Questions tagged [engines]
Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.
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A purely self-trained chess AI
Insofar as I understand, it appears that, before moving, all strong chess software
examines thousands or millions of possible, future positions;
evaluates each future position according to some ...
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How is Alpha Zero "more human"?
I have a possibly naive question about AlphaZero. I have seen it described as playing in a "more human" style than other computers, but whatever it does, it gains about 100 ELO points by doing it. ...
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Is Stockfish 11 (level 20) beatable?
I have heard many people saying, “Hah! I beat Stockfish,” and one saying, “I am the best chess player ever! I beat Stockfish.” So I wonder if it is possible, just to know whether I should try to beat ...
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Suggestion for a good chess engine on Linux
I'm using GNUChess with the Knights client (Knights doesn't seem to be THAT mature; crashes are common). Is there any equivalent of Chessmaster on Linux? What about good clients to play on servers ...
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How do chess engines "think"?
What I want to know is how engines are programmed to find moves. I'm sure they first calculate the most forcing lines such as captures and checks. But what about subtle, deep positional moves? They ...
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Understanding AlphaZero
Very recently, the news came out that Alphabet's DeepMind research team have extended their machine learning engine to play both Shogi and chess. Apparently, after only a few hours of self-learning, ...
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Hardware used in AlphaZero vs Stockfish match
I understand that AlphaZero has to use a different kind of hardware than regular Stockfish. I would expect that the hardware has a large effect on engine strength. That's why I wonder whether there ...
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How to install stockfish on ubuntu?
Is there an easy guide how to install stockfish on ubuntu?
From the main site I can not find any information and github repository does not provide many details.
I would really appreciate if someone ...
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How computers have changed the way humans play chess
A few years ago Vishy Anand mentioned in an interview that computers had changed the way humans play chess. Obviously computers help a lot in opening preparation, but what other concrete examples are ...
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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 ~ ...
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Is there an engine that finds the best "practical" move?
A standard chess engine will find the move it considers best assuming best play from both sides. But this move might lead to an insignificant advantage or a tricky line that can easily result in ...
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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 ...
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What is the status for seven man end game table bases?
There are complete (or nearly complete) six man end game table bases available for download, and even online.
What is the status of seven man table bases? Is there still active development in this ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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What is the worst opening move in Chess960 for White?
Is there a first move for white in Chess960 in which white can immediately blunder a piece or lose a significant advantage (say -2.0 or so)?
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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 ...
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Is computer chess exhibiting the predicted "draw death"?
At various times, even going back 100 years or more, people have been predicting the "draw death" of chess meaning that top players will get so good that every game will be a draw.
In the 1984 World ...
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Deep Blue vs Kasparov - Aftermath
Evaluating 200M positions per second and having a search tree of 20+ moves might not be enough to beat a World Champion if a computer searches in the wrong direction or if it's evaluating positions a ...
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Are computers destroying chess?
These days I have been watching the candidates tournament, and I couldn't avoid noticing that players are reeling/scared of computer home preparation "a little bit too much".
For example:
1) In the ...
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Why does chess.com consider this promotion a blunder?
I've just played a game on Chess.com, and I'm surprised that the engine considers a promotion that I made a huge blunder. Like, my position was rated -62.8 (basically a won game), and after I promoted ...
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Creating chess engine, machine learning vs. traditional engine?
I am both an avid chess player and computer programmer. I would say that playing chess and programming are the two things I spend the most time doing. Naturally, I am wanting to create my own engine ...
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How to determine the value of a piece from scratch?
Assume we have a standard chess set setup, but we make a slight change so that (for example) pawns can now move two squares forward on any move rather than just on their initial move. Even assuming ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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What prevents chess engines from being undetectable?
I see accounts of people getting banned from sites like chess.com for using engines like Stockfish and Komodo (I admit I have used these engines before, but never in an actual match). Now, I believe ...
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A new AI wins at go. Can a similar AI win at chess? Can it achieve pure self-training?
