Gaviota

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Gaviota, a Chess Engine Communication Protocol and UCI compatible chess engine written by FM Miguel A. Ballicora in the C programming language. When It was released in 2001, it was the first Argentinian engine available. Gaviota supports its own endgame tablebases, book, and can use several processors (SMP). It has the ability to learn by remembering book lines and positions that were not good. Gaviota avoids them in following games. There are versions for Linux, Android, Windows, and Mac OS (0.86). The Gaviota team is completed by tester Adam Hair.

=Features= based on Gaviota's change log until v1.0 and Forum Posts

Board Representation

 * Bitboards
 * BitScan with De Bruijn Multiplication
 * Fill Algorithm for Sliding Piece Attacks

Search

 * Parallel Search
 * Iterative Deepening
 * Aspiration Windows
 * Fractional Plies
 * Principal Variation Search
 * Transposition Table (4 Buckets)
 * Killer Heuristic
 * History Heuristic
 * Countermove Heuristic
 * Static Exchange Evaluation
 * Null Move Pruning
 * Late Move Reductions
 * Futility Pruning
 * Extended Futility Pruning
 * Razoring
 * Leaf Forward Pruning

Evaluation

 * Pawn Hash Table
 * Evaluation Hash Table
 * Piece-Square Tables
 * Tapered Eval
 * King Safety
 * Outposts
 * Mobility
 * Pawn Mobility
 * Trapped Rook


 * Automated Tuning

Misc

 * Book Learning
 * Gaviota Tablebases

=Etymology= Miguel A. Ballicora on the name of his program : Gaviota means "seagull", from the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The spirit of the engine reflects the free spirit of the fictional bird, of flying for fun and excitement, not for food. In Spanish, the book was translated to Juan Salvador Gaviota. In addition, my wife's nickname is Gaby, so it has double meaning.

=Tournament Play= Gaviota played various ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships, CCT Tournaments and ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championships, further the IGWT 2013 and multiple TCEC seasons.

=Selected Games= WCRCC 2013, EXchess - Gaviota [Event "WCRCC 2013"] [Site "Internet Chess Club"] [Date "2013.07.20"] [Round "-"] [White "EXchess"] [Black "Gaviota"] [Result "0-1"]

1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.g3 c6 4.c4 Bf5 5.Nbd2 e6 6.Bg2 Be7 7.O-O O-O 8.b3 h5 9.Ng5 Nbd7 10.e4 dxe4 11.Ndxe4 Nxe4 12.Nxe4 Nf6 13.Nxf6+ Bxf6 14.Be3 h4 15.g4 Bh7 16.Qd2 Qd7 17.g5 Be7 18.Qe2 Qd8 19.f4 Bf5 20.d5 exd5 21.cxd5 h3 22.Bf3 c5 23.Qb5 Bd6 24.Rae1 Qc7 25.Qc4 Qa5 26.a4 a6 27.Rec1 Rac8 28.Qc3 Qc7 29.Qd2 Rfe8 30.Be2 Qe7 31.Kf2 Bc7 32.Bc4 Ba5 33.Qe2 Qd7 34.Qf3 Bb4 35.d6 b5 36.Bd5 c4 37.Kg3 cxb3 38.Rxc8 Rxc8 39.axb5 Rc2 40.Rg1 axb5 41.Bxb3 Be1+ 42.Rxe1 Rg2+ 43.Qxg2 hxg2 44.Bf2 Qxd6 45.Kxg2 Qxf4 46.Re8+ Kh7 47.g6+ Kxg6 48.Re3 b4 49.Kg1 Be6 50.Bc2+ Kh6 51.Kg2 Qg4+ 52.Bg3 Bd5+ 53.Kf2 f5 54.Ke1 b3 55.Bxb3 Qb4+ 56.Kf2 Bxb3 57.Be5 f4 58.Rh3+ Kg6 59.Rxb3 Qxb3 60.Bxf4 Kf5 61.Bc1 Ke4 62.Bg5 Qf3+ 63.Kg1 Qe2 64.Be3 Kxe3 65.h3 Kf3 66.h4 Qg2# 0-1

=Forum Posts=

2000 ...

 * Hash table efficiency by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, December 05, 2000 » Transposition Table, Search Statistics
 * New Winboard Engine by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, January 20, 2001
 * Gaviota should work everywhere now by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, January 24, 2001
 * Gaviota - FM Miguel A. Ballicora - live at ICC in 1 hour by Peter Berger, CCC, March 24, 2002
 * Great article for people who wants to write a chess engine by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, April 03, 2002
 * Gaviota 0.33 released (for Linux fans too) by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, March 03, 2003
 * Engine Gaviota + WB2UCI in Fritz7 don,t Work pondering by Luis Andraschnik, Winboard Forum, August 15, 2003 » Wb2UCI

2005 ...

 * Insanity... or Tal style? by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, April 01, 2009
 * Re: Insanity... or Tal style? by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, April 02, 2009 » Automated Tuning


 * A New Gaviota Release by Miguel A. Ballicora, Winboard Forum, October 21, 2009
 * Yet another bitboard attack generator by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, October 28, 2009
 * Gaviota EGTBs, interface proposal for programmers by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, December 13, 2009

2010 ...

 * Test tournament starts: Gaviota, Daydreamer, Greko, Atak by Harun Taner, CCC, January 10, 2010 » Gaviota, Daydreamer, GreKo, Atak
 * Gaviota tablebases, Probing Code Release (Finally) by Miguel A. Ballicora, Winboard Forum, February 10, 2010 » Gaviota Tablebases
 * Gaviota and SMP by Olivier Deville, Winboard Forum, May 23, 2010
 * WCRCC 2010 - Gaviota games by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, July 17, 2010 » WCRCC 2010
 * Gaviota tablebases, probing code v4 (UPDATE) by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, March 11, 2011
 * Re: Programmers: what's the story behind the name of your engine by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, June 20, 2011
 * New Gaviota 0.86 (Linux, Android, Windows, and now Mac!) by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, January 23, 2013
 * Insane move by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, July 20, 2013 » WCRCC 2013
 * Gaviota v1.0 (Release) by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, March 08, 2014
 * Gaviota 1.0 for Mac OS X (Release) by Miguel A. Ballicora, CCC, April 05, 2014

=External Links=

Chess Engine

 * Gaviota Home
 * Endgame Tablebases - gaviota chess engine
 * Compression Schemes for Gaviota Tablebases


 * Gaviota Chess Program (old site)
 * Interview with Miguel Ballicora by Michael Diosi, Free chess graphical user interface (GUI) Arena for chess engines, December 2010
 * Interview with Miguel Ballicora | Chessdom, February 23, 2013
 * Gaviota in CCRL 40/40
 * The chess games of Gaviota from chessgames.com

Misc

 * Gaviota from Wikipedia
 * Gaviota (desambiguación) - Wikipedia.es (Spanish)
 * Laridae - Wikipedia.es (Spanish) Gull
 * Gaviota (galardón) - Wikipedia.es (Spanish) award of the Viña del Mar International Song Festival


 * Gaviota, California from Wikipedia
 * Gaviota State Park from Wikipedia
 * Gaviota Peak from Wikipedia
 * Gaviota Tunnel from Wikipedia
 * Isla de las Gaviotas, Montevideo - Wikipedia
 * Isla de las Gaviotas (Argentina) - Wikipedia.es (Spanish)
 * Clare Fischer - Gaviota, YouTube Video

=References= Up one Level