RookieEvaluation
Rookie 1.0 Screen [1] Rookie,
a family of chess programs developed by Marcel van Kervinck. Rookie started its life in the early 90s, evolved from a mate-in-two problem solver, and was entirely written in 68000 assembly [2] to run on an Amiga, since Rookie 1.0 with an own Graphical User Interface written in C [3]. Rookie 2.x was pure C and active during the late 90s, while Rookie 3.x, a complete rewrite from scratch [4] , appeared in 2010 after Marcel took a long break from computer chess programming.
Search
Chapter 2 covers the search topics PVS, iterative deepening, quiescence search, move ordering, SEE, killer- and counter moves, history heuristic, fractional extensions, pruning, null move pruning, transposition table, and a Bloom filter like hash table to detect repetitions, and much more interesting stuff.
Evaluation
Chapter 3 of the thesis elaborates on evaluation, chapter 4 on the opening book including book learning. The instructive overview of Rookie’s 2.0 evaluator demonstrates its components including various hash-, material- and dynamic piece-square tables [6] [7]:
Triple Stage Evaluator
- Stage 1: material and pawn- king structure
- Stage 2: dynamic piece-square tables
- Stage 3: mobility and board control
Rookie 2.0: Triple Stage Evaluator with conditional lazy eval short cuts [8]
The Big Picture
Overview of Rookie 2.0 Evaluator [9]
Rookie 3
After years “out of business”, Marcel started Rookie 3.0, a 100% rewrite from scratch, but still using incremental attack tables and dynamic piece-square tables of Rookie 1, so he decided to stick with the name [10] .
Tournaments
Rookie 0.82 had its debut at the DOCCC 1993, Rooie 2.0 further played the DOCCC 1997 and DOCCC 1998, and Rookie 3.x the DOCCC 2010, CPT 2011, ICT 2011, CCT13, the Fifth Annual World Computer Rapid Chess Championships 2011, and the 19th World Computer Chess Championship in Tilburg 2011. In June 2013, Rookie with upcoming repetition detection [11] implemented, won the ICT 2013 [12].
Photos
Rookie of the Year Award
DOCCC 2010: Marcel van Kervinck receives the “Rookie of the Year Award” from Cock de Gorter [13]
ICT 2011
ICT 2011: Marcel van Kervinck and Gyula Horváth, Rookie - Pandix [14]
Selected Games
DOCCC 1997
DOCCC 1997, Round 10, Diep - Rookie 2.0 [15]
WCCC 2011
WCCC 2011, Round 1, Rookie 3.4 - Shredder [16]
See also
Publications
- Marcel van Kervinck (2002). The design and implementation of the Rookie 2.0 Chess Playing Program. Masters Thesis, pdf [17]
- Marcel van Kervinck (2002). A pattern-recognition strategy for chess position evaluation. Slides from The design and implementation of the Rookie 2.0 Chess Playing Program.
- Marcel van Kervinck (2013). A fast software-based method for upcoming cycle detection in search trees. pdf preview » Repetitions [18]
Forum Posts
- Rookie program deserves a look by Fernando Villegas, CCC, October 19, 1998
- Rotor uses Rookie’s attack table! by Jan Brouwer, CCC, February 26, 2010 » Rotor
- Re: Programmers: what’s the story behind the name of your engine by Marcel van Kervinck, CCC, June 18, 2011
- 2011 Fifth Annual ACCA WCRCC: Rookie games by Marcel van Kervinck, CCC, July 24, 2011
- ICT13 programmer’s report: Rookie v3.7 by Marcel van Kervinck, OpenChess Forum, June 04, 2013 » ICT 2013
- test position: Rookie-Arasan by Jon Dart, CCC, January 27, 2014 » Arasan, Zugzwang
- Some SMP measurements with Rookie v3 by Marcel van Kervinck, CCC, February 05, 2015 » Parallel Search
External Links
Chess Engine
- Rookie’s ICGA Tournaments
- Index of /rookie by Marcel van Kervinck archive.org
- The chess games of Rookie from chessgames.com
Misc
Rookie of the Year (award) from Wikipedia
References
- ↑ Index of /rookie/nostalgia/v1
- ↑ Rookie 1.0 68000 assembly source, search.s from Index of /rookie/nostalgia/v1
- ↑ ‘Rookie’ timeline from Marcel van Kervinck (2002). A pattern-recognition strategy for chess position evaluation. Slides from The design and implementation of the Rookie 2.0 Chess Playing Program.
- ↑ Re: Rotor uses Rookie’s attack table! by Marcel van Kervinck, CCC, February 28, 2010
- ↑ Marcel van Kervinck (2002). The design and implementation of the Rookie 2.0 Chess Playing Program. Masters Thesis, pdf
- ↑ Marcel van Kervinck (2002). The design and implementation of the Rookie 2.0 Chess Playing Program. Masters Thesis, pdf, Overview of Rookie 2.0 Eval, pp. 66
- ↑ Images from Marcel van Kervinck (2002). A pattern-recognition strategy for chess position evaluation. Slides from The design and implementation of the Rookie 2.0 Chess Playing Program.
- ↑ Rookie 2.0: triple-stage evaluator
- ↑ The big picture
- ↑ Re: Programmers: what’s the story behind the name of your engine by Marcel van Kervinck, CCC, June 18, 2011
- ↑ Upcoming repetition detection by Marcel van Kervinck, OpenChess Forum, April 06, 2013 » Repetitions
- ↑ ICT13 programmer’s report: Rookie v3.7 by Marcel van Kervinck, OpenChess Forum, June 04, 2013
- ↑ Programmersprize 2010
- ↑ ICT11 Round 7 - Photos
- ↑ Downloads | Open Dutch Computer Chess Championships | Games
- ↑ Rookie (Computer) vs Shredder (Computer) (2011) from chessgames.com
- ↑ Chess Programmers – take note: M. N. J. van Kervinck’s Master’s Thesis by Dann Corbit, CCC, August 19, 2002
- ↑ Upcoming repetition detection by Marcel van Kervinck, OpenChess Forum, April 06, 2013