Introduction

Octochess is a free open source chess engine distributed under the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Octochess has been created by Tim Kosse.

Features:

• Cross-platform
• CECP protocol, works well with XBoard/WinBoard, including analysis mode.
• UCI protocol
• Partially Multi-threaded calculation
• Self-generated opening book
• Tweakable evaluation
• Bitboard representation with magic multiplication
• Principal Variation Search
• Aspiration Windows
• Lockless transposition hash table
• Null-move pruning
• Killer move heuristic
• Internal iterative deepening
• Static Exchange Evaluation
• Late Move Reductions
• Futility pruning
• Razoring

Requirements:

• 64bit x86 CPU, ideally with POPCNT instruction such as Intel Core i7
• GCC 4.7 or higher to compile under Linux
• Visual Studio 2012 or higher to compile under Windows
• By default a third of your physical RAM

Getting Octochess

Binaries

Octochess Revision r4984 (Windows and Linux)

Octochess Revision r4741 (Windows and Linux)

Octochess Revision r4690 (Windows and Linux)

Octochess Revision r4638 (Windows and Linux)

Octochess Revision r4529 (Windows and Linux)

Octochess Revision r4452 (Windows only)

Source code

You can check out the source of Octochess from this subversion repository:

https://svn.filezilla-project.org/svn/chess/

Thanks

I've read countless articles, papers, websites and forum posts and would like to thank everyone for sharing their knowledge about chess engine programming. In particular however I would like to thank the following people:

• Colin Frayn for his website on Computer Chess Programming Theory as starting point for my research and implementation.
• Robert Hyatt for his paper on lockless transposition tables and his insight posted on the TalkChess.com forums.
• The contributers to the Chess Programming Wiki.
• Fritz Reul for his New Architectures in Computer Chess thesis.
• Mikael Kilpeläinen for playing many man vs. machine matches against "The Monster".

Contact

Please send an email to tim.kosse@filezilla-project.org

Links

FileZilla Project Another open source project lead by Tim Kosse.

XBoard and WinBoard homepage A free and open source user interface for chess engines.

Chess Programming WIKI Invaluable resource for all wanting to create a chess engine.

TalkChess.com Computer Chess Discussion Forum.