New Engine - Raven

[JimmyRustles]

Hi everyone,

I've created my own chess engine from scratch in C called Raven. It's not too strong but I estimate that it would be around 1300-1350 on the CCRL based on a few matches I've made it play against a few CCRL engines. It's currently rated around 1750 on blitz and bullet on Lichess.

Would it be possible to get it tested and added to the CCRL rating lists?

It's open source and I have compiled a Windows executable which should be suitable for testing.

Raven 0.30:

Windows executable: https://github.com/sgriffin53/raven/releases

Source: https://github.com/sgriffin53/raven

Lichess link: https://lichess.org/@/RavenEngine

Thanks

Edit: Updated links after renaming repo.

[Sergio Martinez]

Hello Jimmy

I have started to test your engine. If everything goes well, the results will be published in the next update.

Best regards

[JimmyRustles]

Hi Sergio,

Thanks a lot for testing my engine. How often are the CCRL updates published?

Thanks

[Sergio Martinez]

Normally we publish the results on Sundays

Good luck with your engine.

P.d.
for more information about the engine, we need your name, surname and your nationality and website if you have (I have already seen the sources and the executable in the link you have put). It's just to offer more information about the engine

Thank you.

[JimmyRustles]

Thanks Sergio. I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

My name is Steve Griffin, country is United Kingdom, I don't have a website for the project but you can use the Github links as the website and download links for it.

Thanks

[T-Poppins]

Hi Steve

I ran some preliminary tests with your engine and uncovered a serious bug. I'll open an issue on Github shortly.
On the positive side, your engine should be at least 1400 Elo on our blitz list.

Tirsa

[JimmyRustles]

Hi,

Thanks for letting me know about the bug. I'll look into it once I see the issue pop up. Also, that's great news that it's at least 1400, that's higher than I was expecting.

Thanks

[JimmyRustles]

Will you need a fixed version of the engine before you can continue testing or can you continue testing despite the bug?

[T-Poppins]

The issue is up now.

We can proceed with testing using the current version. The testers will just have to disable automatic win/loss adjudication which I brought to their attention already.

Aside from the occasional spurious -999.99 eval I haven't observed any issues with Raven during the 320-games test I ran to get an idea of its strength. The single disconnect that occurred during playing a KRK endgame from an EPD file may have been a fluke. Seems like pretty solid implementation for a new engine.

[JimmyRustles]

Hi Tirsa,

I've just fixed the bug with the bad evals and pushed it to the Github. I've also reuploaded the executable so you can download the new executable here: https://github.com/sgriffin53/raven/releases

I've tested it and the bug seems to be fixed but let me know if you still encounter the bug (though, I'm almost certain it's fixed now).

Thanks again for testing my engine, and I look forward to seeing the result.

Thanks

[JimmyRustles]

Hi again guys,

I've just made a release of Raven on Github (I'm still learning Github, didn't realise that was the right way to upload the exe).

The release is here: https://github.com/sgriffin53/raven/releases

Could you please put this as the download link for the engine?

I've also renamed my repo to raven instead of chess0.30, and I've edited all my links in this thread to have the new links. Could you please make sure the Github link and download link for Raven use the /raven/ link instead of /chess0.30/. Thanks.

Edit: Also there was a very rare illegal move bug in the engine. It only happened when the time left was less than 25ms, so it wouldn't have made a difference in strength since it'd lose those games anyway, but I've fixed that illegal move bug too. Hopefully everything should be working now.

[JimmyRustles]

I've just seen that it's been listed on 40/4.

I just wanted to say a big thanks to the testers for testing my engine and listing it on the CCRL.

I'm very happy with the rating of 1452, much higher than I was expecting.

Thanks,
Steve