World Draughts Forum

The difference between ponder and analyze is that go ponder can be followed by ponder-hit, meaning the opponent has in fact made the assumed move, and the engine now continues its search for its own reply move on its own clock.
That is why the assumed opponent move is included in the position.

Go ...

While playing with version 1.4, pondering appears to have a problem. From protocol.txt: "go ponder" works like in UCI: the expected opponent move, chosen by the engine during the previous search, is already present in the position.
I don't see the expected opponent move included in the position ...

I have used (in linux) a shell script mobydam.sh as a wrapper to provide the options and "hub" argument to mobydam as a work around.

There is no response to "go ponder" because of the set-param of ponder to false. Even with ponder=true, I have interpreted the protocol as "go ponder" will only be ...

Gijsbert, I wonder how good the AI is in analyzing a protocol log, finding the problem and coming up with a fix. Can you try with this example? (GWDGUI-1.1 vs Moby Dam, starting a game)


1845678359 00000.000 rcv hub
1845678359 00000.000 snd id name="Moby Dam" version="May 28 2026" author="Harm ...

Good news everyone,

I have just released an update of Moby Dam. This version supports the HUB protocol, in addition to the existing DXP protocol.
Read notes.txt for an example of how to use Moby Dam in hub mode with Fabien Letouzey's hub_21 GUI.

The program can be downloaded at https://hjetten ...

Thank you Sidiki! And congratulations to Joost!

Bert, in Fabien's protocol.txt it isn't clear whether the hub GUI must send a new-game before setting up the first position after the init...ready phase. His hub2.1 happens to do so. Is it required?

Bert, an excellent initiative! I'm currently working on implementing the hub protocol in Moby Dam. Just the basics, no pondering or analyzing yet.

Frank, a quit command terminates the engine, not just the game. A game is also ended with a new-game command.

No, those are mobydam.exe arguments. Not applicable for mm.exe. You need to keep things separate: make a shortcut for each of the engines, and a shortcut for mm.exe.

You will need to make a separate shortcut for mm.exe. For example:

"D:\Moby Dam International\mm.exe" -m 80 -t 10 -1 localhost:27531 -2 localhost:27532 "D:\Moby Dam International\2-move ballots matchfile.fen"

Assuming mm.exe and the fen file are both copied to the D:\Moby Dam International folder ...

Krzysztof,

I think you can do this with my tool mm.exe, which sets up a match between two DXP engines. mm.exe is included in the mobydam zip archive, in the test folder.



Usage: mm.exe [-m n] [-t n] [-1 host:port] [-2 host:port] matchfile
-m n = moves per game (default: 80)
-t n = time per ...

Hello Krzysztof,

It was a good test, and nice to watch live. But what happened at the end of game 6?

Hi Bert,

Here are some recent results of Moby Dam 2023 against Kingsrow and Scan.
All programs use 6-piece egdb, 512MB tt, 1 thread and no pondering.
DXP match settings 1 minute for 80 moves, on my i3 12100.

kr 1.63 vs moby
results for first engine: +144 -3 =1498 ?5 54.3%

sc 3.1 vs moby
results ...

Hello everyone,

Good news! A new version of Moby Dam is out. There are two main changes: multi-threaded search, and pattern based evaluation. The playing strength has improved quite a bit, though not to the level of Scan and Kingsrow.

The program can be downloaded at https://hjetten.home.xs4all.nl ...

Hi Krzysztof,

You can set the number of moves to 0 instead of 75; 0 means "unlimited" moves.
Of course Moby Dam will then play a bit faster so by move 75 it will have used maybe 12 or 13 minutes, to account for the possibility that the game will be much longer.