Ghost by Philipp Claßen

About Ghost:

• Ghost is an amateur chess program written in C++
• Ghost was also used as a subject for an important school work (german: "Facharbeit")
• The name Ghost was taken from the name of Wolf Larsen's ship in the novel "The Seawolf" by Jack London. Also, "ghost pieces" is a widely used term in chess-programming for pieces that appear or disappear suddenly in some positions, because the engine has made some errors during search.

News:

• 2004-09-22: Finally, some minor updates on the engine. You can download the new version 0.14 of Ghost1 in the download-section. There is also a new linux binary for version 0.14. Most changes are related to some bugs in the search function which should be fixed now.
  Ghost1 will not be developed any further except for bugfixes. All efforts will be concentrated on the completely new Ghost2-version.
• 2004-09-21: Still stressed out by study (both Phil and me). But somehow Phil still found some time to have a look at some old Ghost1-code and found some minor things to keep up-to-date to modern compilers. Also, he is currently debugging some issues in Ghost2 which seem to have harmed move ordering quite a bit. Still one of the top items on the todo-list is prabably completing the evaluation function (especially endgame knowledge). Anyway, there will be a brand new pre-version of Ghost2 within the next days. Just don't expect very much improvement, remember, this is only an one-man amateur project... ;-)
• 2004-08-20: Heavy study work for Phil, so new Ghost versions will be delayed for a while. For the time being, you could encourage him by donating some "research funds"... :-)
• 2003-01-28: Finally, there is a running version of Ghost 2. Althoug, I am afraid, it still is not very much other than a alpha-version and so it is not yet concerned good enough for official release. But IMHO, first impression is very promising...
• 2002-05-13: Still no Ghost 2, but at least there is a working Ghost 1 version for Linux!
• 2002-02-27: Finally, I am happy to announce some progress on Ghost 2. Soon there will be a preview version. But right now, the search and evaluation functions have not been implemented completely.
• 2001-05-19: sorry there will be no multithreading in the new version of Ghost. Not yet! Phil wants to keep the code as compatible for later use of multiple threads as possible. Currently he is very busy writing his final exam (ger.: Abitur).
• 2001-04-11: as some of you might have noticed, there seems to be a problem with Ghost running in Chessbase/Fritz environment. This has something to do with the differences in the xboard- and the fritz-protocol.
  But anyway, my Phil is currently working on a complete new version of Ghost, this time adding multithreading and an improved search function. It should also be designed very strict and clean object oriented (even more...) :-).
  So, hang on for further news...
• 2001-02-26: version 0.13 released and ready for download, removing following bugs:
  • problems after editing a game position
  • some problems about taking back moves in general
  • a very nasty bug causing Ghost to crash after 50 move repetition!
• 2001-02-19: news section added, containing news about this site and naturally about Ghost
• 2001-02-19: new version 0.12 of Ghost ready for download, containing all later improvements
• 2001-02-18: new commandline parameters:
  • "hash xxx" (size of transposition table)
  • "pawnhash xxx" (size of pawn hashtable)
  • (xxx = size in MByte, 0 for minimum size, e.g. "ghost hash 16 pawnhash 8")
• 2001-02-??: enhanced endgame knowledge:
  • queen against rook
  • mate by knight + bishop

About the author of Ghost:

Philipp Claßen He made his final exam at the "Gymnasium Landau a.d. Isar", Germany... ...then performed his social service (ger.: Zivildienst). Currently, he is a student of computer science at the University of Passau, Germany.

Used algorithms:

• Alpha-beta Negamax search
• internal iterative deepening
• transposition tables
• pawn-hashtables
• killer + history tables
• selective techniques like:
  • recursive nullmove ("3 plys reduction")
  • razoring + futility prunning

Download:

• Ghost for Windows v0.14 version from Sep. 22th 2004 see news
• Ghost for Linux v0.14 finally, an updated version for Linux!
• sorry, at the moment the source code is still to be cleaned up, so Phil won't show it to anyone now, I hope you understand ;-)

Donate:

Although this is only an amateur project without the intent of making a big pile of money, you could support us poor students by donating some "research funds" using PayPal:

Links:

• Frank's Chess Page: perhaps the most important computer chess page in the web...
• Tim Mann's chess page

Contact:

• e-mail addresses:
  • Philipp Claßen philipp.classen [at] gmx.net, author of Ghost
  • Michael Claßen classenm [at] fmi.uni-passau.de (concerning this website)