Von V. Rajlich   Datum 2012-04-01 12:27
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Rybka 5 will be released later today.  It will be sold both by Chessbase and by Convekta, as well as directly here at the Rybka Forum.  This is a stand-alone UCI engine, meaning that it will not be sold with Aquarium, as Houdini is currently Convekta's primary engine.

Some items of note:
**The overall improvement is such that Rybka 5, according to our testing, is now 85 points stronger than Houdini 2.
**The search has been improved, and Rybka is now most likely the fastest-searching engine among the top engines.
**The calculation of nodes per second (NPS) has been changed to the conventional counting method used by most other chess engines.
**The calculation of the depth has also been changed to the conventional scheme used by most other chess engines.
**The bugs involved in the occasional incorrect calculation of the score in the past have been solved: this feature has now been removed from the program.  Most users will not find this a problem, though, as they are generally interested in the strongest move that the engine can play, not its score
**Rybka is now able to play Gothic Chess.  This chess variant will be the primary focus of development for future Rybka versions.

The timing of the release is unfortunate, but we're trying to roll this out quickly so that the users have the early opportunity to find any new bugs that have crept into the program.

A few other notes:
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**Rybka 5 now only uses 5-man endgame tablebases.  In our testing, particularly in rook endgames, Rybka 5 performed noticeably better when using only the 345 Nalimov tablebases.
**The blind bishop endgame bugs are still in the program.  I am working closely with Robert Hyatt to solve this problem, and we hope to release an update later this spring.  We are hopeful that with some ingenuity, we might be able to make Rybka 5 even stronger than Crafty in these endgames.
**In terms of Gothic Chess, while Gothic Chess is supported, most GUIs (including Aquarium and the Fritz GUIs) don't support this chess variant, so you will need to download a GUI that supports this.
**Rybka 5 is greatly improved in the openings phase of the game.  It is able to vary its opening moves in the engine analysis itself, based on the results of past games and the tuning of the parameters based on how the rest of the games went.  As such, Rybka 5 no longer needs an opening book, and thus no longer supports one.

na ja ...
gruesse charly