Houdini 2.0c

Released November 20, 2011.

 

Corrections

•Nalimov EGTB probing would not recognize KvK end game.
•Nalimov EGTB: Houdini would exit when a corrupt table base file was encountered.
•On some Windows systems the internal timer would overflow after approx. 30 minutes.

 

Improvements and New Features

•New MultiPV_cp option to limit multi-PV analysis to moves within a range of the best move.
•New FiftyMoveDistance option to make the 50-move rule kick in earlier.
•New UCI_Elo and UCI_LimitStrength options as UCI standard-compliant alternative to Strength option.
•Houdini now exits when it detects that the communication with the GUI is broken.

 

 

Houdini 2.0b

Released October 7, 2011.

 

Corrections

•Repetition in games would have Houdini evaluate the repeating position as 0.00.
•When specifying a fixed depth search, Houdini would wait for a "stop" command when analysis finished early.
•Omitting the "uci" command at start-up would produce erratic results in the first analysis.

 

Improvements and New Features

•Nalimov EGTB support.

 

 

Houdini 2.0

Released September 1, 2011.

 

Improved Analysis support: Save Hash to File, Load Hash from File, Never Clear Hash

The complete hash table can be saved to a disk file and reloaded later for continuing the analysis.

Houdini 2 makes better use of the data in the hash table to restart instantly the analysis at the point where it was previously interrupted.

By saving the hash table in a disk file you can interrupt the analysis anytime. At a later date you can reload the hash table file in memory to continue the analysis as if no interruption had happened.

The new "Never Clear Hash" option will keep the hash data in memory even when the position changes or when starting a new game.

 

Position Learning

The "Position Learning" mode will automatically save analysis results in a learning database that will be reused in future analysis. This is a more convenient, but less powerful method of using previous analysis results than the manual Save Hash/Load Hash operations of the previous point.

 

Strength Limit feature

Houdini 2 can limit its skill level from 0 (beginner) to 100 (full strength).

The strength is limited through a combination of techniques: limiting the number of positions searched, purposely picking a non-optimal move, and ignoring table bases.

Up to what skill level can you beat Houdini?

 

Chess960 (Fischer Random Chess) Support

Houdini 2 supports Chess960 a.k.a. Fischer Random Chess games.

 

Mate Search

To speed up solving deep mates, you can fix a limit on the search depth during the mate search.

 

Houdini Pro version for high-end users with powerful hardware

For advanced servers with many cores on multiple sockets (usually with so-called NUMA architecture), a special Houdini Pro version is available. It significantly improves the scaling of Houdini up to 32 cores and makes use of up to 32 GB of hash memory.

 

Improved strength

Improved evaluation and search make Houdini 2 Standard about 25 Elo stronger than its predecessor Houdini 1.5a. On high-end hardware Houdini 2 Pro with its additional NUMA-related speed improvements is about 40 Elo stronger than Houdini 1.5ab-16.