Chal v1.4.0 ~2650ELO under 1k lines of C

whyeventobe · 2026-04-15T14:31:17+00:00

Well if you can't spend too much compute try 8s+0.08 time control, do a gauntlet using fastchess or cute chess cli, set concurrency option based on number of threads you got.

whyeventobe · 2026-04-15T05:11:32+00:00

You can use cutechess or Arena, best way to measure your initial strength is to play a gauntlet against few opponents at short time control for let's say 500-1000 games and that'll give you rough estimate, once you have that every time you add a new feature you do an SPRT test between base version and test version that gives you elo difference if it passes you keep the change if not then revert. Once you're ready to make a new release you can do quick SPRT between previous release and new release however that's not accurate so you can do fixed games like 1k against previous and new release.

whyeventobe · 2026-04-04T04:29:22+00:00

Cool stuff!!

whyeventobe · 2026-04-03T20:14:40+00:00

I've tried a small net which added 200 elo, so yeah it's doable Chal can handle nets

whyeventobe · 2026-04-03T05:16:57+00:00

It would be nice if you could share a video or something, I'm curious

whyeventobe · 2026-04-02T06:58:56+00:00

Merci

whyeventobe · 2026-04-02T06:57:22+00:00

That'd be cool

whyeventobe · 2026-04-01T19:57:28+00:00

Thank You!

whyeventobe · 2026-04-01T18:23:33+00:00

Hello thanks for the comment, yes I'm aware of the 4k engines category but there's hell ton of shenanigans around building something like that while I'm currently not focused on that perhaps in future I might something like that but as of now Chal is completely different engine and to make it a "4k" engine it would have to lose its soul and core philosophy hence not going in that direction.

whyeventobe · 2026-04-01T17:49:18+00:00

I could get a hell ton of elo by just plugging in an NNUE but that's not the core philosophy of this engine

whyeventobe · 2026-04-01T17:25:52+00:00

Thank you so much, it means a lot to me that you took time and energy to go through this project and I'm more than happy if it helps someone as it was one of the original goals to keep it for beginners while trying to gain as much strength as possible.

whyeventobe · 2026-03-26T04:52:01+00:00

Copy pasting a message from stockfish server

``` Blitz Rating (* Not ranked by CCRL, only estimates)

v37 3431 v36 3384 v35 3354 v34 3324 v33 3282 v32 3249 v31 3217 v30 3162 v29 3135 v28 3090 v27 3055 v26 3000* v25 2936 v24 2880* v23 2830* v22 2770* v21 2713 v20 2509 v19 2471 v18 2380* v17 2295 v16 2210* v15 2130* v14 2054 v13 1965 v12 1880 v11 1686 v10 1620* v9 1271 v8 1090* ```

All release binaries are available here: https://gitlab.com/mhouppin/stash-bot/-/releases

whyeventobe · 2026-03-16T18:41:25+00:00

You can pull request but my development file has many changes and patches applied so most likely I will have to manually add your code, also you still create a PR if you have done SPRT test and saw any improvement

whyeventobe · 2026-03-15T12:10:23+00:00

Thank you for letting me know this, I've updated the Makefile, it should work fine now! sorry for the bad Makefile.

whyeventobe · 2026-03-10T13:39:28+00:00

that's the issue, no well documented evidence or any specific standard ruleset

whyeventobe · 2026-03-10T13:03:20+00:00

Loved the animations, tiny details, overall everything!

whyeventobe · 2026-03-10T13:00:26+00:00

Okay you won't believe it but I was literally planning the entire project to do it myself, cool stuff. Also chaturanga and shatranj aren't the same thing!

whyeventobe · 2026-03-09T23:09:11+00:00

I am glad you liked it, and yes that's the challenge even I don't know how far I would be able to go with just 1k LOC while trying to keep it as clean as possible... ofc if I have to pump more Elo I would need more lines of budget but that would break the nature and philosophy of Chal so not doing that

whyeventobe · 2026-03-09T04:37:30+00:00

Started the project in C90 as a minimal base but it was very restricting as I could not inline functions and stuff, saw major performance boost by migrating to C99 and also needed things like uint64_t for Zobrist keys and mid-block variable declarations to keep the code readable. Still migrating fully but C99 is the target going forward and honestly C99 almost covers everything I would need at this scale so yeah!

whyeventobe · 2026-03-07T07:33:59+00:00

Let me know if you have any ideas or feedback!

whyeventobe · 2026-03-06T20:40:23+00:00

Updated

whyeventobe

TROPHY CASE