Uri Blass

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Uri Blass and Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, WCCC 2004

Uri Blass,
an Israeli mathematician, chess and correspondence chess player, and computer chess programmer. Uri Blass received his Ph.D. in discrete mathematics at Tel Aviv University in 2002 on the topic of covering codes under advisor Simon Litsyn . Along with Aviezri Fraenkel, he worked on combinatorial game theory, publishing on Wythoff's game and the game of Nim. In 2011, Uri Blass was awarded with the International Correspondence Chess Grand Master title by the ICCF . As active poster in Computer Chess Forums, Uri asked first questions on how to develop a chess program in the late 90s , and became an autodidact chess programmer, to release his chess engine Movei in 2002 . More recently, Uri Blass contributed to the Stockfish development .

Selected Publications

1990 ...

• Uri Blass, Aviezri Fraenkel (1990). The Sprague-Grundy Function for Wythoff's Game. Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. 75, No. 3
• Uri Blass, Simon Litsyn (1998). Several new lower bounds on the size of codes with covering radius one. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 44, No. 5
• Uri Blass, Simon Litsyn (1998). Several new lower bounds for football pool systems. Ars Combinatoria, Vol. 50, pdf
• Uri Blass, Aviezri Fraenkel, Romina Guelman (1998). How Far Can Nim in Disguise be Stretched? Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, Vol. 84, arXiv:math/9809079
• Uri Blass, Iiro Honkala, Simon Litsyn (1999). On the Size of Identifying Codes. AAECC 1999, Springer
• Uri Blass, Simon Litsyn (1999). The smallest covering code of length 8 and radius 2 has 12 words. Ars Combinatoria, Vol. 52, pdf

2000 ...

• Uri Blass, Iiro Honkala, Simon Litsyn (2000). On binary codes for identification. Journal of Combinatorial Designs, Vol. 8, No. 2
• Patric R. J. Östergård, Uri Blass (2001). On the size of optimal binary codes of length 9 and covering radius 1. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 47, No. 6
• Uri Blass, Iiro Honkala, Mark G. Karpovsky, Simon Litsyn (2001). Short Dominating Paths and Cycles in the Binary Hypercube. Annals of Combinatorics, Vol. 5, No. 10
• Uri Blass, Iiro Honkala, Simon Litsyn (2001). Bounds on identifying codes. Discrete Mathematics, Vol. 241, Nos. 1–3
• Uri Blass (2002). Bounds on Covering Codes. Ph.D. thesis, Tel Aviv University, advisor Simon Litsyn

Forum Posts

1998 ...

• some questions about computer chess programs by Uri Blass, CCC, April 01, 1998
• how to develop a chess program? by Uri Blass, CCC, April 14, 1998
• questions about singular extensions by Uri Blass, CCC, August 09, 1998 » Singular Extensions
• Can Alybadix or Gustav solve this studies by Uri Blass, CCC, December 10, 1998 » Alybadix, Gustav
• 50 move rule question by Uri Blass, CCC, April 20, 1999 » Draw

2000 ...

• Re: King, rook pawn and wrong bishop endgames by Uri Blass, CCC, October 18, 2000 » Wrong Color Bishop and Rook Pawn
• learning to tune parameters by comp-comp games by Uri Blass, CCC, December 28, 2000 » Automated Tuning

2001

• Genius2 is clearly a legal free program by Uri Blass, CCC, April 09, 2001 » Chess Genius
• BELCT 2001 discussion of the game zarkov-yace by Uri Blass, CCC, October 05, 2001 » BELCT 2001
• Who is the champion in calculating perft? by Uri Blass, CCC, November 22, 2001 » Perft

2002

• The probability to find better move is simply irrelevant for diminishing returns by Uri Blass, CCC, February 09, 2002 » Diminishing Returns
• question about opening book and learning by Uri Blass, Winboard Forum, April 26, 2002 » Book Learning
• question about book and learning by Uri Blass, CCC, April 26, 2002 » Book Learning
• my program movei is released by Uri Blass, CCC, May 12, 2002 » Movei
• Re: Did Uri write movei? (yes) by Uri Blass, CCC, June 13, 2002
• positions when deep thought blundered by Uri Blass, CCC, August 20, 2002 » Deep Thought
• what is the importance of the ping command? by Uri Blass, Winboard Forum, September 24, 2002 » CECP
• how to detect information about pawn structure based on bitboard by Uri Blass, CCC, December 17, 2002 » Pawn Pattern and Properties

