Questions tagged [engines]
Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.
898
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Tool for storing multiple engines analysis of chess positions databse
I am looking for a tool that can store engine analysis of a chess positions database. It should be able to store multiple lines of analysis with complete info like depth, tablebase hits, score, etc.; ...
- 326
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Border pieces in Magic Bitboards
I've been trying to understand magic bitboards, but everywhere I've read failed to explain how edge pieces are handled.
The pieces at the borders are ignored to save space.
So for a bishop at D3, the ...
- 21
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2
answers
554
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Can't properly use python stockfish package in Mac
I'm trying to get stockfish for python working but I am running into issues. This is my code so far.
from stockfish import Stockfish
stockfish = Stockfish('/Users/Me/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.9/site-...
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3
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How do I set up an engine never to resign in Arena GUI?
Is there a way to set up the engine in a way it never resignes?
I want to practice mating with bishop and knight but after the engine reaches the depth it can tell it will be checkmated it resigns. I ...
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Which GM said something along the lines of "I can beat any chess engine; just give me time enough (to prevent blunders)"
So I guess I read this long time ago -most probably in the 2000s, when engines started to beat humans. I just have no idea who said it, but I guess it was not a top player at that moment (say Kasparov ...
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Scid vs. PC: a hint needed
I have now installed Scid vs. PC and I have made my first move with White to e4. Now the engine computes the position tree. How can I stop it and make it move with black after some fixed time ?
It ...
- 37
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How to find 'Thermopylaes' with engines?
Motivation
“You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one." – Michail Tal
I am looking for ways to systematically find ...
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Is testing an opening by having a computer play against itself viable?
Recently, I got into a brief argument with a colleague when I mentioned that I wanted to use an engine playing against itself to generate a larger sample size for a rare sideline.
His argument was ...
- 183
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How do you set up two engines to play each other on a cloud server?
I am exploring a semi-novel idea in the London system, where I play 2...b5!? after 1. d4 Nf6 2. Bf4
A main line goes 3.Nf3 Bb7 4.e3 and now:
4...a6 5.Bd3 e6 or Nh5
4...a6 5.c4 bxc4/b4
4...b4 5.Bd3 e6/...
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Is it worth it to use a redundant mailbox representation in addition to bitboards?
Just like the title says. A mailbox would allow for better handling of checking "which piece is at a certain square," and I see no real downsides to it besides the need to synchronize it ...
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Why isn't legal move filtering done at search time?
Most engines have some method of filtering out pseudo-legal moves from the actual legal ones. However, is there any reason not to keep them? With bit-boards, you can quickly filter out the ones that ...
- 133
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How do Chess Bitboards generate individual moves?
If I have a pawn bitboard like this, for example,
00000000
00000000
00000000
00000000
00001000
00000001
11110110
00000000
generating all of the, say, legal capture moves to the right will perform a ...
- 133
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How do you nerf Stockfish to analyze the same position multiple times?
I want to make some statistics by analyzing the same position, multiple times, at different levels of Stockfish.
Precisely, I would like Stockfish to analyze a specific position at different "...
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What does it mean when stockfish evaluates a move as an inaccuracy after previously thinking it was the best move?
I stumbled onto this position from a game posted on reddit. Stockfish gives the best move as cxd4, which it evaluates as +2.
If you play cxd4, it then says cxd4 was an inaccuracy (only being +1), and ...
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Why does Stockfish miss mate in 5 with only two legal moves?
I'm interested to understand what is going on for Stockfish on Lichess here. There are only two legal moves for Black, and it gives the position mate-in-14 for white.
When asked to play its ...
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If you play an engine in Arena, how do you send it setoption commands?
I really want to play two engines against each other, one with a tablebase path and one without, but I assume this is just a special case of the question in the title.
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Why does f3 weaken white's position here?
