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*                         Pedone 0.2.1                                        *
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DESCRIPTION

This is a new release of Pedone, a Winboard chess engine.
It has developed with particular care in code and data structures optimization.
It has a very little chess knowledge but it can analyse millions position per
second with a search depth of 8-9 plies.
His playing strenght is about 2100 ELO.
It's a console program and it needs a graphical interface like XBoard/Winboard
to work.


THE PACKAGE

The package include 3 executables with different hardware and software
requirement:

- Pedone_linux64   - Version for 64 bit linux OS.
- Pedone_win32.exe - Version for 32 bit windows OS (XP/Vista/7/8).
- Pedone_win64.exe - Version for 64 bit windows OS (Vista/7/8).


TECHNICAL DETAILS

- Board rappresentation QuadBitBoard
- Magic BitBoard
- AlphaBeta search
- Quiescence search with captures and promotions
- Transposition Table
- Iterative deepening
- Internal iterative deepening
- Simple evaluation function with piece tables and bonus for the bishop pair
  and the king safety. In this release, added the check for the draw by
  insufficient mating material.


ENGINE SETTINGS

There are 4 settings that you can manage from the xboard menu:

- Transposition Table size:
  From Option->Common Engine Settings you can
  select the size for the hash table.
  Pedone can accept value between 128MB and 4096MB.

- Auto Compute the DrawScore (only if the GUI send the rating command):
  From Engine->Engine Settings you can check
  RatingDraw if you want the engine to compute the draw score,
  uncheck if you want to manually set the draw score.

- Set the drawscore:
  From Engine->Engine Settings in the DrawScore spin you can choose a value
  between -500 and 500 centipawns.

- Set the moves number you expect for a game with an incremental time control:
  From Engine->Engine Settings in the NGameMoves spin you can choose a value
  between 40 and 120 moves per game.
  Choose a lower value if you want Pedone to use more time, an higher one
  if you want Pedone to save time for an expected long match.


XBOARD SUPPORTED COMMANDS

memory - You can select the size of the Transposition Table from the
         xboard Common Engine menu
setboard - You can edit a position
rating - The engine can calculate a Draw Score when it plays on ics
level, st - You can choose all type of time control
undo - You can take back one move
remove - You can undo the last two move
sd - You can select a depth limit for the engine
post, nopost - You can choose if you want to see
               the engine thinking output or not


PEDONE STEP BY STEP

Pedone 0.2.1 01/03/2014
Deleted the configuration file. You can manage all the engine settings
from the xboard menu.
Added the check for the draw by insufficient mating material in the evaluation
function.
Little changes in the piece table.
Some more xboard commands supported.

Pedone 0.2 20/01/2014
Now the transposition table store the score of the position.
Delete Transposition Table old entries at every search.
Internal iterative deepening.
Draw Score.
Added a configuration file.

Pedone 0.1 23/11/2013
Board rappresentation with QuadBitBoard.
Alphabeta search, Quiescence search with captures and promotions.
Persistent Transposition Table with only best moves stored.
Iterative Deepening.

For what every you need you can contact me at the following email address:

0xfab10@gmail.com

Fabio Gobbato

