Phalanx

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Phalanx, an open source chess engine, originally released by a Czech student Dušan Dobeš under GPL, also available as Young Talent by ChessBase running under the Fritz6 GUI. In about 2000 the project has been abandoned, but it was resurrected in 2006 by José de Paula Rodrigues. In October 2014, after fourteen years and nine months, Phalanx XXIII was released by Dušan Dobeš.

=Description= Phalanx's board is represented by a 10x12 mailbox with piece-lists. The search uses PVS with transposition table inside an iterative deepening centiply framework for fractional extensions and reductions without aspiration windows, performing state of the art null move pruning, late move reductions and futility pruning near the tips. Phalanx pioneered in tapered eval and speculatively computes both endgame and middlegame scores to balance them by total material. This prevents evaluation discontinuity when searching a position on the edge of middlegame and endgame. The static evaluation first extracts knowledge and prepares a color flipped board, and applies that knowledge in a second pass using the flipped board to do stuff for both sides with the same color independent code.

=Quotes= by Dušan Dobeš from rgcc, July 16, 1998 : Phalanx is my hobby project. It started in March 1997. It's developed under Linux and GCC, I also prepared binary distribution for Win32 with latter versions. Licensing policy is GPL (free and in sources). Interface is xboard/winboard/RoboFICS compatible. It plays on FICS as 'pikozrout', it's current blitz rating is 2380, standard 2210.

=Forum Posts=

1997 ...

 * Phalanx III - chess playing program for Linux by Dušan Dobeš, rgcc, July 08, 1997
 * Phalanx ? by Dušan Dobeš, rgcc, July 16, 1998

2000 ...

 * Phalanx is dead? by Tord Romstad, rgcc, March 27, 2002
 * Phalanx XXII - Reborn by José de Paula Rodrigues, rgcc, January 19, 2006

2010 ...

 * Phalanx source code by Carlos Pesce, CCC, February 09, 2012
 * New Phalanx code by Steven Atkinson, CCC, April 26, 2014
 * Phalanx XXIII by Dušan Dobeš, CCC, October 20, 2014
 * Phalanx XXIV by Dušan Dobeš, CCC, December 24, 2014
 * Phalanx XXV by Dušan Dobeš, CCC, May 01, 2016

=External Links=

Chess Engine

 * Phalanx Chess | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net
 * Phalanx Chess at SourceForge.net
 * phalanx from SourceForge.net
 * Phalanx in CCRL 40/40
 * Young Talents, Teil 2 by Peter Schreiner, Mai 2000, hosted by Schachclub Leinzell (German)

Misc

 * phalanx - Wiktionary
 * Phalanx disambiguation page from Wikipedia
 * Phalanx formation from Wikipedia
 * Close order formation from Wikipedia
 * Phalanx - Where Did All The Girls Come From, East Berlin 1985, YouTube Video
 * lineup: James Blood Ulmer, George Adams, Amin Ali, Calvin Weston

=References= Up one Level