As stockfish nets and search evolve, the existing time control appears
to give too little time at STC, roughly correct at LTC, and too little
at VLTC+.
This change adds an adjustment to the optExtra calculation. This
adjustment is easy to retune and refine, so it should be easier to keep
up-to-date than the more complex calculations used for optConstant and
optScale.
Passed STC 10+0.1:
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.00>
Total: 169568 W: 43803 L: 43295 D: 82470
Ptnml(0-2): 485, 19679, 44055, 19973, 592
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/66531865a86388d5e27da9fa
Yellow LTC 60+0.6:
LLR: -2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,2.50>
Total: 209970 W: 53087 L: 52914 D: 103969
Ptnml(0-2): 91, 19652, 65314, 19849, 79
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/6653e38ba86388d5e27daaa0
Passed VLTC 180+1.8 :
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,2.50>
Total: 85618 W: 21735 L: 21342 D: 42541
Ptnml(0-2): 15, 8267, 25848, 8668, 11
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/6655131da86388d5e27db95f
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/5297
Bench: 1212167
Stockfish appears to take too much time on the first move of a game and
then not enough on moves 2,3,4... Probably caused by most of the factors
that increase time usually applying on the first move.
Attempts to give more time to the subsequent moves have not worked so
far, but this change to simply reduce first move time by 5% worked.
STC 10+0.1 :
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) <0.00,2.00>
Total: 78496 W: 20516 L: 20135 D: 37845
Ptnml(0-2): 340, 8859, 20456, 9266, 327
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/663d47bf507ebe1c0e9200ba
LTC 60+0.6 :
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) <0.50,2.50>
Total: 94872 W: 24179 L: 23751 D: 46942
Ptnml(0-2): 61, 9743, 27405, 10161, 66
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/663e779cbb28828150dd9089
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/5235
Bench: 1876282
1. The current time management system utilizes limits.inc and
limits.time, which can represent either milliseconds or node count,
depending on whether the nodestime option is active. There have been
several modifications which brought Elo gain for typical uses (i.e.
real-time matches), however some of these changes overlooked such
distinction. This patch adjusts constants and multiplication/division to
more accurately simulate real TC conditions when nodestime is used.
2. The advance_nodes_time function has a bug that can extend the time
limit when availableNodes reaches exact zero. This patch fixes the bug
by initializing the variable to -1 and make sure it does not go below
zero.
3. elapsed_time function is newly introduced to print PV in the UCI
output based on real time. This makes PV output more consistent with the
behavior of trivial use cases.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/5186
No functional changes
This aims to remove some of the annoying global structure which Stockfish has.
Overall there is no major elo regression to be expected.
Non regression SMP STC (paused, early version):
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/65983d7979aa8af82b9608f1
LLR: 0.23 (-2.94,2.94) <-1.75,0.25>
Total: 76232 W: 19035 L: 19096 D: 38101
Ptnml(0-2): 92, 8735, 20515, 8690, 84
Non regression STC (early version):
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/6595b3a479aa8af82b95da7f
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) <-1.75,0.25>
Total: 185344 W: 47027 L: 46972 D: 91345
Ptnml(0-2): 571, 21285, 48943, 21264, 609
Non regression SMP STC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/65a0715c79aa8af82b96b7e4
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <-1.75,0.25>
Total: 142936 W: 35761 L: 35662 D: 71513
Ptnml(0-2): 209, 16400, 38135, 16531, 193
These global structures/variables add hidden dependencies and allow data
to be mutable from where it shouldn't it be (i.e. options). They also
prevent Stockfish from internal selfplay, which would be a nice thing to
be able to do, i.e. instantiate two Stockfish instances and let them
play against each other. It will also allow us to make Stockfish a
library, which can be easier used on other platforms.
For consistency with the old search code, `thisThread` has been kept,
even though it is not strictly necessary anymore. This the first major
refactor of this kind (in recent time), and future changes are required,
to achieve the previously described goals. This includes cleaning up the
dependencies, transforming the network to be self contained and coming
up with a plan to deal with proper tablebase memory management (see
comments for more information on this).
