Prophet

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Prophet, a Chess Engine Communication Protocol compliant open source chess engine under the GNU General Public License, written by James Swafford in C++ as a better C. As successor of Galahad, Prophet is a traditional bitmap based program. Prophet was used in experiments with TD-Leaf when James Swafford was undergraduate at East Carolina University, and testbed for parallel search algorithms as topic of its author's Masters project. In September 2017, Prophet3 was released as open source under the MIT License, using magic bitboards. Prophet 4.0, released in October 2021, comes with an entirely new codebase.

=Description=

Rotated Bitboards
Prophet2 uses rotated bitboards with 1/2 MiB lookup tables, indexed by square and 8-bit line occupancy, to determine sliding piece attacks, ignoring the possible fourfold reduction excluding the redundant outer squares. Bitmap diag_a1h8_attacks[64][256]; Bitmap diag_h1a8_attacks[64][256]; Bitmap file_attacks[64][256]; Bitmap rank_attacks[64][256];

Bitmap GenBishopMap(Position* p,int sq) { Bitmap b=0; // find index for a1->h8 diagonal int ind = (p->allpieces45 >> diag_a1h8_shift[sq]) & diag_a1h8_mask[sq]; b = diag_a1h8_attacks[sq][ind]; // find index for h1->a8 diagonal ind = (p->allpieces315 >> diag_h1a8_shift[sq]) & diag_h1a8_mask[sq]; b |= diag_h1a8_attacks[sq][ind]; return b; }

BitScan & PopCount
Similar to Amundsen, the memory bacchanal is attended by population count, bitscan forward (GetLSBFast) and reverse (GetMSBFast) with three 16-bit indexed, 64K lookup tables of double word integers, another 3/4 MiB competing for the caches : int num_bits[65536]; int lsb[65536]; int msb[65536];

/***************************************************************************** *                                                                          * * int GetLSBFast(Bitmap b)                                                  * *                                                                          * * Returns the least significant bit in a bitmap (1-64), or 0 if no bit set. * * Assumes lsb[] is initialized. Much faster than GetLSBSlow. * *                                                                          * *****************************************************************************/

int GetLSBFast(Bitmap b) { int r = lsb[(int)(b & 65535)]; if (r) return r; b >>= 16; r = lsb[(int)(b & 65535)]; if (r) return r+16; b >>= 16; r = lsb[(int)(b & 65535)]; if (r) return r+32; b >>= 16; r = lsb[(int)b]; if (r) return r+48; return 0; }

Search
Prophet's search is alpha-beta PVS with transposition table inside an iterative deepening framework with fractional plies and aspiration windows of ± 1/3 pawn value. Selectivity is due to adaptive null move pruning, futility and extended futility pruning, and fractional extensions on checks, single replies, passed pawn advances and recaptures. Beside TT and keeping a linked list of PVs on the Stack, Move ordering considers killer and history heuristic, as well as MVV-LVA and SEE for captures.

Evaluation
The evaluation in centipawn resolution determines a score based on material balance and piece-square tables, and further considers various positional features, such as development, mobility, king safety and pawn structure, and trapped pieces.

=Tournament Play= Prophet played five CCT Tournaments, from CCT7 in 2005, until CCT11 in 2009, three ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships, ACCA 2006, ACCA 2007 and ACCA 2008, and the WCRCC 2008 Second Annual ACCA World Computer Rapid Chess Championship.

=Selected Games= CCT11, round 2, Prophet - NoonianChess [Event "CCT11"] [Site "Internet Chess Club"] [Date "2009.03.21"] [Round "2"] [White "Prophet"] [Black "NoonianChess"] [Result "1-0"]

1.c4 g6 2.Nc3 Bg7 3.g3 c5 4.Bg2 Nc6 5.Nf3 d6 6.O-O Nf6 7.d4 cxd4 8.Nxd4 Bd7 9.Nc2 O-O 10.b3 a6 11.Bb2 Ng4 12.h3 Nh6 13.Rb1 Bf5 14.e4 Be6 15.Nd5 f6 16.a4 Re8 17.Qd2 Bf7 18.Bc3 g5 19.a5 Rb8 20.Nb6 Bh5 21.Kh1 e5 22.Ne3 Qe7 23.f4 gxf4 24.gxf4 Qd8 25.Ned5 Kh8 26.Bf3 Bxf3+ 27.Rxf3 f5 28.exf5 Nxf5 29.fxe5 Nh4 30.Rf7 Nxe5 31.Bxe5 Rxe5 32.Nd7 Qe8 33.Nxe5 dxe5 34.Rbf1 Qe6 35.Qe3 Ng6 36.R1f6 Qc8 37.Rd6 e4 38.Rdd7 Ne5 39.Rxg7 Qxd7 40.Rxd7 Nxd7 41.Qd4+ Kg8 42.Ne7+ Kf7 43.Qxd7 Rf8 44.Nf5+ Kf6 45.Qe7+ Kxf5 46.Qxf8+ Kg5 47.Qf1 e3 48.c5 e2 49.Qxe2 Kf4 50.Qe7 h6 51.Qxb7 h5 52.Kg2 Ke3 53.Qd5 Ke2 54.c6 Ke3 55.c7 Kf4 56.Kh1 Ke3 57.c8=Q Kf2 58.Qd4+ Ke2 59.Qxa6+ Ke1 60.Qe6+ Kf1 61.Qdf6# 1-0

=See also=
 * chess4j
 * Galahad
 * Tristram

=Publications=
 * James Swafford (2002). Optimizing Parameter Learning using Temporal Differences. AAAI-02, Student Abstracts, pdf
 * James Swafford (2008). A Survey of Parallel Search Algorithms over Alpha-Beta Search Trees using Symmetric Multiprocessor Machines. Masters Project, East Carolina University, advisor Ronnie Smith, pdf

=Forum Posts=

2005 ...

 * It's Prophet by James Swafford, CCC, February 04, 2005 » CCT7
 * Re: Speedup with bitboards on 64-bit CPUs by James Swafford, CCC, April 28, 2007
 * pthread weirdness by James Swafford, CCC, May 29, 2007
 * Prophet ACCA PanAm 2008 tournament notes by James Swafford, CCC, November 10, 2008 » ACCA 2008

2010 ...

 * prophet3 released with source code by James Swafford, CCC, September 30, 2017
 * prophet3 20180811 released by James Swafford, CCC, September 09, 2018

2020 ...

 * Prophet 4.0 and chess4j 4.0 are released by James Swafford, CCC, October 02, 2021
 * Prophet 4.1 is released by James Swafford, CCC, January 02, 2022

=External Links=

Chess Engine

 * GitHub - jswaff/prophet: Prophet chess engine
 * GitHub - jswaff/prophet3: a C based chess engine
 * Prophet Chess by James Swafford, Wayback Machine
 * Index of /chess/engines/Jim Ablett/PROPHET by Jim Ablett, hosted by Kirill Kryukov
 * James Swafford » Computer Chess

Misc

 * Prophet from Wikipedia
 * Prophet (disambiguation) from Wikipedia
 * Prophecy from Wikipedia
 * Prophecy (disambiguation) from Wikipedia
 * Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy from Wikipedia
 * Jazz is Dead - Estimated Prophet, Fox Theatre, Boulder, Colorado, April 13, 1999, YouTube Video
 * lineup: Jimmy Herring, T Lavitz, Alphonso Johnson, Billy Cobham

=References= Up one level