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https://github.com/timmoth/sapling

A strong dotnet UCI Chess engine - My leaf nodes are growing
https://github.com/timmoth/sapling

chess chess-engine csharp dotnet nnue uci

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A strong dotnet UCI Chess engine - My leaf nodes are growing

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### A strong dotnet UCI Chess engine - My leaf nodes are growing



Play it here -> https://iblunder.com/



Or challenge it on Lichess -> https://lichess.org/@/sapling-bot



| Rating pool                                                                   | Version | ELO  |

|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------|------|

| [CCRL 40/15](https://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/rating_list_all.html) | 1.1.2   | 3378 |

| [Lichess Bullet](https://lichess.org/@/Sapling-Bot/perf/bullet)               | 1.2.2   | 2890 |

| [Lichess Blitz](https://lichess.org/@/Sapling-Bot/perf/blitz)                 | 1.2.2   | 2786 |

| [Lichess Rapid](https://lichess.org/@/Sapling-Bot/perf/rapid)                 | 1.2.2   | 2797 |

| [Lichess Chess960](https://lichess.org/@/Sapling-Bot/perf/chess960)           | 1.2.2   | 2209 |



| Tournament                                                                                         | Version | Result           |

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------|------------------|

| [CCRL 112th Amateur Series Division 5](https://talkchess.com/viewtopic.php?p=969661&hilit=sapling) | 1.1.8   | drawed 3rd place |

| [Blitz Tournament 3'+2" (48th Edition)](https://talkchess.com/viewtopic.php?t=84301&hilit=sapling) | 1.2.0   | Division 4 6th place              |

| [FRC Tournament (35th Edition)](https://talkchess.com/viewtopic.php?p=970724&hilit=sapling#p970724) | 1.2.2   | TBD              |



## Releases

You can browse all windows, linux or mac releases [here](https://github.com/Timmoth/Sapling/releases)



### Latest Release [v1.2.2 13/10/2024](https://github.com/Timmoth/Sapling/releases/tag/Sapling-1.2.2)



## Requirements

- Sapling makes use of hardware intrinsics to improve performance. Currently your CPU must support: `Avx2`, `Bmi1`, `Bmi2`, `Popcnt`, `Sse`. Most modern hardware shipped after 2013 should be supported.

- The releases come with a bundled version of the dotnet runtime, however if you want to run from source you'll need the dotnet 8 SDK installed.



## Running from source

```bash

cd ./scripts



// Windows

./build_windows_avx256.bat

./build_windows_avx512.bat



// Linux

./build_linux_avx256.sh

./build_linux_avx512.sh



// Osx

./build_osx_avx256.sh

./build_osx_avx512.sh

```



## Commands

- `quit` : exit the program

- `setoption name threads value 8` : sets the number of threads to use

- `ucinewgame` : initializes a new game

- `position startpos` : sets the engine to the starting chess position

- `position startpos moves a2a3 a7a6` : sets the engine to the starting position then applies a set of moves

- `position fen rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1` : sets the engine to the position given by the fen string

- `d` : outputs a diagram of the current position

- `go perft 6` : Runs a pert test to a specific depth

- `go depth 10` : Returns the best move after searching for the given depth

- `go wtime 10000 btime 10000 winc 100 binc 100` : returns the best move after searching with the given time control

- `go see a2a3` : [Dev] returns a the result of static exchange evaluation for a given move

- `go eval` : [Dev] returns the static evaluation of the current position

- `datagen` : [Dev] starts generating data in the bullet format, used when training a new NNUE network



## Features



General

  

- Bitboards 

- NNUE (768 -> 1024)x2 -> 8

- Horizontal mirroring

- Output buckets x8

- Transposition table

- Lazy SMP

- Pondering



Search

  

- Negamax

- Quiescence

- Alpha-Beta pruning

- Iterative Deepening

- Asperation windows

- Null move pruning

- Late Move Pruning

- Futility Pruning

- Razoring

- Principal Variation Search

- Check extensions

- Internal Iterative Reduction

- Late Move Reductions

- Cuckoo filter repetition detection



Move generation / ordering



- Pseudo-legal movegen

- Static exchange evaluation

- Killer move heuristic

- Counter move heuristic

- History heuristic with malus

- Incremental sorting

- Magic bitboards

- PEXT bitboards



## SPRT

After any changes to the engine a SPRT test must be ran to ensure that the changes have a positive effect.



There is a script `sprt.bat` which contains the command to run a cutechess-cli SPRT test. Ensure that you've configured CuteChess to point to both `dev` and `base` engines before hand, and also update the opening book + endgame table base to point to one on your system.



## NNUE

I'm in the process of training a (768x8->1024)x2-8 network starting from random weights using self play data generation and bullet trainer. Expect the engine to get much stronger as I improve the network. Check [here](https://github.com/Timmoth/Sapling/tree/main/Sapling.Engine/Resources/WeightsHistory) to see the sequence of networks starting from scratch and the training logs.



## Resources:

- [Chess Programming Wiki](https://www.chessprogramming.org/)

- [Talk Chess Forum](https://talkchess.com/)

- [Coding Adventure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4ogK0MIzqk)