Questions tagged [engines]
Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.
718
questions
-2
votes
0answers
43 views
Why are people so impressed by computers being good as chess? [closed]
I watched a documentary on television last night about Kasparov's game versus that computer, Blue Fish or something.
I barely made it through the doc, due to the insufferable, excessive admiration of ...
2
votes
1answer
68 views
The most efficient valid move generation for minimax
Problem
I am creating a chess engine in Python using Minimax algorithm (with alpha/beta pruning) but I have some issues with performance. Currently the thinking time looks something like this for a ...
1
vote
0answers
28 views
Xboard and a remote engine
I want to analyse chess games with xboard and stockfish. Locally this is no problem.
But my PC is slow, so I have rented a faster linux server, and I want let stockfish run on it.
How can I use xboard ...
-1
votes
1answer
61 views
Is Stockfish 11 SuFi 19 still fallible? [closed]
In a Game of SuFi 19 , a Czech Benoni, Stockfish 11 as White could have forced , on move 28 , a line that forced an eight piece endgame on move 59. White would have had Queen , Knight and two advanced ...
6
votes
3answers
4k views
How does Stockfish know if the king is in check?
I am writing a chess engine. I need to know how to tell if the king is in check. I was thinking that maybe I can use the approach that Stockfish uses. Where and how in Stockfish's code is check ...
0
votes
1answer
68 views
Information on adding opening knowledge to an engine
I'm writing a chess engine in C# for school purposes. As part of the assignment, I need to read something from an external document. I was thinking of reading an opening book, but I can't really find ...
2
votes
3answers
799 views
Stockfish Evaluations
I've been getting Stockfish to analyse lines of the KID, and the evaluation gives a score of around +1.5: White has a big advantage. How come this is true, when the KID is a playable(and good) opening?...
5
votes
4answers
2k views
What should be the value change if pawns are doubled?
I am creating a chess engine and I am creating a heuristic to change the board evaluation if there are doubled pawns. Now, I have no experience in creating engines, so I figured I would ask this site ...
1
vote
2answers
86 views
Computer chess endgame
Again , this is an interesting position I need help to solve. In a game Stockfish vs Ethereal , Stockfish was ahead , but Ethereal could have found refuge in the following endgame. Is the position ...
4
votes
3answers
128 views
Book recommendation for chess engine building
This might be too broad a question, but can anyone recommend specific books that deal with chess engines, including hard-coded ones such as Stockfish, Komodo, and other ones also based on neural ...
3
votes
3answers
906 views
Owen's Defence playability
The Owen's defence is a chess opening which starts with 1. e4 b6!?. This opening is playable if Black can get a quick c7-c5 break, where he has a pawn on e6, b6, and then he pushes c7-c5.
However, ...
8
votes
7answers
236 views
How to make an AI chess engine which can play like a human of similar rating?
We have lot of sophisticated chess engines, but I always prefer playing with a human online, because they make genuine mistakes / blunders which adds a human touch. Playing with computer at a high ...
1
vote
2answers
1k views
Lichess endgame evaluation
Why is it that Lichess, and other engines for that matter, give a non-zero evaluation score on an endgame position that should be either a draw or a win for one of the sides (given perfect play)? For ...
1
vote
3answers
393 views
Engine Evaluation Confused
The Muzio Gambit is -0.8 by Stockfish depth 22. However, if the f7-pawn is moved to the g-file, the evaluation falls to -3.5. How is that so? Both positions seem fine for White.
[FEN ""]
[...
3
votes
3answers
297 views
Does Stockfish NNUE have contempt implemented?
Per title. As I understand contempt, it's a setting in the eval function that adds a bonus for material remaining on the board. This makes the engine favor positions with more material (i.e. more ...
4
votes
0answers
59 views
CNN autoencoder for feature extraction for a chess position
I'm currently building a chess engine in my free time while entering my second year of my master's studies in computer science. For a class we need to perform a litterature survey of a topic and ...