2003

• a question about the definition of winning capture in Rebel(diagrams) by Uri Blass, CCC, January 05, 2003 » Captures
• some questions about chess programs and money by Uri Blass, CCC, April 07, 2003
• The key of pawn hash tables is based on what exactly? by Uri Blass, CCC, September 06, 2003 » Pawn Hash Table
• a question to Tord about detecting threats in null move by Uri Blass, CCC, October 03, 2003 » Threat Detection

2004

• Does swap of Crafty find bad promotions by Uri Blass, CCC, January 11, 2004 » SEE - Swap, Crafty
• movei book progress report by Uri Blass, CCC, May 28, 2004
• I think that woodpusher is the surprise of the tournament by Uri Blass, CCC, July 13, 2004 » Woodpusher, WCCC 2004
• missing a win or fortress? by Uri Blass, CCC, July 21, 2004 » Fortress
• chessbase is selling free engines by Uri Blass, CCC, July 25, 2004 » Young Talents
• question about fixing the time management of movei by Uri Blass, CCC, July 25, 2004 » Time Management, Movei

2005 ...

• Movei report in CCT7:first day by Uri Blass, CCC, February 19, 2005 » CCT7
• I need testers for testing movei personalities in test suites by Uri Blass, CCC, November 03, 2005
• Rybka(1 plies)-Movei(3 plies) 10-10 in the nunn match by Uri Blass, CCC, December 06, 2005 » Rybka

2006

• Movei-Gerbil in rhe endgame suite 20.5-9.5 and could be 21.5-8.5 by Uri Blass, CCC, January 01, 2006 » Gerbil
• LMR question by Uri Blass, Winboard Programming Forum, July 13, 2006 » LMR
• supporting FRC questions by Uri Blass, Winboard Forum, September 13, 2006 » Chess960

2007

• is there a test suite for avoiding opening traps by Uri Blass, CCC, April 06, 2007
• About pawn hash tables by Uri Blass, CCC, May 10, 2007 » Pawn Hash Table
• a beat b,b beat c,c beat a question by Uri Blass, CCC, May 16, 2007 » Engine Testing, Playing Strength
• question about symmertic evaluation by Uri Blass, CCC, May 23, 2007 » Evaluation
• fail high handling with tranposition tables by Uri Blass, CCC, August 01, 2007 » Transposition Table
• Rybka's knowledge by Uri Blass, CCC, August 23, 2007 » Rybka
• discovered check definition by Uri Blass, CCC, September 12, 2007 » Discovered Check
• About strelka1.8 sources by Uri Blass, CCC, October 01, 2007 » Strelka
• About the code of strelka by Uri Blass, CCC, October 10, 2007
• BitBoard representations of the board by Uri Blass, CCC, October 14, » 2007 Bitboards
• Fruit2.3.1 stalemate bug by Uri Blass, CCC, October 21, 2007 » Fruit, Stalemate

2008

• Strelka cannot see mate in 1 by Uri Blass, CCC, March 06, 2008 » Strelka
• programming gui questions by Uri Blass, CCC, May 20, 2008  » GUI
• Fritz10 in correspondence chess question by Uri Blass, CCC, July 24, 2008
• Rybka in the nolot suite by Uri Blass, CCC, August 21, 2008 » Rybka, The Nolot Suite

2009

• stockfish question by Uri Blass, CCC, March 06, 2009
• A question about the best hardware for chess today by Uri Blass, CCC, July 30, 2009
• what is the speed difference between humans and computers by Uri Blass, CCC, November 06, 2009
• morality and legality of dowloading robbolito by Uri Blass, CCC, November 24, 2009 » RobboLito
• 7 piece tablebase question by Uri Blass, CCC, December 16, 2009
• Did people try replacing LMR by pruning by Uri Blass, CCC, December 31, 2009  » LMR

2010 ...

