25,161
edits
Changes
no edit summary
'''Ferret''' ,<br/>
a chess engine by [[Bruce Moreland]]. Ferret won the Amateur World Microcomputer Chess Champion Title in [[WMCCC 1995|Paderborn 1995]] and was two times winner of the World Microcomputer Speed-Chess Champion, in [[WMCCC 1996|Jakarta 1996]] and [[WMCCC 1997|Paris 1997]]. Ferret became runner up at the [[WMCCC 1996|14th World Microcomputer Chess Championship]], Jakarta 1996 without losing a game. At the [[WCCC 1999|9th World Computer Chess Championship]], Paderborn 1999, Ferret was unlucky in not winning a dramatical playoff against [[Shredder]].
=Photos & Games=
Ferret is a "normal" chess program. By that I mean that it uses alpha-beta full-width search, a quiescent search, a transposition hash table, an evaluation function that is called at the tips, and so forth. It uses [[Null Move Pruning|null-move forward pruning]], and for that I am indebted to [[Chrilly Donninger]], who did not invent this technique, but he made it accessible to the amateur community via an [[ICCA]] Journal article (Vol. 16 #3, September 1993).
The program uses numerous common [[Extensions|extensions]] such as [[Check Extensions|check extension]], [[Recapture Extensions|recapture extension]], and [[One Reply Extensions|single-response]] to check. It also uses a sort of [[Singular Extensions|singular-extension]] that is loosely based upon the extension of this name that appears in [[Deep Thought]] and presumably [[Deep Blue]]. The [[Evaluation Function|evaluation function]] is designed to catch common features without being slow, but it's slow enough that the program isn't particularly fast.
The program uses [[Endgame Tablebases|endgame databases]] of my own design and construction, but which aren't any better than the [[Eugene Nalimov|Nalimov]], [[Steven Edwards|Edwards]], or [[Ken Thompson|Thompson]] endgame databases. I wrote my own because I didn't want to take advantage of code written by others, since I felt that the program would be less mine if I did so. The program has a series of special case low-material evaluation functions that it uses when endgame databases are not present, and in some cases when they are. The program is written 100% in [[C]], and is portable to any platform that runs any Windows-based operating system, including multiprocessor machines.
==1995==
Description given in '''1995''' from the [[ICCA]] site <ref>[https://www.game-ai-forum.org/icga-tournaments/program.php?id=35 Ferret's ICGA Tournaments]</ref> :
Ferret is a "normal" [[Brute-Force|brute-force]] program that runs under [[Windows|Windows NT]]. Techniques and tools used by the program include [[Alpha-Beta|alpha-beta pruning]], selective search [[Extensions|search extensions]], [[Quiescence Search|quiescence search]] limited by a [[Static Exchange Evaluation|static exchange evaluator]], [[Null Move Pruning|null-move forward pruning]], a 50,000-positions [[Opening Book|opening book]], several [[Hash Table|hash tables]] and a few simple endgame databases. The program consists of about 20,000 lines of [[C]] code and has been compiled using [[Microsoft]] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_C%2B%2B Visual C++] 2.0. Ferret searches approximately 18,000-32,000 [[Nodes per Second|nodes per second]] on a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium Pentium] 66. It was written during off-hours over a period of about 4 years, for fun. Ferret finished fifth in [[Don Beal|Don Beal's]] [[UPCCC 1994|uniform platform tournament ]] last September. It has also played several hundred games of blitz chess on the [[Chess Server|Internet Chess Server]], where it has been shown to be competitive among strong human players and various commercial programs. Ferret is copyrighted but its author is not particularly secretive about the program as he feels indebted to the many people who have answered his own questions.
==1997==
Description given in '''1997''' from the [[ICCA]] site:
Ferret is a normal chess program. It uses [[Null Move Pruning|null-move forward pruning]] and other standard techniques. It is a leaf-node evaluator, and searches 80- 350K [[Nodes per secondSecond|nps]] (120K typical middlegame) on a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_Pro Pentium Pro] 200 mhz machine.
=GNU Chess?=
=See also=
* [[Gerbil]]
* [[Table-driven Move Generation#Ferret|Table-driven Move Generation]] in [[Ferret]]
* [[Table-driven Move Generation#GNUChess|Table-driven Move Generation]] in [[GNU Chess]]
<references />
'''[[Engines|Up one Level]]'''
[[Category:EngineDEC Alpha]][[Category:SPARC]][[Category:SPARCstation]][[Category:X86]][[Category:PC]][[Category:Windows]]
[[Category:Mammal]]