2
votes
2answers
130 views
Lc0 vs. Stockfish
Stockfish analyses many positions per second and chooses the best line. Lc0 is a neural network that immediately ignores moves which don't work, but is slower. However, somehow Stockfish is better. ...
3
votes
1answer
104 views
Machine Learning parameters for human vs computer detection
I would like to start a machine learning project that should recognize whether a player is a person or a computer.
I have a data set with labeled labels (computer or human).
In your opinion, what ...
2
votes
1answer
113 views
Chess Engine with Python-Based / API?
I went through the most popular chess engines, e.g. StockFish, Komodo, Rykba and so forth, but I wasn't able to a.) find an API or b.) a python based Engine - does anyone know a suitable project?
I ...
11
votes
1answer
2k views
Why does a chess engine not get excited about a piece exchange at the end of its analysis depth?
I read about the chess engine algorithms and came up with a question. If, for example roughly all (disregarding alpha-beta pruning) possible 20 moves variations are calculated, why does a chess ...
1
vote
1answer
199 views
Traxler Counterattack
I've had a few looks at the Traxler counterattack before. It seems fine for Black, but somehow the engine (Stockfish) says that White has a +2.57 advantage after Nxf7, but not much advantage after ...
6
votes
2answers
2k views
Where is the blunder that White made?
[Event "the_meayhi vs. oxygen2020"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2020-08-16"]
[White "the_meayhi"]
[Black "oxygen2020"]
[Result "1-0"]
[...
1
vote
1answer
66 views
Finding a Kasparov Game
I remember seeing a Kasparov game, where Black played a classical bishop sacrifice. He was playing against a computer, and I'm pretty sure it was Deep Junior. I have tried to find this game, but it ...
26
votes
4answers
6k views
Should a chess engine be aware of opposite-side castling?
I often hear chess experts and chess articles say that when opposite side castling occurs on the board that it is important to launch an attack on the enemy player as fast as possible. Up to the point ...
4
votes
1answer
683 views
What does Stockfish NNUE mean for Stockfish?
Apparently there was a major update to Stockfish recently such that it gained +50 elo (per regression tests). I'm told that the difference is coming from the new NNUE (efficiently updatable neural ...
2
votes
1answer
54 views
Engine vs Engine Database
Does anyone know of engine vs engine databases? Like stockfish vs leela vs komodo pgns for 1000s of games with a lot of time per move? I want data for how draw rate changes as engine rating goes up, ...
3
votes
1answer
168 views
Transposition Tables
Are transposition tables (in engines) used for one or multiple games?
My current knowledge of transposition tables is that when an engine searches the game tree, there will sometimes be positions ...
5
votes
3answers
4k views
Why is White's accuracy 99.7% instead of 100.0%?
Here is a short game played online at chess.com.
[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 d6 5. d4 Bb6 6. dxe5
Black resigned for some unknown reason; maybe a mouse slip or he/she ...
2
votes
1answer
75 views
When are games against engines drawn?
When two engines play against each other in a game of chess, when is it appropriate to declare a draw when clearly no progress is possible?
For example:
8/6k1/8/R3K2p/2r3p1/6P1/7P/8 w - - 0 2
This ...
3
votes
1answer
79 views
What are the most common checks in chess?
I read somewhere that to optimize move generation for a chess engine it's good to have fast detection of position where one side is checked (to eliminate illegal moves).
The author suggested that ...
1
vote
3answers
654 views
Chess engine with no evaluation
One of the most difficult parts of a chess engine is the evaluation function. Handcrafted evaluation functions are very long and complicated, while NN evaluations are hard to make and train. That's ...
-1
votes
1answer
64 views
Need help finding a tactics database with motifs [duplicate]
I am trying to make a neural network which could determine what chess tactic is present in a position. For this, I need to have a database of chess tactics labelled with correct motifs.
A similar ...
1
vote
1answer
102 views
How many positions per second should my homemade engine calculate?
My program prints time spent on executing a function for doing/retracting move, and both take together an average of 00.0002 seconds. That means my engine can analyze at most 5000 positions per second,...