Take this game:
[fen ""]
[Startply "13"]
1. d4 d5 2. Bf4 Nc6 3. Nf3 Bf5 4. e3 Nb4 5. Nh4?? Bxc2 6. Qd2 e5 7. Bg3 Be4 (7... Bxb1 8. Rxb1) 8. f3 Bxb1 9. Rxb1
I'm specifically ...
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Are engines impaired by the 50-move rule?
Are we missing too much from the 50-move rule implementation to engines, whether HCE (Hand-crafted evaluation) or/and NN (Neural Network)?
We know that certain endgames are a win without the rule.
...
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Testing Mate Possibility Without Use of King
I would like to be able to convince myself of the possibility (or lack thereof) of mate using various piece combinations in which the attacker doesn't use their own king.
I'd like to approach this by ...
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2
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Help with evaluating this position
rn2k2r/ppp2p2/4bn1p/2bp4/8/1B3N1P/PPP2PP1/RNB1R1K1 w Qkq - 0 1
I am having trouble evaluating this position, I believe the activity of the pieces is equal, besides the week h6 pawn I cannot see why ...
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Issue with connecting engine to lichess bot (uci communication)
My engine is responding correctly to the first inputs from the GUI (as above), but when it receives go movetime 10000 it just crashes and I don't know why. When I test my engine manually in CMD I get ...
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The ultimate decision of the eternal bishop vs knight question
The following is...disturbing.
[FEN "bbbbkbbb/bbbbbbbb/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]
Black is about 15*3-38, say 10 units up (as Black will also grab a pawn and exchange on b2 or ...
- 10.2k
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Why do these convergent lines evaluate differently?
I recently analyzed alternative lines for this puzzle on chess.com.
[Event "French Championship"]
[Site "Val d'Isere FRA"]
[Date "2002.08.23"]
[Round "5"]
[...
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1
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Why is my chess engine that uses minimax with alpha-beta pruning so slow, even at depth 3?
I have little experience with any sort of chess AI and am at a complete loss as to why it still takes a couple of seconds to calculate a decent move even at just depth 3. Here is the code:
private ...
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Lichess Cloud Evaluation Flaw?
In the following position that's in the Traxler Counterattack: https://lichess.org/analysis/r1b1k2N/ppp1q1pp/5n2/3Pp3/2Bn4/8/PPPP1bPP/RNBQ1K1R_w_q_-_1_9
[fen "r1b1k2N/ppp1q1pp/5n2/3Pp3/2Bn4/8/...
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Hamppe-Meitner, the final verdict?
[FEN ""]
1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Bc5 3.Na4 Bxf2+
For those of you who never heard of Hamppe-Meitner. Now I dimly remember that a super engine somewhere found a White win, but even the bringer of the ...
- 10.2k
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Do engines have a larger advantage over a human at long or short time controls?
Question: Title question, basically: do engines have a larger advantage over a human at long or short time controls? Have any studies been done on this?
Context for the question: On a reddit thread ...
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1
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165
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Optimising Stockfish parameters when batch-analyzing with python-chess
I am running a python script that analyzes a large batch of PGN games (each of ~5,000 games) across and exports the games evaluations. It calls Stockfish 14 to analyze each game at depth 20. **[EDIT: ...
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1
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174
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What's the strongest non-ML chess engine?
What's the current strongest Chess Engine built solely on heuristics, no neural networks or any kind of deep learning?
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Do modern chess engines learn material values through self-play?
I have a simple question about how Chess engines like Stockfish and Leela value material. Do they use traditional material values (i.e. 1 for pawn, 3 for knight/bishop, 5 for rook, 9 for queen), or do ...
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Looking for free versions of older chess engines
In connection with another project, I am looking on the internet for some free versions of older chess engines, such as some of the old Chessmaster engines from the 1990s. I would even take an old ...
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Python Efficient Board Scoring Function To Use As Placeholder
I'm building a chess engine in Python. I'd like to find a board evaluation function that would be easy to put into my engine as a placeholder while I work on other aspects of the engine first.
I would ...