The removal of these global structures has been discussed in parts with
Vondele and Sopel.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4968
No functional change
- remove the blank line between the declaration of the function and it's
comment, leads to better IDE support when hovering over a function to see it's
description
- remove the unnecessary duplication of the function name in the functions
description
- slightly refactored code for lsb, msb in bitboard.h There are still a few
things we can be improved later on, move the description of a function where
it was declared (instead of implemented) and add descriptions to functions
which are behind macros ifdefs
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4840
No functional change
This introduces clang-format to enforce a consistent code style for Stockfish.
Having a documented and consistent style across the code will make contributing easier
for new developers, and will make larger changes to the codebase easier to make.
To facilitate formatting, this PR includes a Makefile target (`make format`) to format the code,
this requires clang-format (version 17 currently) to be installed locally.
Installing clang-format is straightforward on most OS and distros
(e.g. with https://apt.llvm.org/, brew install clang-format, etc), as this is part of quite commonly
used suite of tools and compilers (llvm / clang).
Additionally, a CI action is present that will verify if the code requires formatting,
and comment on the PR as needed. Initially, correct formatting is not required, it will be
done by maintainers as part of the merge or in later commits, but obviously this is encouraged.
fixes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/3608
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4790
Co-Authored-By: Joost VandeVondele <Joost.VandeVondele@gmail.com>
This patch changes the frequency with which the time is checked, changing
frequency from every 1024 counted nodes to every 512 counted nodes. The
master value was tuned for the old classical eval, the patch takes the
roughly 2x slowdown in nps with SFNNUEv7 into account. This could reduce
a bit the losses on time on fishtest, but they are probably unrelated.
passed STC:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/64bb8ae5dc56e1650abb1b11
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) <-1.75,0.25>
Total: 76576 W: 19677 L: 19501 D: 37398
Ptnml(0-2): 274, 8592, 20396, 8736, 290
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4704
No functional change
The Tempo variable was introduced 10 years ago in our search because the
classical evaluation function was antisymmetrical in White and Black by design
to gain speed:
Eval(White to play) = -Eval(Black to play)
Nowadays our neural networks know which side is to play in a position when
they evaluate a position and are trained on real games, so the neural network
encodes the advantage of moving as an output of search. This patch shows that
the Tempo variable is not necessary anymore.
STC:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) <-2.50,0.50>
Total: 33512 W: 2805 L: 2709 D: 27998
Ptnml(0-2): 80, 2209, 12095, 2279, 93
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/60a44ceace8ea25a3ef03d30
LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) <-2.50,0.50>
Total: 53920 W: 1807 L: 1760 D: 50353
Ptnml(0-2): 16, 1617, 23650, 1658, 19
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/60a477f0ce8ea25a3ef03d49
We also tried a match (20000 games) at STC using purely classical, result was neutral:
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/60a4eebcce8ea25a3ef03db5
Note: there are two locations left in search.cpp where we assume antisymmetry
of evaluation (in relation with a speed optimization for null moves in lines
770 and 1439), but as the values are just used for heuristic pruning this
approximation should not hurt too much because the order of magnitude is still
true most of the time.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3481
Bench: 4015864
Introduce variable tempo for nnue depending on logarithm of estimated
strength, where strength is the product of time and number of threads.
The original idea here was that NNUE is best with a slightly different
tempo value to classical, since its style of play is slightly different.
It turns out that the best tempo for NNUE varies with strength of play,
so a formula is used which gives about 19 for STC and 24 for LTC under
current fishtest settings.
