There have been a number of improvements made to Blocky between v1.0 and this new release. They include:
- Search
- Reverse Futility Pruning
- Internal Iterative Reductions
- Late Move Pruning
- Evaluation
- Piece Evaluation
- Mobility (Rook, Bishop, Knight)
- Bishop Pair
- Pawn Evaluation
- Passed Pawns
- Doubled Pawns
- Chained Pawns
- Phalanx Pawns
- Piece Evaluation
- Move Ordering
- Butterfly History Heuristic
Additionally, there were some major speedups, and existing features have been tweaked.
Results against Blocky v1.0 at time control 40s + 0.4s:
Score of Blockyv2.0.0 vs Blockyv1.0: 831 - 45 - 124 [0.893] 1000
... Blockyv2.0.0 playing White: 431 - 18 - 51 [0.913] 500
... Blockyv2.0.0 playing Black: 400 - 27 - 73 [0.873] 500
... White vs Black: 458 - 418 - 124 [0.520] 1000
Elo difference: 368.6 +/- 28.8, LOS: 100.0 %, DrawRatio: 12.4 %
Testing was done using Stockfish's 8movesv3 book.