Time-off...

Hi all

I need to take some time off from Vicki for a few weeks or so. My thesis has just arrived back from the moderators and I have some minor changes to make before I hand it in on the 24th of August... then there is also a research paper that needs to be submitted before the end of this month. Then apart from that, I also have to work to pay for everything...

So, Vicki will have to wait a while...

Sorry guys :-(

Null moves

I finally got null moves to work in Vicki. I had some trouble with the capturing of the king (which caused Vicki to hang), but I eventually got it fixed. I am utterly amazed at the effect of null moves in the engine. With null moves Vicki searches (on average) 1-2 plies deeper and even more later in the game. In late-middle games, depths of 12 plies are reached! That is without any other form of pruning or transposition tables. The new version of Vicki is already playing on FICS and I am conducting tests against the older version to evaluate the improvement.

Why didn't I have this ready for the WRCC?