STC 10+0.1:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {-0.20,1.10}
Total: 120816 W: 11155 L: 10861 D: 98800
Ptnml(0-2): 406, 8728, 41933, 8848, 493
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/60735b3a8141753378960534
LTC 60+0.6:
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {0.20,0.90}
Total: 35688 W: 1392 L: 1234 D: 33062
Ptnml(0-2): 23, 1079, 15473, 1255, 14
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/6073ffbc814175337896057f
Passed non-regression SMP test at LTC 20+0.2 (8 threads):
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {-0.70,0.20}
Total: 11008 W: 317 L: 267 D: 10424
Ptnml(0-2): 2, 245, 4962, 291, 4
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/60749ea881417533789605a4
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/3426
Bench 4075325
This patch ports the efficiently updatable neural network (NNUE) evaluation to Stockfish.
Both the NNUE and the classical evaluations are available, and can be used to
assign a value to a position that is later used in alpha-beta (PVS) search to find the
best move. The classical evaluation computes this value as a function of various chess
concepts, handcrafted by experts, tested and tuned using fishtest. The NNUE evaluation
computes this value with a neural network based on basic inputs. The network is optimized
and trained on the evalutions of millions of positions at moderate search depth.
The NNUE evaluation was first introduced in shogi, and ported to Stockfish afterward.
It can be evaluated efficiently on CPUs, and exploits the fact that only parts
of the neural network need to be updated after a typical chess move.
[The nodchip repository](https://github.com/nodchip/Stockfish) provides additional
tools to train and develop the NNUE networks.
This patch is the result of contributions of various authors, from various communities,
including: nodchip, ynasu87, yaneurao (initial port and NNUE authors), domschl, FireFather,
rqs, xXH4CKST3RXx, tttak, zz4032, joergoster, mstembera, nguyenpham, erbsenzaehler,
dorzechowski, and vondele.
This new evaluation needed various changes to fishtest and the corresponding infrastructure,
for which tomtor, ppigazzini, noobpwnftw, daylen, and vondele are gratefully acknowledged.
The first networks have been provided by gekkehenker and sergiovieri, with the latter
net (nn-97f742aaefcd.nnue) being the current default.
The evaluation function can be selected at run time with the `Use NNUE` (true/false) UCI option,
provided the `EvalFile` option points the the network file (depending on the GUI, with full path).
The performance of the NNUE evaluation relative to the classical evaluation depends somewhat on
the hardware, and is expected to improve quickly, but is currently on > 80 Elo on fishtest:
60000 @ 10+0.1 th 1
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f28fe6ea5abc164f05e4c4c
ELO: 92.77 +-2.1 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 60000 W: 24193 L: 8543 D: 27264
Ptnml(0-2): 609, 3850, 9708, 10948, 4885
40000 @ 20+0.2 th 8
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f290229a5abc164f05e4c58
ELO: 89.47 +-2.0 (95%) LOS: 100.0%
Total: 40000 W: 12756 L: 2677 D: 24567
Ptnml(0-2): 74, 1583, 8550, 7776, 2017
At the same time, the impact on the classical evaluation remains minimal, causing no significant
regression:
sprt @ 10+0.1 th 1
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f2906a2a5abc164f05e4c5b
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {-6.00,-4.00}
Total: 34936 W: 6502 L: 6825 D: 21609
Ptnml(0-2): 571, 4082, 8434, 3861, 520
sprt @ 60+0.6 th 1
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5f2906cfa5abc164f05e4c5d
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) {-6.00,-4.00}
Total: 10088 W: 1232 L: 1265 D: 7591
Ptnml(0-2): 49, 914, 3170, 843, 68
The needed networks can be found at https://tests.stockfishchess.org/nns
It is recommended to use the default one as indicated by the `EvalFile` UCI option.
Guidelines for testing new nets can be found at
https://github.com/glinscott/fishtest/wiki/Creating-my-first-test#nnue-net-tests
Integration has been discussed in various issues:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/2823https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/2728
The integration branch will be closed after the merge:
https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2825https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/tree/nnue-player-wip
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2912
This will be an exciting time for computer chess, looking forward to seeing the evolution of
this approach.
Bench: 4746616
the option was, since at least 2014, not correctly implemented,
ignoring all dynamic adjustments to optimum time in search.
Instead of fixing it, remove it, no need to expose an option that
will influence time management negatively.
