Ferret
Authors
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Bruce Moreland | engine programmer |
Participations
| Tournament | Title | Participants | Score | Games |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chess, 2001, Maastricht | 18 | 5.0 | 9 | |
| Chess, 1999, Paderborn | 30 | 5.5 | 7 | |
| Chess, 1997, Paris | 34 | 7.0 | 11 | |
| Chess (Blitz), 1997, Paris | World Microcomputer Speed-Chess Champion | 22 | 10.0 | |
| Chess, 1996, Jakarta | 27 | 8.5 | 11 | |
| Chess (Blitz), 1996, Jakarta | World Microcomputer Speed-Chess Champion | 5 | ||
| Chess, 1995, Paderborn | Amateur World Microcomputer Chess Champion | 34 | 7.5 | 11 |
| Chess, 1995, Shatin | 24 | 2.0 | 5 |
Descriptions
- Description given in 1997:
Ferret is a normal chess program. It uses null-move forward pruning and other standard techniques. It is a leaf-node evaluator, and searches 80- 350K nps (120K typical middlegame) on a Pentium Pro 200 mhz machine.
- Description given in 1995:
Ferret is a "normal" brute-force program that runs under Windows NT. Techniques and tools used by the program include alpha-beta pruning, selective search extensions, quiescence search limited by a static exchange evaluator, null-move forward pruning, a 50,000-positions opening book, several hash tables and a few simple endgame databases. The program consists of about 20,000 lines of C code and has been compiled using Microsoft Visual C 2.0. Ferret searches approximately 18,000-32,000 nodes per second on a Pentium 66. It was written during off-hours over a period of about 4 years, for fun. Ferret finished fifth in Don Beal's uniform platform tournament last September. It has also played several hundred games of blitz chess on the Internet Chess Server, where it has been shown to be competitive among strong human players and various commercial programs. Ferret is copyrighted but its author is not particularly secretive about the program as he feels indebted to the many people who have answered his own questions.