Questions tagged [engines]
Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.
679
questions
2
votes
1answer
34 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 ...
2
votes
2answers
55 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 ...
-1
votes
0answers
16 views
What is the definitive resource(s) to analyze chess, like an engine? [duplicate]
What are some good resources to learn to analyze chess for the purpose of understanding the engines. I am not asking about the resources to learn chess, we have plenty of books on that. I am more ...
15
votes
4answers
4k 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
39 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
61 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
66 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?
2
votes
0answers
29 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
44 views
Magic bitboards: My indexing doesn't seem to work!
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
315 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
79 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?
3
votes
2answers
77 views
How to get static evaluation from Stockfish in case that a king is in check?
I am working on a program that should recognize the difference between human and computer players. For this purpose, I need some parameters. A part of them would be the individual values of the static ...
1
vote
1answer
49 views
How to store moves for a magic bitboard system?
I am currently trying to implement magic bitboards into my chess engine. Let's just talk about rooks here. Given a square, what I can currently do is:
-Calculate the sliding moves on an empty board.
...
1
vote
1answer
62 views
Calculating the precise number of combinations of possible moves from a given position
I was surprised Bobby Fischer couldn't find a mate in 3 within 30 minutes in this problem by Pal Benko. This made me wonder-how many actual moves are possible with so few pieces left in only 3 moves?
[...
24
votes
7answers
5k views
Would an ensemble of chess engines beat the best one?
In many areas such as prediction and classification, ensemble methods tend to outperform individual methods. This made me wonder if it would make sense to pick a few of the top chess engines and work ...
2
votes
0answers
33 views
Multi-thread performance
I'm implementing multi-thread in my engine but I think I'm not getting the expected performance boost. Below are the results from the initial position to depth 10. The single thread version takes ...
6
votes
2answers
773 views
How are online chess engines' architecture designed?
I recently build a chess engine using javascript (https://github.com/Ram-the-coder/ai-chess-engine-v2). It runs on the browser - because of this when the chess engine is computing the best move, the ...
1
vote
1answer
35 views
ELO change of engine from pure material to very good evaluation
I am currently rewriting a chess engine with a friend. We decided to first work on the search and only later if the search works really well, we will do some very good evaluation.
The engine itself ...
1
vote
1answer
25 views
Static null move CPW engine
I have two questions about a code implementing a static null move. The questions are in the code.
The code is extracted from here: CPW engine search code
if (depth < 3
&& !...
1
vote
1answer
37 views
How do you manually set switches when you are compiling Stockfish in Visual Studio? [closed]
How do you manually set switches when you are compiling Stockfish in Visual Studio?
In the type.h file it saids:
When Makefile is not used (e.g. with Microsoft Visual Studio) some switches
need ...
5
votes
1answer
177 views
Is there a list of approximate ELO ratings for each Stockfish level?
I want to create something that will select an appropriate Stockfish difficulty setting automatically given the player's rating. The straight Stockfish v11 that I've downloaded has 20 difficulty ...
3
votes
1answer
151 views
2
votes
1answer
62 views
Engine is evaluating the same position at the same depth with different score
My engine is evaluating the same position at the same depth with a different score inside the search tree, is that normal?
[Title "depth 1 ply 3 alfa -20 beta -15 score -15 (1.Na3 a5 2.Nh3)"]
[FEN ...
4
votes
1answer
269 views
Which is better-Stockfish 10 or AlphaZero?
I know AlphaZero (an AI) is one of the best top chess engines but Stockfish is also improving. Which one is better at chess? Also is there a new Stockfish level?
3
votes
1answer
238 views
What should the practical meaning of “blunder” be?
There have been questions about the reliability of computer evaluation, and famous cases in which computers miss-evaluate positions have been given. What I want to ask is more related to the practical ...
2
votes
2answers
73 views
Setting up BugHouse on my computer
I want to have a setup on my computer to play BugHouse with three engine. One engine would be my partner and the other two would be the opposing team. How can I setup such a scenario? I use Linux but ...
3
votes
2answers
651 views
Can someone explain the positional advantages for white?
[FEN "3r1rk1/7p/bq2ppp1/p1R5/Pp2P2P/4QB2/1P3PP1/3R2K1 w - - 0 1"]
As far I can see, Black’s bishop has more scope than the white one, White has some isolated pawns, and the Black pawns rule the 5th ...
8
votes
1answer
168 views
Positions that stump engines
Chess engines are so strong that it is becoming increasingly hard to find positions that they are demonstrably evaluating incorrectly. I'm interested in collecting examples—if there are any&...
7
votes
2answers
1k views
Why, in this Capablanca game, was this move considered bad?
Regarding this position:
[fen "r2qr1k/pbpn1pbp/1p1p1np1/4p3/1PP5/3P1NP1/PBQNPPBP/R2R2K1 w - - 1 1"]
I have 2 questions:
1)If the game goes 1..c5 2.b5 the engine shows white slightly better but if 1....
-1
votes
1answer
82 views
How to make a chess engine that can identify tactics in the position?
I want to make a program that can identify chess tactics in the position, while searching moves according to given heuristics. but I am not sure exactly how to go about this.
Related to this Is there ...
