August 23 Update Correction

As it turns out, the only thing correct about my update yesterday were the ratings I posted. There were problems with the database, and with the statistics generated from that database. So, I have made the corrections and uploaded a corrected PGN.

Also-Rans Ratings List Update - August 23, 2012

The Also-Rans list has been updated. I have also updated the statistical information and the database. The link to the Also-Rans database can be found at the ratings page.

Ed Schröder's Donationware

Ed Schröder, the author of chess programs such as Mephisto MM IV and MM V, Rebel, and Pro Deo, has decided to make his older Rebel PC chess programs Winboard and UCI (via WB2UCI) compatible and provide them as donationware. As stated at Wikipedia and Ed's site, donationware is a licensing model that supplies fully operational unrestricted software to the user and requests an optional donation be paid to the programmer or a third-party beneficiary (usually a non-profit). Ed's request for donations is for raising money to create a "World Championship" competition among the top-rated chess engines. So feel free to download the versions of Rebel that Ed converts and makes available. If you can, please donate 1 Euro (via PayPal) for each engine you download.

Also-Rans Update - August 8, 2012

A ratings list that is in continued fluctuation is of no use to anybody. Having said that, I have made one more change (and, with high probability, the last change) to how the Also-Rans list is computed. I have decided to compute the ratings from a database of games consisting of the CCRL 40/4 pure, single CPU database and the Also-Rans games. The list shall be calibrated so that Brutus RND, a random mover (chooses its next move at random from the legal moves available), has a rating of 0 Elo. The Also-Rans list will consist of all engines outside the top 200 engines of the combined database. Since the CCRL ratings may be computed in this manner within the next year (more games are needed to meet the CCRL standards), the Also-Rans list will finally be stable.

Chess for Mobile Devices - ChessGenius

ChessGenius - A program written by the legendary Richard Lang in the 1990's, originally for MS-DOS, that has been ported to Palm, Windows Mobile, Bada phones, Symbian phones, iOS, and Android devices.

Richard Lang is famous for winning the World Microcomputer Chess Championship 10 times, from the mid 1980's with Mephisto to the mid 1990's with ChessGenius. ChessGenius became the first chess program to beat a world champion (none other than Gary Kasparov) at a non-blitz time control, and obtained a rating of 2795 in the same tournament (1994 Intel World Chess Grand Prix), while running on a 100 MHz Pentium PC.