Questions tagged [engines]
Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.
815
questions
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1answer
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How to avoid the same opening move in an engine built using Python chess
I created a chess engine using the Python chess library. It has an evaluation function (piece values, piece square values, and capture values) and minimax. Alpha-beta pruning is also implemented. At ...
-1
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1answer
63 views
meaning of fractional depth in chessbase?
when I load fritz 17 in chessbase, it often shows depth as for e.g. 18/25. what does this mean?
14
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5answers
4k views
+50
How difficult is it to win a winning endgame against an engine?
Consider an endgame like the one shown below (white to move):
[fen "5k2/5p2/r7/8/6R1/4b1PP/8/5R1K w - - 0 50"]
Stockfish gives white a solid +3 advantage here and that seems appropriate ...
6
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3answers
1k views
Why did Lichess annotate this as a blunder?
Lichess analysis annotated 4. Nf3?? as a blunder preferring (4. Nc3) (see on Lichess). I am trying to understand the ideas that make this a blunder. At depth 23 with Stockfish 13+ NNEU, both were ...
21
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2answers
4k views
Are there any moves that humans agree are best which engines cannot see?
Are there any moves from real, preferably reasonably well known games which humans agree are great moves, but which engines cannot see, or, at least, think are weak/average?
Here is an example that I ...
1
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0answers
96 views
Did Black, my colleague, cheat in our Lichess game? [closed]
I recently played against a colleague of mine, who claimed to have a chess.com elo of about 1000. I am about 1700 on Lichess. We played 3 matches, where he won two. In these matches I got completely ...
4
votes
1answer
634 views
Problems with computing the Zobrist hash for a chess position?
I'm attempting to use Zobrist hashing in my chess engine, but I'm running into some difficulties getting it to work correctly.
I'm using the random numbers from this site so I can test my results ...
8
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3answers
791 views
Material vs positional advantage: does Stockfish give good advice?
This is from Yusupov's "Build up your chess" volume 1, chapter 11 (pins).
[Event "Munich"]
[Site "Build Up Your Chess"]
[Date "1994"]
[Round "Diagram 11.4&...
1
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2answers
149 views
Where does Leela Zero stand (in terms of ELO / strength) when compared with other AI like Mu Zero / Alpha Zero?
I can break my puzzle down into the following:
How strong is Leela Zero today in terms of rating / strength, esp when compared with Alpha Zero / Mu Zero?
Does its rating get calculated as it ...
2
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0answers
70 views
Chess Engine Using LazySMP
I was hoping to parallelize the chess engine I was currently working on. I have done some research on some of the various types of algorithms such as YBWC, ABDADA, and LazySMP which is currently used ...
4
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1answer
95 views
How can a check evasion move generation algorithm be done efficiently?
In my chess engine, I'm attempting to create a strictly legal move generator, instead of generating pseduo-legal moves, then discarding them later in the search and evaluation phase.
So far, here is ...
6
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0answers
210 views
How is Stockfish so fast?
I'm currently developing a bitboard-based chess engine for fun and can generate around 5.5 million positions per second on perft tests. I ran the same tests on Stockfish, which can do around 130 ...
3
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2answers
142 views
Does the Stockfish engine use past matches, or does it not need such a “database”?
I have a simple question. Does the Stockfish engine use, amongst the steps of its complicated algorithm, a library/database of past matches?
For such an algorithm to work, it would to need store many ...
6
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0answers
185 views
How do computers end up blundering?
I’m trying some practice games against Stockfish level eight. I always lose but sometimes Stockfish makes obviously bad moves and I get ahead. Here for example, Stockfish makes an inaccuracy followed ...
0
votes
0answers
40 views
How to validate chess moves with a server? Winboard and Unity 2020.3
I'm looking for advice on how to implement online chess move validation using a winboard chess engine. I am creating a mobile battle chess game in Unity 2020.3. Right now I have the possible moves for ...
17
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1answer
3k views
What if both players always play the worst engine move?
There are questions for the worst opening in chess and the worst opening in Chess960, but these only consider the very first move. I'm curious what a game would look like where white plays the worst ...
3
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1answer
161 views
How can I make my chess engine more efficient?
First, here's some context. My chess engine uses bitboards and works like this: A single gameboard is created as a 2d array at the start of the program. Like this:
[[-4 -2 -3 -5 -6 -3 -2 -4]
[-1 -1 -...
