Questions tagged [engines]
Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.
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How to estimate chess engine rating? Year 2023 [duplicate]
Previous questions have asked about how to get a chess engine rated. The last one I found was in 2015. It's 8 years since then.
I've started building a chess engine. What's a good way nowadays to get ...
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Understanding UCI Output of Chess Engine - how to get best continuation
I am trying to understand and parse the UCI (Universal Chess Interface) output of a chess engine (here Stockfish 15.1). Specifically, I calling Stockfish with the following command and want to get the ...
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Is it possible to lose to "Worstfish"?
I just found out about Stockfish's stupid little brother, Worstfish. Worstfish calculates the worst move in every position and plays it. Because of this, is it possible to lose against it? If you give ...
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Can previous and continuing research on N-piece tablebases be used toward human theory of chess?
This follows another questions here:
What is the status for EIGHT piece endgame tablebases?
My answer there was appropriately removed as being question in reaction to that question, well in light of ...
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How to calculate transposition table hash index
I'm writing a chess engine in Java, and I'm having difficulty understanding how to calculate the hash address/index, based on the zobrist key.
According to the Chess Programming Wiki, since the 64-bit ...
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Is it possible to make stockfish promote only to a queen and nothing else?
Is there a way to limit stockfish to promote pawns only to a queen? I'm using python chess library and a stockfish engine. I'm making an engine play itself and then use its moves to control the ...
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What engine & setup can I use to analyze a Bughouse position from a single board only (one board), taking into account the pieces in hand?
I have looked at the Sjeng and the Bughousechess.wz.cz website and the answers in the other page. This is not quite a Crazyhouse equivalent analysis, due to the capture mechanics. The pages are very ...
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How to install external engines in Lucas chess?
I downloaded several chess engines ,and tried to add them with the help of engine configuration, but Lucas wanted .exe type file. My downloaded engine files were not shown because they were in the ZIP ...
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Today's engines changing what was considered the best plan
So when I peruse the many strategy books I have, I have found many positions where there is a clear best plan, that seems clearly much better than all other plans. The variations given by the experts,...
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Viability of 4 player chess engines
I got into a discussion with a friend recently about the viability of 4 player chess engines. He claimed that they would be impossible to create at anywhere near the level of modern chess engines.
I'm ...
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In a completely lost position do chess engines attempt to bait their opponent into mistakes, or just play for the longest survival?
Essentially, do Chess Engines acknowledge that their opponents might make "flawed" moves? Or do they always assume absolutely perfect play.
More specifically, if an engine has a choice ...
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Horrible branching rate in kiwipete position
My chess engine can generally get a branching factor 4.5 in the opening and around 7.5 during average middlegame positions. However, I recently tested my engine on the test position Kiwipete and found ...
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How bad is Stockfish in Fog of War chess
Since in Fog of War chess you cant see all the board , I think that engines would suck at it.Have there been any attempts on playing engine tournaments under Fog of War chess?
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Chess match between two smartphones
I have two smartphones with different CPUs, GPUs, RAM etc...
How can I put them to play a chess match each other? By using different chess engines or the same one, with choosing CPU or GPU.
For ...
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What are the best practices for measuring search and evaluation speed?
I understand that perft is the standard tool for measuring an engine's move generation speed. However, during a perft search you don't execute your search, move ordering or evaluation functions - you ...
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Issue with Magic Bitboards
I have a implemented a similar version to the example given on the chess programming wiki by Tord Romstad.
I just changed the random generation and stored the magics in an array. I even kept the old ...
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How can I install chess engines in windows?
Actually, I want to install top 10 chess engines in my PC for practicing better.
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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
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 engine that ...
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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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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 ...
user34459
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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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