| version | date | description of changes |
| 1.050 | 03 May 2008 | After a long hiatus, Chenard has returned to the web, this time on my new web site cosinekitty.com. This newer version supports displaying PGN move notation, as well as saving/loading PGN files. |
| 1.040 | 06 Aug 1999 | Fixed a couple of bugs that on rare occasions would corrupt the board (mostly disappearing pieces).
There was a bug that caused Move Undo to not work right after a game file was opened. Before, you would have to make a move before Undo started to work again. This has been fixed. Fixed a bug that caused Move Undo to not work when the game was over. Now you can press F1 as a keyboard shortcut for Suggest Move. |
| 1.039 | 13 Mar 1999 | Fixed a bug in the Game | Suggest Move command. For arcane reasons, Chenard was getting confused when the suggested move was accepted by the user AND that move caused check, was a pawn promotion, was an en passant capture, or was a castling move. |
| 1.038 | 14 Feb 1999 | I believe I have fixed a bug which caused Chenard to crash in extremely rare circumstances, but I'm not sure because I have not yet been able to reliably reproduce the bug in the first place.
Improved the search by making it pretend that any position which is repeated at all during the search is a forced draw. This will make Chenard avoid wasting time when it should be avoiding a draw, and will increase the likelihood of finding a forced draw when that would be in its favor. |
| 1.037 | 05 Feb 1999 | Fixed a problem with the computer search not always seeing a forcible draw by repetition. |
| 1.036 | 31 Jan 1999 | Added the new command Suggest Move under the Game menu. This allows the user to ask the computer to suggest a move to make. |
| 1.035 | 28 Jan 1999 | Found one more bug in draw-by-repetition detector. Okay, this time I really really think it works!
Added new evaluation heuristics for attacking squares in front of the enemy king that are not protected by an enemy pawn. Improved search efficiency by using transposition tables. |
| 1.034 | 24 Jan 1999 | Fixed a bug where the draw-by-repetition detector (added in v 1.033) was falsely reporting a draw.
More minor additions to evaluation heuristic: refined bishop pin detector, and added a rook pin detector. Also added a queen position table to try to keep computer's queen out of corners. |
| 1.033 | 20 Jan 1999 | Now Chenard observes the draw by repetition rule and the 50-move rule.
New option "automatic singular move" allows Chenard to make your move for you when you have only one legal move anyway. Minor enhancement to evaluation function: computer looks for veiled bishop attacks and pins. "Copy game listing" command now uses a 64K buffer instead of a 4K buffer. Added a program icon (finally!). |
| 1.032 | 14 Jan 1999 | Fixed a bug: increased move list array size from 80 to 200, because sometimes it was overflowing and causing Chenard to crash in the middle of the computer thinking. If you have experienced an "illegal operation" error with earlier versions of Chenard, this should fix it right up! |
| 1.031 | 03 Jan 1999 | Now display algebraic coordinates (rank numbers and file letters) around the board.
When the computer is considering its move, "< thinking >" is displayed below the board. |
| 1.030 | 15 Nov 1998 | Minor user interface bug fixed: the Game|Allow Computer to Resign option was working, but the checkmark state wasn't being updated until the user quit and reloaded Chenard.
Now the user may enter a non-integer number of seconds for the computer's think time. The minimum think time has been decreased from 1 second to 0.1 seconds. The default piece style is now "Skak" instead of "Tilburg". |
| 1.029 | 18 Aug 1997 | Now the View|Analysis|Best Path menu option displays both the the total number of nodes evaluated and the search speed expressed in nodes per second. Both are updated about twice a second during the search. |
| 1.028 | 22 Jun 1997 | I have made some improvements to the move ordering rules that resulted in a 15 percent increase in search efficiency. Other minor changes, such as alternating colors in the best path display (View|Analysis|Best Path). |
| 1.024 | 06 Feb 1997 | I have decided to split the distribution of WinChenard into two zip files: one containing the executable and readme file, the other containing just the WAV files needed for the View|Speak menu option (introduced in version 1.022). I made some changes to the code so that Chenard can detect when someone is trying to enable the View|Speak option without the necessary WAV files, and tells them how to get here. |
| 1.023 | 03 Feb 1997 | Due to popular demand, I finally caved in and added a help file to the distribution file winchen.zip called readme.txt in ASCII format. [Note: There is no change in version number because the Chenard program itself has not changed in this revision.] |
| 1.023 | 02 Feb 1997 | Fixed a bug: was hanging the program when speak option was enabled and a computer player predicted "mate in n". |
| 1.022 | 01 Feb 1997 | The Windows 95/NT version of Chenard can now speak! By enabling the new View|Speak option, you can tell Chenard to say every move through your sound card. The WAV file recordings of my voice are played in the correct sequence to say the move notation. By default, the View|Speak option is turned off, because I figured more people would be annoyed by this option than would like it. |
| 1.021 | 30 Jan 1997 | Added the new font style called "Skak" from Alastair Scott's Free Chess Fonts page. |
| 1.020 | 30 Jan 1997 | Added support for move undo/redo. Now you can take back a move by either selecting Edit|Undo Move or pressing Ctrl+Z. You can redo a move with Edit|Redo Move or Ctrl+D. |