-1
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1answer
71 views
How to sept up a search engine?
One issue that has always been pulling my hair is how to configure different chess engines so that they compete with each other with maximum efficiency according to the speed of the processor that our ...
1
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1answer
181 views
How can I load a position without kings into an engine?
I would like to be able to do load a position into a whatever possible (advanced) engine without kings. For example, the goal of the game would be to annihilate all the possible pieces instead of ...
5
votes
1answer
134 views
Obtain information about a a position from Stockfish
I want to know from Stockfish:
All possible moves in a position, a.k.a. a depth 1 analysis with no score.
If the king is in check, is checkmated, or if there is a draw.
The current FEN string, after ...
5
votes
4answers
229 views
Can a chess engine play like a particular famous player?
Different players have different personalities and different playing styles. Mikhail Tal's style is different from Tigran Petrosian, just as Kasparov is different from Karpov. I am wondering if there ...
2
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4answers
199 views
Looking for a chess engine that instead of playing the best move randomly chooses among the best moves?
Of course this should be subjected to some rules; something like "play any move that's not bellow 0,70 the best move", or something similar.
My idea is to use such an engine in order to play ...
3
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2answers
114 views
Why doesn't SimpleEval's eval change in multiples of 1?
SimpleEval is Stockfish with simple eval - it only counts the material in the position and ignores all other evaluation factors like king safety or mobility. It is currently playing at TCEC.
If ...
1
vote
1answer
43 views
How to score a certain move in a PGN, for how well opening theory is followed
I am making a bot that plays opening moves from a PGN. When the player reaches a position out of PGN, I want to give a score to the player how well he followed the PGN. What kind of statistics can I ...
2
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1answer
78 views
Fastest way to parse a bitboard
I am making a chess engine, and for now I’m working on the move generation. I’m using bitboards, and so for example my magic bit boards file for a knight on d4 is
00000000
00000000
00101000
01000100
...
1
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1answer
79 views
How to install stockfish on winBoard 4.4.5?
I want to install stockfish to winBoard 4.4.5. But winBoard 4.4.5 doesn't seem to have the same protocol as stockfish. Is there a way to do it on windows 10? I would like to install the latest version ...
26
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9answers
9k views
How has chess managed to remain a competitive sport despite engine dominance?
As much as people fear losing their jobs to machines that can do them better, Chess has seen the exact opposite take shape. There have been extremely strong chess bots since Kasparov's time, and more ...
-5
votes
4answers
215 views
Why won't elite players like Nakamura play a (fair) game against AlphaZero just to see how it goes? [closed]
You know, both for entertainment and to analyze what moves he made were blunders/sub-optimal?
Like, the handicap thing is not a real game, and also humiliating for the grandmaster.
Like how would a ...
3
votes
1answer
672 views
Using Stockfish in Commercial Apps
Stockfish uses a GPLv3 license, which requires you to release your source code if you use it. This then makes your own code GPLv3. However, chess.com, chessable and decodechess all use Stockfish.
So, ...
18
votes
3answers
6k views
Undetectable semi-cheating?
I bet I would play already 200 ELO better if I'd only check if my move isn't a complete tactical blunder. This obviously begs the question if engine cheating can be as easily detected if
I'd only use ...
5
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2answers
1k views
How many moves needed for a knight to go from any square to any other square?
I want to find a sequence of knight moves that has a given origin and destination squares, preferably with the minimum number of moves. I can iterate over knight moves and collect visited squares, ...
11
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5answers
10k views
Why does the engine tell me to sacrifice a queen for bishop after a failed Scholar's mate?
I am a beginner. Recently I have looked at the computer-generated analysis of one of my games and I found a surprising recommendation. Why is it best to sacrifice my Queen in this situation, as the ...
2
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1answer
268 views
What does an engine do if it has found the shortest mate?
For example, take this famous position from Kramnik vs. Deep Fritz, 2005:
[FEN "5N1k/6p1/7p/4P3/pp2Q3/4q3/1P4PP/2b4K w - - 0 1"]
Obviously White wins with Qh7#, and equally obviously, there ...
4
votes
1answer
70 views
Transposition Tables Bug, implementation produces different results
I've been writing my chess engine for 2 months now, and I've come across this bug that I can't manage to solve. Basically, when I disable my transposition table, the engine plays fine and the minimax ...
