News

Project Dead
4/11/2006
I've decided to start a new chess engine with completely different board and move generation structures.

Alpha 22 release won't be for a while
4/11/2006
Work on Witz is stagnating becase of a lot of work load from college and other buisness. Nevertheless I will certainly work on it as time allows. Expect a release no later than 4 months.

Tournament Book 1.1 Released
3/26/2006
A much better opening book made from many top quality games. Much thanks to IM Gaston to provide the pgn file.

Huge bug in Alpha21
3/24/2006
I found a terrible mistake in the eval tuning. Witz goes for bad pawn structures because I have the piece square tables for bad pawns as positive scores instead of negative scores! I fixed this and re-upload a new A21 with a better config file.

Alpha21 Released
3/18/2006
A hurried release before spring break.

Slacking on Witz
2/26/2006
I have hardly had time to work on Witz, but I will try to be more active now. Except a release in 1-2 weeks.

Book Downloads
1/12/2006
Added a tournament book to the downloads page.

Alpha20 Released
1/10/2006
You can find Alpha 20 now on the downloads page!

Alpha20 Development
12/23/2005
Redirected effort for improvements in strength to improvements in features for Alpha20.

Alpha19 Released
12/4/2005
A lot of new features and a big increase in playing strength.

Alpha19 Soon
10/30/2005
Witz Alpha 19 should come out by Monday with a substantial improvement in playing strength.

Home

Witz is a free and open-source chess playing program and is currently not being developed. Nevertheless I've started writing a new chess engine and for those who are interested they can find it here.

ICS Handles running Witz

WitzSF (FICS)
Singularity (FICS)

Contact me and I'd be glad to add anyone who runs Witz on an ICS to this list.

Current Features

Well documented source code
Winboard/Xboard protocols 1 and 2 (analyze and ponder not supported yet)
Ad-hoc support for timed controls
Rotated Bitboard move generation
Search
- Multiple Search Algorithms
  - Principal Variation Search (PVS)
  - Alphabeta
- Quiescence Search
- Interior Node Recognition
  - 3-move repetition detection
  - fifty move repetition detection
- Forward Pruning
  - Adaptive Nullmove Pruning
- Extensions
  - Check Extension
  - Recapture Extension
  - Pawn to 7th Extension
Move Ordering
- History Heuristric
- Ray-casting Static Exchange Evaluation
- Killer Move
- Dynamically Pregenerated Piece-Square Tables
- Transposition Tables
Evaluation Function
- Material
- Full Mobility Evaluation
- Capture bonus for mobility
- Dynamic King Safety (Scaled with Material)
- Pawn Structure
  - Pawn Hash
  - Passed Pawns
  - Half-Passed Pawns
  - Doubled Pawns
  - Isolated Pawns
  - Generic Weak Pawns
Principal Variation Output
Opening Book
- Generation of opening book from PGN files
- Supports transpositions
- Uses a fast red-black tree structure for generation
Configuration File
Potential for Parallelization

Planned Features for next release

Better evaluation still needed, also major improvements in speed can be done. Recommendations for the evaluation function will be greatly appreciated.

Optimization
Endgame Evaluation
Tuning current evaluation
Limited Mate-threat extension
Improve Move Ordering (mabe try Internal Iterative Deepening)
Raycasting Mobility and King Safety Evaluvation
Taking into account pressure distribution in King Safety
Tempo evaluvation
Any additional generic evaluvation terms I can come up with
Threaded input and search (pthreads/pthreads-win32)
Pondering and Analyze Support
Primitive Tree-Splitting Parallel Search
Endgame Recognizers

Information on Witz's playing performance compared to other engines may be found on the following websites:

Links to more rating information from other tournaments can be found at the Winboard Forum.