Questions tagged [engines]

Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.

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Highest depth ever achieved

I saw a guy that went into depth 70 with no search moves at 41, 192, 897, 168, and 184 nodes from the starting position on Stockfish a few years ago. I would like to know if this is still a record or ...
Ropdup's user avatar
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7 votes
0 answers
380 views

Stockfish position evaluation component terms in Python?

I saw the excellent Javascript-based guide to how Stockfish evaluates (non-NNUE). Is there a python version out there, perhaps using python-chess? What I am trying to do (in case you have other ...
Abhijit Mahabal's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
152 views

Stack data structure to store chess positions?

One method I thought of for storing chess positions is a stack. This is because when you go one move deeper in the search, you add that position onto the stack, and delete the node when finish, this ...
BanjoMan's user avatar
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5 votes
0 answers
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Setting up Stockfish for Droidfish

I would like to set up Stockfish for the android app Droidfish. How do I set up a server for a Windows machine (my linux machine is too weak) using SF13?
Concerto's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
299 views

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. ...
JSBach49's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
278 views

How engines accomplish calculation speeds of 1000kN/s per Core and above?

I am developing a chess engine to improve my Cpp. It works, which means it generates legal moves and it can play them out. I optimized a bit and now achieve ~20k N / s, which is way better than my ...
Niclas's user avatar
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3 votes
0 answers
79 views

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 ...
dbdb's user avatar
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3 votes
0 answers
232 views

Debugging my PERFT coding

I'm stuck debugging my move generation and do move function. I noticed that the castling as actually the problem in my code, but I think I have implemented everything right. I installed some java ...
James Urian's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
104 views

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 ...
Konraddo's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
110 views

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.
Andrea Nerla's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
159 views

Transposition table cut and all nodes

I have written a chess engine over the last year. Inside my search function I have the following struct transposition *e = attempt_get(pos); if (e && transposition_depth(e) >= depth &&...
spinosarus123's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
128 views

Which websites have a ranking and/or a rating list for correspondence chess without engine help?

I am looking for websites that have a ranking and/or a rating list for correspondence chess without engine help. Which ones do exist? For example, lichess.org has correspondence chess without engine ...
Beginner's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
182 views

Alpha-Beta Pruning and Depth skews checkmate evaluation

I am currently working on a chess engine in golang. I have implemented and tested move generation, making and unmaking. I am working on search and evaluation using Negamax with Alpha Beta pruning, ...
Rak Laptudirm's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
126 views

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 ...
ZED's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
272 views

Understanding Null move pruning

I have trouble understanding null move pruning. I understand the concept of a free move for the side that just played a move, but what I don't understand is the code part: int score = -negamax(-beta,-...
DaOnly Owner's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
50 views

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 ...
Thomas's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
120 views

Creating or editing shredder .bkt opening book

I want to create an opening book for Shredder or edit an existing one. the way I want it is like how Lucas chess works, giving a certain value (weight, percentage, etc) to a specific move. This is an ...
mohammad sarabi's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
230 views

Is this a possibly faster way to find pinned pieces using magic hash?

Okay so this is something that I came up with while working on my own engine, but I am not sure if anyone has ever tried. Basically I am using a separate set of magic hashed longs to store pieces and ...
Debabrata Roy's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
262 views

Clear Stockfish hash table after every move conveniently

When analyzing a game with Stockfish I sometimes find it confusing that evaluation of a given position changes depending on what positions I had analyzed previously. I understand that this is because ...
boot4life's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
339 views

Why is futility pruning causing an Elo drop in my engine?

I'm getting weird results when introducing futility pruning into Blunder. On the one hand, I'm getting a pretty sizeable reduction in nodes, and I'm searching a full ply deeper for some positions (e.g....
Christian Dean's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
313 views

Relation between Elo and search depth for basic minimax

If we use the most basic approach to a chess engine (for example, for a codegolf): minimax to a fixed depth with the material count as static evaluation, then how strong is this algorithm? This of ...
Jens Renders's user avatar
0 votes
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54 views

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 ...
kelseyde's user avatar
0 votes
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20 views

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 ...
Mark C's user avatar
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0 votes
0 answers
40 views

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 ...
Mohammad Shahinur Islam's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
62 views

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 ...
Hank's back rank's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
88 views

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?
Cerise's user avatar
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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 ...
user35470's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
68 views

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 ...
Fb_Wdw's user avatar
  • 1
0 votes
0 answers
74 views

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 ...
FxMySz's user avatar
  • 1
0 votes
0 answers
75 views

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....
James Martin's user avatar
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191 views

What's the fastest way to detect blunders with an engine?

My main goal is to detect blunders in chess games. I wrote a python program that loads a large pgn database and then analyses the games. I did it by letting Stockfish go through every game and every ...
RottenSchnitzel's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
43 views

Fritz 18 Position Setup For Engine Match

The other day, I saw a GothamChess on two engines playing the King's Gambit. I thought to myself that it would be interesting to do the same thing, so I tried it in Fritz 18. I know that I have to ...
Prachetas Pavamana's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
352 views

Is there any stockfish web api?

I would like to create a web page with a stockfish analysis which evaluates the sharpness of position, but to do that I would like to avoid to upload myself a Stockfish program in the cloud. I would ...
Andrea Nerla's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
194 views

Transposition table produces diffrent and wrong search results

I am currently developing my own chess engine in rust. It all was working pretty fine, until I added transposition tables. Where my engine was playing the reasonable move e2e4 at a lower depth, with ...
LilithUwU's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
125 views

How to install an engine to Arena chess GUI and play with personality?

As a beginner chess player I'm in love with chess.com personality bots, but free bots are limited, so I found this Rodent 3 engine but I don't quite understand how to use their unique personality to ...
chesslovedeath's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
71 views

Engine for Pawn Sideways Chess

Is there an engine I can download or buy that plays the variant described by AlphaZero in which pawns have additional sideways moves in addition to their regular moves? Fairy-Stockfish does not yet ...
Someone211's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
283 views

Scid vs. PC: a hint needed

I have now installed Scid vs. PC and I have made my first move with White with 1. e4. Now the engine computes the position tree. How can I stop it and make it move with Black after some fixed time ? ...
user852508's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
139 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 ...
real_rashad's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
101 views

Where to find a list of the computer stored in the FICS Games Database?

According to the FICS Games Database there are currently 1,525 "computers stored". Such accounts are indicated by a "(C)" after the username. However, this suffix does not seem to be recorded in the ...
majom's user avatar
  • 109