Welcome to the official
V I C K I website
Vicki is a WinBoard compatible chess engine that is currently under development. The very first version of Vicki was written in Java, but I decided to rewrite the engine in C, polish up the AI and get a website running. Vicki is freeware and can be distributed freely. To play against Vicki, I strongly recommend you download a copy of Arena, or WinBoard which are both free interfaces for playing against compatible chess engines. Vicki has been tested under WinBoard and Arena with success.
I also maintain a blog and will be delighted if you leave a message or just browse around. You can also send me an
email. My email address is 
. (This is an image to protect me against spam - please type the adderss in your favourite e-mail client.)
Ratings
These ratings are highly speculative (I estimate Vicki to be at around 1700-1800), but these are the ratings for Vicki on FICS as of 19 August 2008. I think many people that play online does not play at their full strength. However, since most of Vicki's opponents are probably computer engines as well, this does give some indication of Vicki's playing strength.
| Type | Won | Lost | Draw | Rating |
| Lightning (0'+1") | 490 | 73 | 27 | 2311 |
| Blitz (5'+1") | 2987 | 475 | 143 | 2034 |
| Standard (28'+1") | 647 | 96 | 17 | 2150 |
Downloads
The current "official" release of Vicki is version 0.041a, which can be downloaded here. Below you can find information on the various releases.
Releases
Version 0.041 alpha (19 August 2008)
- Improved evaluation (somewhat).
- Transposition table.
Version 0.035 alpha (06 August 2007)
- More bug fixes.
- Improved evaluation for end games.
- Elementary extensions.
- Draw Content factor implemented.
Version 0.034 alpha (29 July 2007)
- Some minor bug fixes (castling rules and Zobrist calculation).
Version 0.032 alpha (07 May 2007)
- Improved move ordering and evaluation.
- Minor bug fixes with Winboard protocol.
- "kibitzing" during play (for online tournament).
Version 0.031 alpha (07 May 2007)
- Improved Static Exchange Evaluation (SEE) for capture ordering.
- Ordering of moves within alpha-beta improved considerably.
- Improved and fixed some bugs within the static evaluation.
- Support for "setboard" command in Xboard protocol.
- Engine now reports number of nodes searched per iteration.
Version 0.03 alpha (30 April 2007)
- Fixed a WinBoard reporting error.
- Added quiescence-search.
- Added Static Exchange Evaluation (SEE) for capture ordering.
- Principal variation of the previous iteration of iterative deepening is now fed back into the search, improving move ordering.
- Added elementary move ordering of normal moves.
Version 0.021 alpha (22 April 2007)
- Optimised the threaded IO to be less taxing on the processor.
- Fixed a WinBoard evaluation reporting error.
- Fixed numerous other errors, which included a nasty pawn evaluation bug.
Version 0.01 alpha (22 April 2007)
- Minimal Winboard support (force, go, new, quit, usermove, time, post and nopost supported).
- Threaded IO support.
- Basic move generation using the 12x12 board representation technique.
- Iterative deepening using the alpha-beta search algorithm.
- Very simplistic static evaluation function (material, some mobility and pawn structure).
Site maintained by Jaco van Niekerk
Last updated on 19 August 2008.