New Engine: Camel

[bdmendes]

Hello there! My name is Bruno Mendes, and I am a (soon-to-be) software engineer from Porto, Portugal. I have been developing Camel as a hobby project for over a year now (with some hiccups), starting from a very basic beginner mailbox approach. I have gotten it to a point where I would like it to compete against other engines.

Camel's code is open-source on GitHub (https://github.com/bdmendes/camel) and can be built from sources per the documentation. You can find the latest version (v1.3.1) binaries for Linux and Windows here: https://github.com/bdmendes/camel/releases/tag/v1.3.1

Camel has been playing on Lichess sporadically for some months now (https://lichess.org/@/camel_bot) and has a Elo of around 2100 playing against other bots, so I would expect Camel to be around that strength (although I understand that the player base is different).

Thank you in advance for considering including Camel for testing, and please let me know if something is missing or if there is any other information I should provide.

[Gabor Szots]

Hello Bruno,

I was a bit surprised at your post because Camel is already on our list.

Gabor

[bdmendes]

Oh, that's great! Since I never posted here before I assumed it would not be known. I guess that you are investigators yourselves

Let me know if I can adjust anything to further help with future testing, or if there's anything else wrong.

I'll use this thread for relevant future updates, perhaps when I finish my MSc and get the proper time for that

[bdmendes]

Dear all,

Just before I get to really work on my thesis , I've released version 1.4.0 of my engine, which is now multi-threaded . I also made the hash table entries smaller, improving performance on all platforms, even in (the default) single-threaded mode. As usual, you can find the sources, binaries and compilation instructions on GitHub: https://github.com/bdmendes/camel/releases/tag/v1.4.0

I expect it to be around 100 Elo points stronger than version 1.2.0, the last tested here. It would mean a lot to me to see this new version included here

Please let me know if you find any issues.

Bruno

[Gabor Szots]

I have just announced 1.4.0 at CCC.

[bdmendes]

Thank you, Gabor.

[bdmendes]

Dear all,

Version 1.5.0 is now live on GitHub: https://github.com/bdmendes/camel/releases/tag/v1.5.0. As usual, source code and binaries for Windows and Linux are available.

This release introduces SEE and some important bug fixes, resulting in an 80-point ELO increase in self-play. It will be interesting to see how it performs on the list!

Greetings,

Bruno