the Stockfish team I managed to replace my delta pruning in QS nodes (once per node) with a futility prunning per move in QS node based on approximate material gain. The LMR algorithm has had some changes too, to provide more aggressive pruning. To balance that, I reduced pruning done in PV nodes in both normal search as well as QS.

Another important thing is that I made Plisk able to read Polyglot opening books and from now on, Plisk will be released with a Polyglot book. Plisk can also be used to manage books: it can create books, merge books, print statistics as well as print moves given a fen position. The readme explains how this is done.

You can get Plisk from here:

http://sites.google.com/site/pliskchess/

Regards,
Vlad.

[vladstamate]

Hi all,

I forgot to say that there are binaries provided for Win (32 and 64 bit), Linux (32bit) and MacOSX (Snow Leopard).

Regards,
Vlad.

[Swaminathan]

Thanks, Vlad. Will be testing it.

Good luck with the improvement. The engine is making a steady progress.