0
votes
0answers
61 views
Forced mate in 'n' from opening [duplicate]
Advanced chess engines can report a forced mate (for some given position) within a huge number of moves. For example, mate in 40 or 50 is not unheard of. Theoretically, is it possible that there ...
2
votes
1answer
88 views
Mac - Chess App
I was trying to play chess on the included chess app on mac, and after the computer's turn, it will not allow me to make any move at all, and I am 100% sure I am not in check as the game just started, ...
5
votes
2answers
140 views
How to calculate percentage of accuracy of game-play based on the number of mistakes, blunders and inaccuracies?
For some time now, chess.com analysis suggests the accuracy of the gameplay based on the blunders, mistakes and inaccuracies, one committed during his/her gameplay. Now, my question is,
Whether there ...
1
vote
2answers
65 views
Material score in analysis report
Is it possible to do an analysis using Scid vs PC or any other major chess program where it shows material score after each move in addition to showing the normal evaluation score? So for an endgame ...
4
votes
2answers
184 views
Can I host lichess server to my local machine to use the study offline?
Lichess is a free, Ad-free and Open-Source chess server. To me, it has the best STUDY option over the internet. I am thinking whether it's possible or not to host a localhost setup using the source ...
5
votes
1answer
102 views
What insights have neural networks revealed about chess?
I've been interested to see an analysis of the decision making processes of an NN in determining the difference between good and bad moves. The only writings I've seen is about how NN can be applied ...
1
vote
1answer
170 views
Which engine is better at Chess960-Stockfish or Leela?
It seems that TCEC has seen Stockfish and Leela go back and forth. It is probable that these days Stockfish is a little bit better than Leela. I was wondering, since it is different in Chess960, which ...
3
votes
1answer
72 views
How to I apply moves (bitboard) and continue searching? My current attempt is throwing a strange error!
Explanation
I have a list of all possible current moves in a position. At each node, I want to then generate all possible moves and continue. The problem is that my code is modifying the list of moves ...
3
votes
2answers
125 views
Compiling Stockfish to disable own castling while allowing opponent castling
For artistic purposes, I would like to create and study engine games in which only one side is able to castle.
For this, I need to compile a version of Stockfish which never castles, and doesn't ...
19
votes
4answers
5k views
How often do grandmasters miss checkmate?
Although top players are extremely good at finding checkmate, the number of permutations of moves in just 3 moves can be hundreds of thousands, and the farther out the possible mate (e.g. mate in 4, ...
5
votes
1answer
49 views
Hosting bughouse server for local competition?
I'm interested in running a local competition for bughouse engines. What chess server software can I use to run the games? The most relevant question I found was but the answer is almost 4 years old.
...
0
votes
2answers
67 views
Is there a standard way of scoring a position for chess programs?
It seems most chess programs score a position basically the same way, give or take a few tenths of a point, for a given position. For example, Stockfish might score a position as .65 while Houdini ...
1
vote
1answer
96 views
Why is stockfish not accepting my move?
I am trying to play with stockfish from terminal.
I entered the following commands:
position startpos e2e4
d
The output was:
Why is stockfish not accepting my move?
3
votes
1answer
90 views
Are there any cloud engine services solely 'pay per use'?
I'm looking for a chess cloud engine service where I only have to pay for the time I use.
I thought chessbase.com provides that, but you have to get a premium membership first (as far as I understand)....
1
vote
0answers
57 views
Magic bitboards: My indexing doesn't seem to work! [closed]
I am beginning to understand magic bitboards. I have successfully implemented them with Rooks, and I am currently working with Bishops. The method is very similar though.
Problem
I have a bishop on g7 ...
4
votes
3answers
339 views
Is there a standard system of classification of games?
Given there are practically infinite number of chess games possible, does there exist a standard system of classifying or naming games simlar to how there are rules for naming a chemical compound ...
1
vote
1answer
92 views
Mate In N algorithm-Lichess Computer Analysis
Is it possible to have the computer analysis report mate in 12 moves to only change that to mate in higher number of moves, like 15 for example, after it searches deeper?