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2765
No functional change.
This is a functional simplification of the time management system.
With this patch, there is a simple equation for each of two distinct
time controls: basetime + increment, and x moves in y seconds (+increment).
These equations are easy to plot and understand making future modifications
or adding additional time controls much easier.
SlowMover is reset to 100 so that is has no effect unless a user changes it.
There are two scaling variables:
* Opt_scale is a scale factor (or percentage) of time to use for this current move.
* Max_scale is a scale factor to apply to the resulting optimumTime.
There seems to be some elo gain in most scenarios.
Better performance is attributable to one of two things:
* minThinkingTime was not allowing reasonable time calculations for very short games like 10+0 or 10+0.01. This is because adding almost no increment and substracting move overhead for 50 moves quickly results in almost 0 time very early in the game. Master depended on minThinkingTime to handle these short games instead of good time management. This patch addresses this issue by lowering minThinkingTime to 0 and adjusting moverOverhead if there are very low increments.
* Notice that the time distribution curves tail downward for the first 10 moves or so. This causes less time to attribute for very early moves leaving more time available for middle moves where more important decisions happen.
Here is a summary of tests for this version at different time controls:
SMP 5+0.05
LLR: 2.97 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 46544 W: 7175 L: 7089 D: 32280
Ptnml(0-2): 508, 4826, 12517, 4914, 507
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/user/protonspring
STC
LLR: 2.94 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 20480 W: 3872 L: 3718 D: 12890
Ptnml(0-2): 295, 2364, 4824, 2406, 351
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5ebc343e7dd5693aad4e6873
STC, sudden death
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 7024 W: 1706 L: 1489 D: 3829
Ptnml(0-2): 149, 813, 1417, 938, 195
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5ebc346f7dd5693aad4e6875
STC, TCEC style
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 4192 W: 1014 L: 811 D: 2367
Ptnml(0-2): 66, 446, 912, 563, 109
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5ebc34857dd5693aad4e6877
40/10
LLR: 2.93 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 54032 W: 10592 L: 10480 D: 32960
Ptnml(0-2): 967, 6148, 12677, 6254, 970
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5ebc50597dd5693aad4e688d
LTC, sudden death
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 9152 W: 1391 L: 1263 D: 6498
Ptnml(0-2): 75, 888, 2526, 1008, 79
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5ebc6f5c7dd5693aad4e689b
LTC
LLR: 2.98 (-2.94,2.94) {-1.50,0.50}
Total: 12344 W: 1563 L: 1459 D: 9322
Ptnml(0-2): 70, 1103, 3740, 1171, 88
https://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5ebc6f4c7dd5693aad4e6899
closes https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/2678
Bench: 4395562
Adding a clamp function makes some of these range limitations a bit prettier and removes some #include's.
STC
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 28117 W: 6300 L: 6191 D: 15626
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5c9aa1df0ebc5925cfff8fcc
Non functional change.
Preparation commit for the upcoming Stockfish 10 version, giving a chance to catch last minute feature bugs and evaluation regression during the one-week code freeze period. Also changing the copyright dates to include 2019.
No functional change
This is a patch to fix issue #1498, switching the time management variables
to 64 bits to avoid overflow of time variables after 25 days.
There was a bug in Stockfish 9 causing the output to be wrong after
2^31 milliseconds search. Here is a long run from the starting position:
info depth 64 seldepth 87 multipv 1 score cp 23 nodes 13928920239402
nps 0 tbhits 0 time -504995523 pv g1f3 d7d5 d2d4 g8f6 c2c4 d5c4 e2e3 e7e6 f1c4
c7c5 e1g1 b8c6 d4c5 d8d1 f1d1 f8c5 c4e2 e8g8 a2a3 c5e7 b2b4 f8d8 b1d2 b7b6 c1b2
c8b7 a1c1 a8c8 c1c2 c6e5 d1c1 c8c2 c1c2 e5f3 d2f3 a7a5 b4b5 e7c5 f3d4 d8c8 d4b3
c5d6 c2c8 b7c8 b3d2 c8b7 d2c4 d6c5 e2f3 b7d5 f3d5 e6d5 c4e5 a5a4 e5d3 f6e4 d3c5
e4c5 b2d4 c5e4 d4b6 e4d6 g2g4 d6b5 b6c5 b5c7 g1g2 c7e6 c5d6 g7g6
We check at compile time that the TimePoint type is exactly 64 bits long for
the compiler (TimePoint is our alias in Stockfish for std::chrono::milliseconds
-- it is a signed integer type of at least 45 bits according to the C++ standard,
but will most probably be implemented as a 64 bits signed integer on modern
compilers), and we use this TimePoint type consistently across the code.