2
votes
2answers
148 views
Why is …d5 the best move for Black?
I am learning chess and came across this position. Stockfish 11+ HCE (Depth 32/99) and Stockfish 13 (Depth 31/47) both says ...d5 is the best move for Black. But the next move is exd6 e.p., leaving ...
3
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1answer
163 views
Hashtable decreases playstrength
I have implemented a simple variant of Zobrist keys to store and look up positional data, but whenever I let my engine play itself with either white or black using hashtables and the opponent doesn't, ...
1
vote
2answers
112 views
Stockfish shows only 2 next moves
For Position 1r2k1r1/pq1b1p2/1p1Rp1p1/2p1P3/2B2P2/P1N1K1P1/1P2Q3/8 b - -
stockfish analysis ouput is like
info depth 12 seldepth 17 multipv 1 score cp 258 nodes 80180 nps 76874 hashfull 14 tbhits 0 ...
10
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1answer
1k views
Is there an engine evaluation technique that factors in 'time'?
An interesting game played out between Wesley So and Levon Aronion1:
[title "Wesley So vs Levon Aronian"]
[fen "rn4k1/p2bP1b1/2q5/1pp2p1Q/2p5/8/PP3PPP/3R1RK1 w - - 0 1"]
So was in ...
4
votes
1answer
193 views
Computer being right and human being wrong
Of course, computers have changed the evaluation of more than one endgame position (BB vs N being the most known, I guess), which humans thought to be drawn.
Having read another question here, I'm ...
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3answers
208 views
Why does the computer give me a high accuracy score?
My rating on chess.com is of about 1077 on rapid and today when I won a game against a player with slightly lower rating the analysis results said I played with 73 accuracy according to their best ...
-3
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1answer
269 views
Could Magnus Carlsen beat AlphaZero given unlimited takebacks? [closed]
Carlsen can't beat AlphaZero in an actual game, but what if we gave him the ability to takeback any blunder or sub-optimal move he makes and try again?
I mean a normal person with no knowledge of ...
4
votes
1answer
166 views
How do I complete this implementation of magic bitboards?
I'm currently coding a chess engine in C++, and have run into a bit of trouble with my magic bitboard implementation.
So far, I have a function that calculates blockerBoards (all the possible pieces ...
1
vote
1answer
146 views
If there is two knight that can go to the same square, how does lichess know which knight I moved in the blind mode?
I just thought about something where two knight can go to the same square. Let say if a white knight is at c3 and a black knight is at b2. They both can go to a4 square. My question is that if I am ...
0
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0answers
6 views
How to solve interface issues on Sesse analysis tool? [duplicate]
I tried to use the sesse analysis tool (https://analysis.sesse.net/), but when I use it, there is a big issue : there are no pieces on the board, so i can not play a move, I can't use the tool.
I ...
1
vote
1answer
72 views
Why does my ability/rating against bots vary?
I've recently started playing chess again and am training against the chess.com bots.
I've been able to blaze through the lower rated bots and started to get stuck around the 1100s with having to take ...
2
votes
1answer
172 views
Why does Stockfish lose against this piece sacrifice in the Berlin Defense?
In a recent YouTube video, Jonathan Schrantz presents an absurd (?) piece sacrifice in the Berlin Defense, which Stockfish seems to vastly underestimate.
The engine evaluation shows around -4, until ...
1
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1answer
125 views
What does an equal odds game look like for a GM vs an engine?
This question began an interesting discussion on handicaps for engines that play against GMs:
Engine-invented variations/hypotheticals
This led me to wonder, are there differences in handicaps in ...
6
votes
1answer
276 views
What is the difference between a brilliant move and the best move?
As far as I know, nowadays the chess engines can judge that a move is the best or that it is brilliant (usually denoted by ! or !!). I was wondering what is the precise criterion for this ...
3
votes
3answers
172 views
Engine-invented variations/hypotheticals
After watching a few alphaZero vs stockfish games, I was very intrigued. Clearly, engines can play at a different kind of level, but for the most part the openings seem pretty meta. Nothing extremely ...
10
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1answer
2k views
A disagreement between me and my chess engines
In a recent blitz game, I was playing as White and faced the Lasker-Pelikan variation of the Sicilian.
Things were not really going according to plan, I was down a Knight and facing obliteration. In ...
