Fischerle

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Fischerle, a Java-based chess engine that has been developed by Roland Stuckardt. Fischerle implements the UCI protocol. It is recommended to employ it from within the Arena environment. Additionally, Fischerle has an own GUI providing supplementary configuration and testing features; in principle, it can thus be used independently of UCI based chess GUIs. Fischerle is available for download at its author's web pages.

=Technology= Fischerle’s representation of chess positions is based on the rotated bitboard model. Fischerle employs some well-known techniques of enhanced alpha-beta minimax search:
 * NegaScout algorithm
 * Iterative deepening (ID) and IID
 * Aspiration windows
 * History heuristic
 * Killer heuristic
 * Hash tables
 * Transposition table
 * Evaluation cache


 * Quiescence search
 * Search extensions:
 * Promotions
 * 7th rank Passed pawn extensions
 * Check evasions only by a singular / a few moves
 * Winning recaptures
 * Singular extensions (restricted implementation that doesn't apply at Cut nodes and that considers only transposition table moves as singularity candidates the value of which is marked there as exact or lower bound)
 * extension by several plies at the very moment a pawn endgame is reached


 * Tactically painless reductions according to the enhanced model suggested by Ernst A. Heinz
 * Adaptive Null Move Pruning
 * Extended Futility Pruning
 * Limited Razoring


 * Late Move Reductions
 * Interior node recognition similar to Heinz’s proposal
 * Dedicated scoring functions for some particular endgame types

The static evaluation parameters of Fischerle are amenable to external fine tuning based on a concept of so-called efb (evaluation factor block) files, thus enabling the user to influence, within certain bounds, Fischerle’s playing style (e. g. to prefer closed positions, etc.). Fischerle comes with its own, small opening book, covering about 220K positions and some 540K moves. Fischerle supports pondering via its UCI interface.

=Latest Version= Fischerle 0.9.80 SE - a slightly more aggressive forward pruning scheme is now applied; quiescence search has been mildly refined (adding, in particular, delta pruning); the piece value assigned to bishops and the bishop pair bonus have been slightly reduced; king safety ealuation has been refined; the mate approaching scheme has been enhanced.

=Etymology=

"Ein Mensch, was ka Schach spielt, ist ka Mensch"

Auto-da-Fé
Fischerle is named after a famous character of Elias Canetti’s novel „Die Blendung“ („Auto-da-Fé“), which plays in Vienna around protagonist Peter Kien, a middle-aged philologist and Sinologist: Siegfried Fischerle , a Jewish hunchbacked dwarf and pander, is a chess addict whose dream is it to go to America to challenge chess champion José Raúl Capablanca in order to get rich and famous. Canetti wrote his novel in the years 1930/31, coincidentally more than one decade before Nazi German Oberfeldwebel Siegfried Fischer was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, Jewish artist and poet Peter Kien died in Auschwitz concentration camp, and more than two decades before chess genius Bobby Fischer entered the international chess scene.

Fischers Fritz
The German tongue-twister "Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische. Frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz." (Fisher's Fritz fishes fresh fish, fresh fish are fished by fisher's Fritz) is not related to Fritz Fischer but may be to Fischerle's famous brother Fritz?

Publications

 * Elias Canetti (1936). Die Blendung. Wien 1936, Editio princeps (German)
 * Elias Canetti (1946). Auto-da-Fe. Translated by Veronica Wedgwood
 * Peter Jansen (1980). Die Komik des Sprechens. Zur sprachlich-ästhetischen Erfahrung des Komischen am Beispiel von Canettis Roman "Die Blendung". in Sprache im technischen Zeitalter, 76 (German)
 * Nicola Riedner (1994). Canettis Fischerle: eine Figur zwschischen Masse, Macht und Blendung. Königshausen und Neumann (German)
 * Harriet Murphy (1996). Canetti and Nietzsche: Theories of Humor in Die Blendung. State University of New York Press
 * Ritchie Robertson (1999). The 'Jewish Question' in German Literature 1749 - 1939 Emancipation and Discontents. Oxford University Press
 * William Collins Donahue (2001). The End of Modernism : Elias Canetti's Auto-da-fâe. University of North Carolina Press
 * Marcus Puknatis (2002,2007). Elias Canettis 'Die Blendung' - Typische Österreichische Nationalliteratur? GRIN Verlag (German)
 * Yun Chen (2003). Canetti und die chinesische Kultur. Dissertation, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (German)
 * Hidas Ildikó (2008). Elias Canettis Roman Die Blendung im Schnittpunkt zeitgenössischer Diskurse. Ph.D. thesis, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Piliscsaba, pdf (German)

=See also=
 * Bobby
 * Capablanca Edition
 * Chess Fever (Shakhmatnaya goryachka)

=Forum Posts=

2014

 * Nice move by Fischerle (Division 7 engine in my Amateurs) by Graham Banks, CCC, January 11, 2014
 * A good 64-bit Java chess engine unknown here by Ruxy Sylwyka, CCC, February 12, 2014
 * No GUI problems with Fischerle by Norbert Raimund Leisner, CCC, February 18, 2014
 * Re: 32-bit and 64-bit java engines by Roland Stuckardt, CCC, February 24, 2014
 * New Fischerle Versions (64 and 32 Bit) by Roland Stuckardt, CCC, May 15, 2014
 * New Fischerle Version: 0.9.60 by Roland Stuckardt, CCC, October 07, 2014

2015 ...

 * New Fischerle Version: 0.9.65 by Roland Stuckardt, CCC, September 17, 2015
 * New Fischerle Version: 0.9.70 SE by Roland Stuckardt, CCC, March 25, 2016
 * New Fischerle Version: 0.9.80 SE by Roland Stuckardt, CCC, March 24, 2017

=External Links=

Chess Engine

 * Schachengine Fischerle (German)
 * Schachengine Fischerle - Techniken im Überblick
 * Schachengine Fischerle - Benutzeroberfläche


 * Fischerle in CCRL 40/40

Misc

 * Fischer - Wiktionary
 * Fischer from Wikipedia
 * Bobby Fischer from Wikipedia


 * Auto-da-Fé from Wikipedia
 * Fisherman from Wikipedia
 * Fish from Wikipedia
 * Fish anatomy from Wikipedia
 * Fischerle - The Love Bruises, YouTube Video

=References= Up one level