Bug report by user "fischerandom" on the TCEC chat (thanks), and the
patch includes code and suggestions by user "WOnder93" and Ronald de Man.
Fixes issue: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/1498
Closes pull request: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/1510
No functional change.
To more clearly distinguish them from "const" local variables, this patch
defines compile-time local constants as constexpr. This is consistent with
the definition of PvNode as constexpr in search() and qsearch(). It also
makes the code more robust, since the compiler will now check that those
constants are indeed compile-time constants.
We can go even one step further and define all the evaluation and search
compile-time constants as constexpr.
In generate_castling() I replaced "K" with "step", since K was incorrectly
capitalised (in the Chess960 case).
In timeman.cpp I had to make the non-local constants MaxRatio and StealRatio
constepxr, since otherwise gcc would complain when calculating TMaxRatio and
TStealRatio. (Strangely, I did not have to make Is64Bit constexpr even though
it is used in ucioption.cpp in the calculation of constexpr MaxHashMB.)
I have renamed PieceCount to pieceCount in material.h, since the values of
the array are not compile-time constants.
Some compile-time constants in tbprobe.cpp were overlooked. Sides and MaxFile
are not compile-time constants, so were renamed to sides and maxFile.
Non-functional change.
Using a SPSA tuning session to optimize the time management
parameters.
With SPSA tuning it is not always possible to say where improvements
came from. Maybe some variables changed randomly or because result
was not sensitive enough to them. So my explanation of changes will
not be necessarily correct, but here it is.
• When decrease of thinking time was added by Joost a few months ago
if best move has not changed for several plies, one more competing
indicator was introduced for the same purpose along with increase
in score and absence of fail low at root. It seems that tuning put
relatively more importance on that new indicator what allowed to save
time.
• Some of this saved time is distributed proportionally between all
moves and some more time were given to moves when score dropped a lot
or best move changed.
• It looks also that SPSA redistributed more time from the beginning to
later stages of game via other changes in variables - maybe because
contempt made game to last longer or for whatever reason.
All of this is just small tweaks here and there (a few percentages changes).
STC (10+0.1):
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 18970 W: 4268 L: 4029 D: 10673
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a9291a40ebc590297cc8881
LTC (60+0.6):
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [0.00,4.00]
Total: 72027 W: 12263 L: 11878 D: 47886
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a92d7510ebc590297cc88ef
Additional non-regression tests at other time controls
Sudden death 60s:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-4.00,0.00]
Total: 14444 W: 2715 L: 2608 D: 9121
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a9445850ebc590297cc8a65
40 moves repeating at LTC:
LLR: 2.95 (-2.94,2.94) [-4.00,0.00]
Total: 10309 W: 1880 L: 1759 D: 6670
http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests/view/5a9566ec0ebc590297cc8be1
This is a functional patch only for time management, but the bench
does not reflect this because it uses fixed depth search, so the number
of nodes does not change during bench.
No functional change.
In x/y time controls there was a theoretical possibility
to use all available time few moves before the clock will
be updated with new time. This patch fixes that issue.
Tested at 60/15 time control:
LLR: 2.96 (-2.94,2.94) [-3.00,1.00]
Total: 113963 W: 20008 L: 20042 D: 73913
The test was done without adjudication rules!
Bench 5234652
