BLANK v1.3.0

• Improved search tree pruning
  • Extended Futility Pruning
  • Static Null Move Pruning
• Implemented 50-Move rule and insufficient material draw logic
• Adopted a more aggressive null-move pruning approach by increasing reduction constant at higher depths
• Quiescence search now probes transposition table and has the hash move prioritised.
• Silent moves with no scores assigned are placed at a lower priority and
  ordered based on PSQT change during move ordering
• Added a seed to generate a fixed set of Zobrist keys.
• Minor bug fixes

BLANK v1.2.0

• Redesign of Transposition table. Instead of a HashMap, the Transposition table now uses a fixed-sized array implementation.
  • Two-Level Transposition Table where the first level uses a 'Depth-preferred' replacement scheme while the second level uses an 'Always-replace' scheme to handle index collisions.
• Fixed a bug in move ordering where some PV nodes were not ordered first to be searched.
• Added tapered evaluation based on values by Ronald Friederich.
• Added a small "Contempt" factor fixed at 20 cp to avoid mid-game draws
• Removed search on a separate thread. Engine now periodically listens for UCI commands during the search itself
• Added Hash option to engine to configure hash size for transposition table

BLANK v1.1.0

• Added Late Move Reduction based on a reduction factor which scales off depth and move number (position in move list) in search
  
  where r, d and m represents Reduction factor, Depth and Move number respectively.
  Acknowledgement: https://skemman.is/bitstream/1946/34940/1/Master_Project_Final.pdf , Pg. 30 Model (5.1)
• Implemented Principal Variation Search (PVS) in search
• Engine search now runs on a separate thread in order to concurrently listen for UCI 'stop' commands
• Fixed a bug in engine clock where engine allocates more time to itself when its total time left goes below increment time.

BLANK v1.0.1

• Added UCI "OwnBook" option to disable in-built opening book.

• Fixed a bug in "go movetime " where the time allocated for the engine to "think" was incorrect.

BLANK v1.0.0

Official release of BLANK Chess Engine.

Pre-Release

This is the pre-release version of the chess engine created using Java complete with time control and a GUI.
UCI protocol and Game menu has not been implemented yet.

AI Features:

• Opening Book (Built into an OpeningTrie using a database of >2600 Elo Games)
• Negamax Search with Alpha-Beta pruning
• Static board evaluation
• Move Ordering (PV Nodes, MVV / LVA for Captures, Promotion)
• Quiescence Search
• Transposition Table (Zobrist Hashing)
• Null-Move pruning
• Search Extension on check
• Killer / History Heuristics
• Iterative Deepening Search