Monsoon

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Monsoon, a chess engine by Scott Gasch, written in C, and compliant to the Chess Engine Communication Protocol. Monsoon, whose development started in 2000, and its multithreaded successor Typhoon are well described on Scott's Monsoon/Typhoon homepage.

=Description= Monsoon and Typhoon represent the board as 0x88 array, where the difference of two square coordinates has unique direction and distance relationship, extensively using vector delta tables for in check detection, move generation, X-ray attack detection, PGN file parsing for book creation, static exchange evaluation, and position evaluation. It performs a principal variation search with nullmove pruning, various extensions and transposition table. For evaluation purpose, Monsoon keeps track of piece-square and material balance incrementally. Utilizing a pawn hash table with some pawn bitboards, it considers the pawn structure along with multiple features for king and pieces, such as king safety and mobility to name a few. Monsoon and Typhoon support Nalimov Tablebases and apply various simple interior node recognizers for wrong color bishop endgames and trivially won KPK games. These recognizer are based on Thorsten Greiner's program Amy.

=Tournament Play= Monsoon played the CCT3, CCT4 and CCT5 online tournaments with a significant upward trend.

=Selected Games=

Warp
CCT4, round 7, Warp - Monsoon [Event "CCT4"] [Site "Internet Chess Club"] [Date "2002.01.26"] [Round "7"] [White "Warp"] [Black "Monsoon"] [Result "0-1"]

1.e4 c5 2.c3 Nf6 3.e5 Nd5 4.d4 cxd4 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.Bc4 Nb6 7.Bb3 d5 8.cxd4 Bg4 9.Be3 e6 10.h3 Bh5 11.O-O Bb4 12.a3 Ba5 13.Nc3 Bxc3 14.bxc3 O-O 15.Bc2 Nc4 16.Qe2 f5 17.Bd3 f4 18.Bc1 Kh8 19.Bxc4 dxc4 20.Qxc4 Bxf3 21.gxf3 Rc8 22.Qxe6 Nxd4 23.cxd4 Rc6 24.Qg4 Qxd4 25.Rb1 Rg6 26.Rxb7 Qd5 27.Rb4 Qxf3 28.Qxg6 hxg6 29.e6 Qxh3 30.Bxf4 Qg4+ 31.Bg3 Qxe6 32.Rc1 Rd8 33.Rc5 Rd1+ 34.Kg2 g5 35.Rb8+ Kh7 36.Rb4 Ra1 37.Be5 Rxa3 38.Bc3 Ra2 39.Bb2 a5 40.Rbb5 Qg4+ 41.Kf1 a4 42.Rc7 Qe4 43.Rxg7+ Kh6 44.Rb6+ Kh5 45.Ra7 Qh1+ 46.Ke2 Qb1 47.Ke3 Rxb2 48.Rxb2 Qxb2 49.Kd3 a3 50.Kc4 Qxf2 51.Rxa3 g4 52.Ra5+ Kg6 53.Ra6+ Kf7 54.Ra3 g3 55.Rxg3 Qxg3 56.Kd4 Ke6 57.Kc4 Qe3 58.Kb4 Kd5 59.Ka5 Qb3 60.Ka6 Kc6 61.Ka7 Qb7# 0-1

HIARCS
CCT4, round 8, HIARCS - Monsoon [Event "CCT4"] [Site "Internet Chess Club"] [Date "2002.01.26"] [Round "8"] [White "HIARCS 8"] [Black "Monsoon"] [Result "0-1"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Nbd7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.O-O-O b5 10.e5 Bb7 11.Qh3 dxe5 12.Nxe6 fxe6 13.Qxe6+ Be7 14. Bxb5 axb5 15.Nxb5 Qb6 16.Nd6+ Kd8 17.Nxb7+ Qxb7 18.fxe5 Ra6 19.Rxd7+ Nxd7 20.Qxe7+ Kc8 21.Qxg7 Re8 22.Qf7 Rf8 23.Qc4+ Qc6 24.Qxc6+ Rxc6 25.Bh4 Nxe5 26.Bg3 Nd3+ 27.Kb1 Nf4 28.Rf1 Rcf6 29.c4 Ne2 30.Rxf6 Rxf6 31.Be5 Rf5 32.Bd6 Kd7 33.c5 Nd4 34.a4 Nb3 35.Ka2 Nxc5 36.Bxc5 Rxc5 37.Kb3 Rf5 38.h4 Re5 39.Ka3 Re3+ 40.b3 Kc6 41.g4 Re4 42.g5 0-1

=See also=
 * Typhoon

=Forum Posts=
 * CCT4: monsoon vs. cyberpagno 0-1 lessons by Scott Gasch, CCC, January 19, 2002 » CyberPagno
 * Re: quarkx v monsoon-ccct4 by Scott Gasch, CCC, January 20, 2002 » Quark
 * monsoon's losses in CCT5 by Scott Gasch, CCC, January 19, 2003

=External Links=

Chess Engine

 * Monsoon/Typhoon Homepage

Misc

 * Monsoon from Wikipedia
 * Gábor Juhász with Palle Mikkelborg - Monsoon (2004), YouTube Video
 * lineup: Jószef Horváth Barcza, Elemér Balázs,  Gábor Juhász, Helen Davies, András Dés, Palle Mikkelborg, Zoltán Lantos

=References= Up one level