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*                           Pedone 0.5                                        *
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DESCRIPTION

This is a new release of Pedone, an UCI chess engine.
It has developed with particular care in code and data structures optimization.
This release has been tuned with an hybrid approch to Texel and Junior tuning
method.
It's a console program and it needs a graphical interface to work like 
XBoard/Winboard (with Polyglot) or Arena.


THE PACKAGE

The package include the following files:

- Pedone_linux64        - Release for 64 bit linux OS and CPU with SSE4.2
                          instructions.
- Pedone_linux64bmi2    - Release for 64 bit linux OS 
                          and CPU with BMI2 instructions.
- Pedone_linux32        - Release for 32 bit linux OS.
- Pedone_win64_nopopcnt - Release for 64 bit Windows OS (Vista/7/8)
                          and CPU without SSE4.2 instructions.
- Pedone_win64.exe      - Release for 64 bit windows OS (Vista/7/8)
                          and CPU with SSE4.2 instructions.
- Pedone_win64bmi2.exe  - Release for 64 bit windows OS (Vista/7/8)
                          and CPU with BMI2 instructions
- Pedone_win32.exe      - Release for 32 bit windows OS (XP/Vista/7/8)
- ReadMe.txt            - The file you are reading
- Pedone.bmp            - Pedone Logo

TECHNICAL DETAILS

- Board rappresentation QuadBitBoard
- Magic BitBoard
- PV search
- Quiescence search with captures, promotions and checks
- Transposition Table
- Iterative deepening
- Internal iterative deepening
- Search extension and reduction
- Futility and Null Move pruning
- Delta pruning
- SEE
- History
- Killer moves
- Razoring
- Syzygy egtb support
- Polyglot book support


ENGINE SETTINGS

There are 10 settings that you can manage from the GUI menu:

- Hash:
  select the size for the hash table.
  Pedone can accept value between 1MB and 16384MB.

- Ponder:
  enable or disable pondering

- DrawScore
  Choose the score in cp for the Draw (between -500 and +500)
  And high value makes Pedone play for the draw.
  A low value makes Pedone to disdain the draw.

- OwnBook:
  enable or disable Pedone own book

- BookFile
  Choose the opening book for Pedone

- AlwaysBestBookMove
  Let Pedone choose every time the best book move or not. If not it choose a
  random move from the book.

- Log
  Enable or disable the output commands to be logged

- SyzygyPath
  The path of the syzygy egtb.

- SyzygyProbeDepth
  The search depth where Pedone start to probe the egtb.

- SyzygyProbeLimit
  Limit the egtb probe with this number of pieces left on the board.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This realease is a result not only of my own work.
Thanks to:
- Fabien Letouzey for the code that support the Polyglot opening books.
- Ronald de Man for the syzygy probe code.
- G6 group for the technical support and for being a meeting point for
  the Italian computer chess programmers


PEDONE STEP BY STEP
- Pedone 0.5 30/08/2014
Automatic Tuning
Quiet move ordering with History Heuristic
Killer Moves
Razoring
Changed the reductions formula
Improved the evaluation for the king safety and the passed pawns
New time management
Some bug fixes

- Pedone 0.4 13/05/2014
Changed the protocol to UCI
Ponder
Polyglot Book support
Syzygy egtb support
More knowledge in the Evaluation function
Added Transposition Table and forward pruning also in the QSearch
BMI2 optimization
New Logo

- Pedone 0.3 21/03/2014
Changed AlphaBeta search into PVS.
Added checks in the Quiescence search.
Pawn evaluation.
Search extension and reduction.
Futility and Null Move pruning.

- 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

