Questions tagged [engines]
Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.
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Literature on chess engines' playing style
I'm aware of Matthew Sadler and Jozarov's outputs, do you have any other suggestions?
Any first-hand attempt of trying to describe engines' playing main themes would also be welcome.
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Problem with tablebases
I hope this is the right forum for my question.
So, I have all 5 men files on my HDD and the two files
KRPPvKR.rtbz
KRPPvKR.rtbw
In the position here (8/2K2k2/3R3P/5P2/8/8/8/r7 w - - 0 10) everything ...
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Why is 11...Qg6 the best move in this line of the italian?
In the following position:
2kr3r/ppp1bppp/2nq4/1N2pb2/8/3PBN2/PPP2PPP/R2Q1RK1 b - - 4 11
The engine (Stockfish 14) suggests 11...Qg6 as the best move for black. It evaluates 11...Qg6 -3.4 compared to ...
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What is the maximum theoretical (and practical) limit to an engines Elo? [duplicate]
If I'm not wrong, Chess #1 is at 2800 something, (Magnus) And the #1 Engine is Stockfish, with something of 3200-ish.
What I'm asking that is there any theoretical limit to the elo?
yes, I know, Elo ...
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Search returns PV that has depth reduced by null move reduction
I was running my program on a couple test positions earlier, and I came across a problem where the PV would be shorter than the max search depth. I am now pretty sure this is due to null move ...
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Humanlike chess engine that isn't a neural network
stackexchange! I am currently trying to make a chess engine that tries to make the most human moves instead of the best ones.
Now, I am aware of Maia Chess, which I believe is a neural network chess ...
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I would like to make engine play specific openings
I would like to organize an engine tournament on Arena and restrict it only to one opening. How do I do that?
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What is the fastest way of generating a list of all attacked squares?
I have generated pseudo-legal moves, and now need to check if they are legal.
I believe the fastest way of doing this is comparing the kings position to a bitboard or list of all attacked squares, and ...
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How are piece phase values for tapered evaluation/phase calculation calculated?
On the chessprogramming wiki site for tapered evaluation, there is the following code snippet for how engines calculate phase:
eval = ((opening * (256 - phase)) + (endgame * phase)) / 256
PawnPhase = ...
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Setting Stockfish at 2900 strength for a match against top 1-5 GMs
Obviously stockfish 15 is well above the capabilities of any human to even draw a game, Hikaru Nakamura needed a handicap of 2 pawns from the side of Komodo only to lose 1.5-0.5 in a mini match ...
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How can I ensure my transposition table is working correctly?
I am programming a chess engine in C#, and it uses a Negamax function with alpha/beta pruning and "killer" moves for sorting. Additionally, I have implemented a crude transposition table ...
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I found, and now cannot find, an awesome chess website
I need help finding a lost chess website that was totally awesome! It was a wiki style website where you can enter in a FEN string into the search bar, then all the computer calculations would show (...
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Why is Leela Chess Zero rated low on CCRL leaderboards?
Lc0 routinely makes it far in the Top Chess Engine Championship (TCEC). Latest, it defeated Komodo Dragon and nearly tied Stockfish:
Yet, we see on CCRL 40/15, Lc0 is ranked #32, 159 ELO behind ...
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Extremely slow move generation in chess engine
I am making my first chess engine in python (which is obviously not that fast). I am using the mailbox approach rather than bitboards, as switching would likely take more effort than just restarting ...
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Are Chess Engines Humanoid Figures?
On Youtube it shows chess engines as humanoid robots (here, for instance). Is this true, and if so do they play chess over the board according to their software? That would explain why they don't ...
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How to implement Zobrist tables?
I am making a chess engine and trying to implement Zobrist tables into my engine. From what I've read, my understanding is that you first calculate the Zobrist hashcode, then get the modulo of the ...
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How to run perft with Stockfish in the terminal on a macbook?
I just got a Macbook and I'm attempting to build a chess engine, so I want to run the perft function on Stockfish to compare my perft results. When I was on PC, I was able to download the engine from ...
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Difficulty with magic bitboards
I am having some difficulty with magic bitboards, in that multiple blocker bitboards which would result in different attack boards having the same index. I realize this is likely because of one of the ...
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Any engine that can play like Petrosian?
So, I am a big big fan of Petrosian and his Style. I tried to search for engines that can actually try to imitate it's style, instead I found Tal's engine (Opental 1.1). Can anyone help me?
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Tools to study positions with partial information?
TL;DR Is there a chess engine or other tools to study a "position" where the exact location of certain pieces is not known?
From the following chess position, a plan could be to win the a2 ...
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Why is this the best move?
I was just reviewing my game and was wondering why the AI would think this is the best move. All I see is giving white a free knight.
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Storing generated moves for a chess engine in Java [closed]
I am in the process of building a chess engine in Java using bitboards. I know C/C++ is more optimal for this but I have no knowledge of either so I'd rather attempt to do it with Java for now. I have ...
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How to improve performance of Quiescence Search?
Thanks to information provided by a previous answer I added a quiescence search to the end of my negamax search to ensure I am not left with a piece hanging. I think it works however it takes a very ...
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Chess Programming, Have to clear my transposition table after every move
I am developing a chess engine and have implemented various basic algorithms such as negamax search, alpha beta pruning with move ordering, and quiescence search. I have a transposition table with an ...
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How to prevent evaluation function thinking better position after defended piece is taken?
So I’m making a chess engine and have an evaluation function that has material as (a large) part of the eval weighting. But the eval function (as if depth is 1) will think that one side is up a piece ...