One of the more popular questions asked on this site regards the prospect of a purely self-trained chess AI.
Today, ChessBase is distracted from its coverage of the FIDE Candidates tournament to ...
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What is the deepest Stockfish evaluation of the standard initial position that has ever been done?
Letting Stockfish (14+ NNUE) run for several minutes with lichess' analysis tool on the initial position of a standard chess board lets it reach depths beyond 30 moves, I suppose letting it run for ...
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Free online analysis engine?
Is there an online analysis engine that allows you to enter a PGN and get a game analysis, showing where suboptimal moves were made?
I know there are programs for download/purchase that do this, but ...
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Will quantum computers solve chess?
The theory is that there are more that 10^40 positions, and a computer that works with an atomic scale has to be impossibly large(As in galaxy-scale large), and well beyond our current level of ...
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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, ...
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Why do chess engines sometimes miss good moves (or take forever to spot)?
It is not the first time that I found a greatly superior move than the chess engine did, it even takes them a while to understand these moves after you make them.
For example, the move 15 ... Bf2 in ...
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Is it more helpful to play with a titled player than to play with a chess engine?
I can choose to hire a titled player to play with me; at the same time, playing with the computer is usually free and more flexible.
As far as improving one's chess skill is concerned, is there more ...
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Do chess engines store all of the previously analysed positions between moves
I am starting to play with chess engines. I notice that the best chess engines can take several minutes to move. I am wondering why. Before each move the engine examines all legal future moves to some ...
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Why does NN + MCTS & AB + handwritten eval dominate engine chess?
As I understand it engines can be divided into four groups right now: those that use Alpha-beta (AB) + those that use Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) for search, and those that use handwritten ...
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What algorithms and heuristics are popular in computer chess?
Computer chess has exploded in the last twenty years, with a computer world championship being established and many chess computer designers becoming quite profitable from their endeavors. Some of ...
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Making my own chess engine for a college project
I'm starting my college project to build my own chess engine. The problem is that I have no clue where to start or what to read. I found videos on YouTube but I don't want to be a copycat. I want to ...
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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 ...
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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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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 ...
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CPU v. GPU for chess engines
GPUs are better at certain types of calculations, e.g. generating bitcoins and performing climate simulations.
Would chess engines benefit if they calculated with GPUs instead of CPUs?
Maybe some ...
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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 did the engines improve since Deep Blue?
Computer chess engines have gotten better since Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997.
Did the algorithms get better, or were the improvements mostly due to the same algorithms running faster thanks to ...
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Why don't chess engines take into account the time left by each player?
Firstly, I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong the way engines are implemented at the moment, by analyzing only the current position regardless of time left by the players. This is great ...
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Computers: Hardware or Software?
It is well known that both hardware and software contributed to the total dominance of computers. Has there been an experiment to run a very modern program (say Alpha Zero) on a museum computer (of ...
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How many moves ahead does Anand calculate in his mind?
I always wondered about this! How many moves ahead can strong players like Anand actually 'see' during the game? How does the calculation of a supercomputer like Deep Blue differ from that of strong ...
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Alternative approaches to chess engine programming
As far as I understand, roughly speaking, chess engines work by:
calculating all possible variations (game tree) up to some depth
evaluating the final position based on some criteria (material, piece ...
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How do I learn Chess Programming?
Basically I have seen that people write a lot of chess algorithms, and ask questions in this forum, which I fumble to answer appropriately. I see the code, but unable to make out whether it is correct ...
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Could a chess engine do retro analysis?
If I took a legal chess position, to what extent could an engine work out the previous moves? [in some other board games such as Othello such game reconstruction is done easily with an engine.]
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Bad Stockfish evaluation
This is the study
[fen "3B4/1r2p3/r2p1p2/bkp1P1p1/1p1P1PPp/p1P4P/PPBK4/8 w - - 0 1 "]
As you can see, Stockfish gives an absolute decisive win for black, though it is clearly a draw!!
Check it out ...
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