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----  DarkThought  ----

competitive chess program
created by^1.1

Markus Gille	Ernst A. Heinz
<gille@ira.uka.de>	<heinz@mit.edu>

Contact Address:

Dr. Ernst A. Heinz, M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS), NE 43 - 228,
Massachussetts Inst. of Technology, 545 Technology Sq., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Tel./Fax: +1 - 617 - 253 8853 / 0145, WWW: <http://supertech.lcs.mit.edu/~heinz/>

Tournament History  

9th World Computer-Chess Championship (June 1999):

• 4.5 points out of 7 games (3x win, 3x draw, 1x loss) - finished on shared 5th place as 6th of 30 participants in main tournament (microcomputer Vice-Champion and best microcomputer amateur overall, see below)

16th World Microcomputer-Chess Championship (June 1999):

• 4.5 points out of 7 games (3x win, 3x draw, 1x loss) - finished on shared 2nd place as overall Vice-Champion and best amateur of the 22 microcomputer participants in the 9th World Computer-Chess Championship (see above)

15th World Microcomputer-Chess Championship (October 1997):

• 7.0 points out of 11 games (5x win, 4x draw, 2x loss) - finished on shared 4th place as 6th of 34 participants in main tournament (best European amateur)

1st Karlsruher UniSchau (June 1997):

• 3.0 points out of 4 games (2x win, 2x draw) - exhibition match against official student chess team from the University of Karlsruhe (ELO 2225 - ELO 2305)

12th AEGON Man vs. Machine (April 1997):

• 3.5 points out of 6 games (2x win, 3x draw, 1x loss) - win against IM S. Polgar (ELO 2470), draw with GM C. Parada (ELO 2539), sole loss against IM J. van Mil (ELO 2406)

14th World Microcomputer-Chess Championship (October 1996):

• 6.5 points out of 11 games (5x win, 3x draw, 3x loss) - finished on shared 6th place as 7th of 27 participants in main tournament and on shared 3rd place in speed-chess event

11th AEGON Man vs. Machine (April 1996):

• 3.5 points out of 6 games (2x win, 3x draw, 1x loss) - loss vs. GM Bronstein (ELO 2455)

13th World Microcomputer-Chess Championship (October 1995):

• 7.0 points out of 11 games (6x win, 2x draw, 3x loss) - finished on shared 6th place as 7th of 34 participants (best European amateur, best German overall)

8th World Computer-Chess Championship (May 1995):

• 2.0 points out of 5 games (2x win, 3x loss) - finished on shared 14th place as 14th of 24 participants

Latest Performance on Test Suites  

Test Suite	Time	Result	Speed
BS-2830   ( DARKTHOUGHT rating = 2734)	15 min.	18 / 27	391K nps
BT-2630   ( DARKTHOUGHT rating = 2526)	15 min.	27 / 30	340K nps
LCT-II     ( DARKTHOUGHT rating = 2645)	10 min.	28 / 35	410K nps
Bratko / Kopec	1 min.	18 / 24	362K nps
Encyclopedia of Chess Middlegames	5 sec.	534 / 879	401K nps
Win at Chess	5 sec.	290 / 300	446K nps
World's Greatest Chess Games	5 sec.	23 / 50	368K nps
1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices	5 sec.	832 / 1001	435K nps

Solution Times for BS-2830

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6	#7	#8	#9	#10	(in sec.)
81	13	-	4	-	15	10	-	15	109	#00
-	107	14	94	-	76	471	-	372	-	#10
186	263	53	9	-	-	21				#20

Solution Times for BT-2630

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6	#7	#8	#9	#10	(in sec.)
0	1	2	17	0	0	0	0	-	3	#00
0	6	154	1	4	-	2	1	19	1	#10
48	1	0	5	3	-	0	55	67	17	#20

Solution Times for LCT-II

#1	#2	#3	#4	#5	#6	#7	#8	#9	#10	(in sec.)
3	0	273	-	27	7	205	-	7	-	#00
21	75	118	0	2	0	0	53	8	3	#10
1	5	18	9	-	-	0	0	0	15	#20
4	0	5	-	-						#30

Measured Peak Speed = 1.473M nps

(in position ``8/8/7K/8/6p1/6k1/4R3/8 w - - 0 1'' from ECE3 with timing = 5 sec).

Test Configuration

• DARKTHOUGHT as of May 31, 1999 with 8M transposition-table entries (4M per side), 1M King hash-table entries (512K per side), and 512K Pawn hash-table entries,

• Digital Unix 4.0e program development tools and operating system,

• 500MHz Compaq XP1000 workstation (500MHz Alpha-21264 EV6 CPU, 64KB/64KB on-chip I/D L1 caches, 4MB unified off-chip L2 cache, Compaq DS-10 mainboard, 2x 128MB/100MHz SDRAM-DIMMs = 256MB RAM).

``Scalable Search in Computer Chess''  --  Ernst's New Book !!

  Author:     Ernst A. Heinz
  Title:      ``Scalable Search in Computer Chess''
  Subtitle:   Algorithmic Enhancements and Experiments at High Search Depths
  Series:     Computational Intelligence (ser. eds. Profs. Bibel and Kruse)
  Publisher:  Vieweg Verlag [268 pages, 31 figures, 57 tables]
  ISBN:       3-528-05732-7

In order to find out more about the book, please click here.