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Pros and cons of engine-assisted play for training
When I first learned chess, practice against a strong player, actively advising me, was the primary tool. They'd see how good my move was, suggest what to do, offer review it. Today, as I'm relearning,...
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Scid Vs. PC | Using Stockfish on Linux [duplicate]
I have downloaded Stockfish 16 from their site at:
https://stockfishchess.org/
Using the command line in linux (I'm a newb), I have compiled it in the 'src' folder. After this, the exec file appears ...
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What are the strengths of different Chess Engines? [duplicate]
I personally use Komodo most of the time, but lots of people use stockfish. What are the differences between engines and what do they help you improve on better compared to other engines.
Tl;DR Where ...
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How to ask an AI engine to test this chess variant?
I would like to use an AI engine to test how well the following chess variant would work: The rules are as in usual chess, except
Castling is not possible; instead, the next rule takes its place:
...
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chess engine: alpha beta pruning starts evaluating moves incorrectly
I'm writing a simple chess engine in Go and have been running into some issues related to search. I'm currently using iterative deepening and alpha-beta search using the negamax pruning. My issue I ...
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Why does Stockfish continue analysis and report a non-zero result for a position with insufficient material?
In the position shown in the image, Stockfish (via the lichess interface) shows a top line of 91 ... Rxe5 92. Bxe5 Kxe5 93. Kc5 Kf5. 94 Kd5 Kf4 and so on. It reports an evaluation of +0.1 for the line....
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Differences between normal chessbase and chessbase Steam
I just recently realised that the chessbase software is available on Steam, which would seem normal to me if it wasn't almost half the price compared to the version on the official website. I have ...
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What is the status for EIGHT piece endgame tablebases?
An earlier question here asked in 2012 about the status of 7-piece tablebases. Today complete 7-piece tables are widely available.
So today, what is the status of 8-piece endgame tablebases?
How ...
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How is this game a draw? [duplicate]
I was watching some YouTube videos, and I stumbled upon this game:
[Event "?"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "?"]
[Black "?&...
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How to use Stockfish for the review feature on Chess com?
I really like the "Review" feature in Chess com, where there is a "virtual coach" explaining why a particular move is better than the other. But it requires a paid membership for ...
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What's the fastest way to detect blunders with an engine?
My main goal is to detect blunders in chess games.
I wrote a python program that loads a large pgn database and then analyses the games. I did it by letting Stockfish go through every game and every ...
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Can someone spot the issue with my search + evaluation?
I am working on a chess engine and believe I'm using my evaluation function in Negamax and Minimax with alpha beta pruning wrong. A couple days ago, I implemented Negamax with alpha beta pruning and ...
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Which gambits do engines rate positively? [duplicate]
I often hear about "dubious" gambits - those that may be successful against mediocre opponents, but with correct preparation or against an engine are inaccurate.
Which gambits do the engines ...
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Is Stockfish reliable as far as draw conclusions is concerned?
I just stumbled across this endgame :
https://www.365chess.com/game.php?back=1&gid=134885&m=24
Basically, Black has only a Queen, White has Queen and Rook. Black resigns.
But here comes the ...
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Drastic difference between perft and search + evaluation performance
I'm creating my own chess engine and noticed a significant time difference between running perft and the search + evaluation. At depth 5, perft on the initial position searches 4,865,609 nodes in ...
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Why are there no strong ASIC-based chess engines?
If I'm correct (I may be not) there were no attempts to hardcode any strong chess engine directly into silicon and try to optimize it all the way to the transistor level. Is there any reason for that, ...
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What are examples of chess positions where the best move for a human to play is a game-theoretic error?
I'm looking for positions where the game-theoretic perfect move is actually a mistake for any human to play (because it would lead to complications that they can't be expected to handle), and ...
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Fritz 18 Position Setup For Engine Match
The other day, I saw a GothamChess on two engines playing the King's Gambit. I thought to myself that it would be interesting to do the same thing, so I tried it in Fritz 18. I know that I have to ...
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Unknown "Mystery" Engine
Recently, a strange engine with a mysterious nickname "Mystery" appeared on CCC, there is no information about it except the most basic one. One of the strangest things is that at 'CCC 20 ...
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Chess Engine on Matlab
I finished a university project working extensively with matlab, so I decided to create a chess engine on matlab too. Has anyone had any experience creating/using a chess engine on matlab. I ...
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Are there chess apps that allow users to record moves and do not include a chess engine?
I have seen chess apps that work as a chess clock. Are there chess apps that allow users to record moves and do not include a chess engine? The idea is to use the app during a chess tournament as a ...
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When and why should I develop my knight to e2 or f3 in the English Opening?
I have heard that in English opening white should play d4 and Nf3, unless black plays Bc5. In this case white plays d3 and Ne2 in order to block the black bishop. However, that lesson seems to be ...
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Is there any stockfish web api?
I would like to create a web page with a stockfish analysis which evaluates the sharpness of position, but to do that I would like to avoid to upload myself a Stockfish program in the cloud. I would ...
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Is there a chess program that profiles its opponent?
To my knowledge, most modern chess programs use some kind of minimax algorithm, effectively choosing the best moves for both sides. So, no matter how poorly I play, at every new move Stockfish expects ...
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Is Shredder just making a mistake or is there a strategy here?
I was playing against the online version of Shredder on the hard setting, and after this weird opening phase I went ahead with a queen trade, but weirdly Shredder didn't take my queen. Is this just a ...