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Using pgn-extract to output FEN + evaluation
I'm using pgn-extract to convert a PGN database into FEN + evaluations. My goal is something like this:
1. e4 e6 2. d4 b6 3. a3 Bb7
Into this:
rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/4P3/8/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKBNR b KQkq e3 ...
- 88
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5
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Approximating a rating for too strong engines
Suppose we have an extremely strong engine that happens to win every game it participates in even against the most powerful engines and players.
If it continues to win every game, its rating (for ...
- 221
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4
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156
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For fixed-depth search, how much is the efficiency different between odd and even moves?
If a chess engine calculates in even depth, in the final position, it has to move again, whereas if it calculates at the odd depth, then the opponent has to move at the end of calculation (ignoring ...
- 173
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1
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167
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Average number of moves until checkmate for two players of unequal strenth
Suppose a game is played, until checkmate, between players of unequal strength, say 1800 vs 2800. What would be the average number of moves be for, say, 1000 games? I also ponder 2000 vs 2800 and 2200 ...
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Evaluation bar cheating - how much does it really give, and how can it be detected?
To start off - due to my anxiety, I do not play any form of chess against other people (except some friends of mine, but that obviously doesn't matter for the context of this post).
I recently got ...
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225
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What does "hashfull 1000" mean in Stockfish?
When I use Stockfish, the "hashfull" value climbs up to 1000 and then stays there. I was wondering what this means.
The documentation says :
* hashfull <x> the hash is x permill full, ...
- 153
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What is the best chess engine for 1 CPU?
We have now GPUs, Quad-cores, i7s, i5s, i3s, and so on. However, I am wondering what is the best chess engine for 1 CPU. ChessBase offers Fritz 11 for free. Fritz 11 works very well with 1 CPU. Also, ...
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Clarifications on the number of nodes explored per seconds
I am trying to understand exactly what is meant when a chess engine is reporting a number of explored nodes per second. For example, on a single thread, Stockfish is reporting about 1.5 million nodes ...
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Where can you play against AlphaZero?
I have read a few articles about the game between Stockfish and AlphaZero. But is there a place where anyone can play against AlphaZero?
- 835
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Is it more helpful to play with a titled player than to play with a chess engine?
I can choose to hire a titled player to play with me; at the same time, playing with the computer is usually free and more flexible.
As far as improving one's chess skill is concerned, is there more ...
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2
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141
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What do you think will happen when chess gets solved? [closed]
When some ultra strong computer discovers the perfect game of chess, will chess as a game die?
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143
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How to compare Stockfish move preference every 1000 nodes
I would like to test how Stockfish or other Engines change their moves and evaluations as the number of nodes increases. Is there a way to run Stockfish (or another engine) and force it to output its ...
4
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6
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Why don’t chess engines use Node.js?
I agree that this might look like a question that Google has the answer to, but I could not find the answer. C++ is a language that many chess engines are built on, like Stockfish and Leela Chess Zero,...
- 835
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Chess engine in python
Are there any open-source chess engines that are written in primarily or fully in python? For example, Stockfish is written in primarily C++.
- 835
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Why is this position a forced mate?
I was playing a game against one of the chess.com bots, as shown below (I was playing as white). On analysing the game afterwards, I'm aware I made a lot of mistakes, but the one I'm really confused ...
- 185
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2
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155
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How to evaluate whether a position will result in a draw vs a decisive outcome?
Suppose 2 positions both have 'equal' evaluations according to the engine, but the first position has strong, easy-to-spot moves which lead to a drawn endgame, whereas the second game is extremely ...
- 1,751
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1
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113
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"Strong ICCF players" What is your input into the game? [duplicate]
This question is directed to the experienced ICCF players. My question is basically what is the input that the human player has into the game. I was just wondering because with the use opening books, ...
- 2,118
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99
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What is the human influence in modern correspondence chess? [duplicate]
On most websites, such as chess.com and lichess.org, computers aren't allowed, but when playing under ICCF rules engines are allowed. With the increase in strength of engines especially from the ...
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