1
vote
3answers
124 views
Defeating 1600 rated chess computer on chess.com
I just defeated a 1601 rated computer in under 3 minutes. Normally, it is a lot more difficult to defeat players having rating even 1500+.
I want to understand how is that possible. Was it a ...
1
vote
0answers
44 views
UCI protocol recent “official” specifications
I am looking for the most recent specification (offical would be perfect) of the UCI protocol.
I found http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/UCIProtocol.html but it is from 2004.
The most recent I could ...
3
votes
2answers
96 views
Discovered attack in quiescent search
I'm implementing quiescent search in my chess engine, although just capturing moves have been generated. In the below position, at 1 ply, the white queen captures the pawn, but the quiescent search ...
3
votes
2answers
123 views
Play against a computer, but only with a few pieces and without the kings
I would like to practise playing chess against an chess engine/program, but only with a few pieces, without the kings. For example, 3 pawns against one knight.
Does exist any chess engine/program ...
5
votes
2answers
172 views
Stockfish draw value randomization and “3-fold blindness”
In this commit, a change was made to the way Stockfish scores board positions that are draws due to 3-fold repetition or 50-move limits. Prior to this commit, a drawn position was assigned a score of ...
29
votes
4answers
5k views
Why does Stockfish undervalue pawns when compared to the classical “a piece is worth three pawns” approach?
I was taking a look at values engines give to pawns and piece and was quite shocked by Stockfish values for middlegame (Mg):
PawnValueMg = 128
KnightValueMg = 721 ~ 5.6 pawns
BishopValueMg = 825 ~ ...
21
votes
5answers
4k views
Is it possible that a radically different but equally effective playstyle exists?
There seems to be an established "chess canon", whereby general principles exist for long term strategy in the game. There is a well-characterized set of openings, a small subset of which are even ...
2
votes
1answer
107 views
Is this implementation of Killer Move heuristic correct?
I implemented the killer move heuristic based on my understanding, but is it correct?
Inserting a killer move when a non-capture causes a beta cutoff (i is a Move pointer)
// Stuff
if(val >= beta){...
9
votes
2answers
434 views
Why are world-class engines playing like this?
I was reading about the Lc0 engine and its evolution. Then took a glimpse at the games between Lc0 and the notorious Stockfish. I am not a professional or anything remotely close, but this particular ...
1
vote
1answer
131 views
Chess Engine: Faster Move Generation
Introduction
I'm in the process of rewriting my chess engine for better performance. I've started with the move generation function first. I've been looking at this person's article (Their Article) ...
1
vote
0answers
31 views
Arena Question-Can more than one match be played at same time in a tournament?
I am using Arena 3.5.1 version. Is it possible that more than one game can be played parallelly in the tournament? I want to start a Round-Robin tournament between a number of chess engines including ...
4
votes
1answer
95 views
Creating a New Neural Network for chess
I'd like to have my own chess engine similar to Leela for personal use. I’d want it to have a decent strength, let’s say 2k, and be able to play with it.
I'm wondering if I can use Leela to create a ...
5
votes
2answers
142 views
What makes a move “weird”?
I am not sure if this question has been asked before, but I recently had a friend, who is a NM, play a blitz match against stockfish (level 12 I believe) and commentate its playing style. What struck ...
2
votes
1answer
91 views
Quickly converting board to bitboard representation using python-chess library
I would like to convert a given chess board into its bitboard representation, but my implementation is rather slow. Here is what I'm doing (using the python-chess package):
board = chess.Board('...
3
votes
1answer
90 views
Which steps were blunders and inconsistencies?
This is the pgn of the game. The engine said that white made a blunder and some inconsistencies. But I can't spot them. Can you help me to find them?
[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bc4 f5 4. Nc3 f4 5....
3
votes
1answer
123 views
Why is the engine evaluating against bringing more attackers in this position?
[FEN "r2qk2r/pQpbbppp/n2p1n2/3Pp3/4P3/2N1BN2/PPP2PPP/R3KB1R w KQkq - 0 1"]
This position is evaluated at +6.4l but if I capture with the Bishop (Bxa6) it drops down to +0.8.
Why does the evaluation ...
1
vote
2answers
139 views
Using the Stockfish move generator in a home chess engine
Basically, I’m creating a chess AI and I want to focus on the search algorithm rather than the most complete way or fastest move generation portions. So, for now, I was thinking I could use a prebuilt ...
15
votes
2answers
2k views
How do chess engines decide which best line to play when the game outcome is within their horizon?
Inspired by the Hot Network Question "In this puzzle, why does white play dxe5?", when a chess engine is in a position that it can definitively call lost, drawn, or won, what policy is used to decide ...
14
votes
3answers
2k views
Is Houdini 6 a Stockfish clone?
I've been hearing this claim being bandied about quite a lot and I'm wondering if there's any substance to it. Apparently the details are in a certain thread on Talkchess, but it's not viewable to non-...
2
votes
1answer
93 views
How can I increase the search ply depth of my minimax function for my chess engine?
I have programmed a minimax function with alpha-beta pruning for a chess engine I am building. However, it is very slow and I cannot analyze to a deeper depth as it would take too much time. I believe ...
