Kenny

• Author: Kenshin Himura (Sudarsan Balaji)
• License: GNU GPL v3 and CC-BY-NC-SA Licenses (see gpl.txt and ccbyncsa.txt)
• Application Version: 0.1.1.0
• ReadMe Version: 1.3

Description

Kenny is a Winboard/XBoard chess engine based on Winglet, an open source chess program. Winglet's full source code can be obtained from Winglet.

Kenny is an advanced form of Winglet which plays better at some faster time levels like blitz chess or upto 20 minute games, but almost always loses against Winglet when the time controls are 40 minutes or more for each. These tests were run by setting up various tournamennts on the free Chess GUI Arena Version 3.0. Kenny uses modified values for evaluation of various parameters, thus introducing almost an entirely new engine, because the evaluation function is the heart of a chess engine.

Visions

• Better board representation using fully object oriented programming using proper class heirarchy (probably in an entirely new repo)
• Modification of the evaluation function to a better one (pending some neural networks analyses on my side)
• History pruning implementation
• Killer Moves implementation
• Better Move-ordering and pruning of serach tree

Install Instructions

• Install the chess engine into your "Engines" directory, eg: (GUIInstallDIR)\Engines\ in the case of Arena and Fritz (ChessBase), or (GUIInstallDIR)\Data\Engines\ in the case of Aquarium (Convekta/ChessOK).
• Add new WB-2 engine if your GUI supports it. Usually this can be done via some options like Engines->Add New Engine->Select Engine Type and selecting WinBoard or XBoard as provided. For windows executables, look for the exe's in (KennyInstallDIR)\Windows\
• For GUI's which support only UCI engines, install Wb2Uci.exe (included) in the same folder, as an engine.
• By default, the Wb2Uci.exe will use the 64-bit JA build of Kenny.
• For 32 bit JA build, delete Wb2Uci.eng, copy-paste "Wb2Uci for x86 ja.eng" in the same folder, and rename it to "Wb2Uci.eng".
• To revert back to 64 bit JA build, delete Wb2Uci.eng, copy-paste "Wb2Uci for x64 ja.eng" in the same folder, and rename it to "Wb2Uci.eng".