• stockfish's unreliable evaluation by Uri Blass, CCC, June 03, 2010 » Stockfish
• mobility evaluation of stockfish by Uri Blass, CCC, October 09, 2010 » Mobility
• nolot number 3 again by Uri Blass, CCC, December 18, 2010 » The Nolot Suite
• effective branching factor of chess programs by Uri Blass, CCC, December 21, 2010 » Branching Factor

2011

• a hard test position for computers that I composed by Uri Blass, CCC, January 14, 2011
• human computers and the time factor by Uri Blass, CCC, March 18, 2011
• Finding equivalent times for different engines by Uri Blass, CCC, May 19, 2011

2012

• estimating the number of possible stalemates in perft(n) by Uri Blass, CCC, February 18, 2012 » Perft, Stalemate
• optimal aspiration window for stockfish question by Uri Blass, CCC, March 12, 2012 » Aspiration Windows, Stockfish
• houdini3 search and mate scores by Uri Blass, CCC, October 29, 2012 » Houdini

2013

• important ideas in chess programming by Uri Blass, CCC, February 08, 2013
• evaluating tablebases draws by Uri Blass, CCC, November 23, 2013 » Endgame Tablebases, Draw Evaluation

2014

• Movei, The Baron, and TSCP by Uri Blass, CCC, January 23, 2014 » Movei, The Baron, TSCP
• maximal ply that programs need today by Uri Blass, CCC, January 26, 2014 » Ply
• fixing the null move search "bug" by Uri Blass, CCC, February 01, 2014 » Null Move Pruning, Stockfish
• selective depth definition by Uri Blass, CCC, February 13, 2014 » Stockfish

2015 ...

• lazy_smp] by Uri Blass, Fishcooking, October 18, 2015 » Stockfish, Lazy SMP
• Using more than 1 thread in C beginner question by Uri Blass, CCC, January 11, 2016 » C, Thread
• Adding a random small number to the evaluation function by Uri Blass, CCC, September 03, 2016 » Search with Random Leaf Values
• comparing between search or evaluation by Uri Blass, CCC, October 09, 2017 » Evaluation, Search

2018

• replace the evaluation by playing against yourself by Uri Blass, CCC, January 25, 2018 » Evaluation, Fortress
• Wrong use of SPRT by Uri Blass, FishCooking, February 09, 2018 » Contempt Factor, SPRT
• Is there a program to build opening books based on engines? by Uri Blass, CCC, February 23, 2018 » Opening Book
• about using winboard by Uri Blass, CCC, February 25, 2018 » WinBoard
• What does LCzero learn? by Uri Blass, CCC, April 05, 2018 » Leela Chess Zero
• analysis of 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f6 by Uri Blass, CCC, June 22, 2018
• mate test positions by Uri Blass, CCC, July 29, 2018 » Checkmate, Test-Positions
• A mate suite to test multi-pv and new engines by Uri Blass, CCC, August 06, 2018
• stockfish increasing returns with low nodes by Uri Blass, CCC, August 31, 2018
• evaluation and scaling by Uri Blass, CCC, September 19, 2018 » Fortress
• Test the combinational vision of your engine by Uri Blass, CCC, October 15, 2018 » Combination
• abstract fairy pieces by Uri Blass, CCC, October 29, 2018
• rewrite generating a new chess project by Uri Blass, CCC, November 02, 2018
• Are opening principles correct? by Uri Blass, CCC, December 09, 2018
• translating chess material and author's right by Uri Blass, CCC, December 29, 2018

2019

• a test position that I composed by Uri Blass, CCC, January 24, 2019
• changing the 50 move rule to 5 move rule by Uri Blass, CCC, January 28, 2019 » Fifty-move Rule
• can stockfish with book beat leela without book? by Uri Blass, CCC, March 06, 2019 » Stockfish, Leela Chess Zero
• evaluation that usually go up when you are winning by Uri Blass, CCC, June 24, 2019
• Are there tools to create opening books by Uri Blass, CCC, June 28, 2019

2020 ...

• what is the rating of engines when you do not count draws? by Uri Blass, CCC, June 23, 2021 » Match Statistics, Playing Strength

External Links

• Uri Blass' ICGA Tournaments
• Uri Blass from Netanya Chess Club
• Blass, Uri FIDE Chess Profile
• ICCF Player Details - Uri Blass

References

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