Questions tagged [engines]
Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.
898
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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 ...
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1
answer
354
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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 ...
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0
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0
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82
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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 ...
19
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1
answer
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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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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 -...
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1
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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 ...
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2
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2
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233
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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 ...
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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 ...
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4
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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1
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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
...
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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 ...
user26887
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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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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 ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
- 10.2k
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2
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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1
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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 ...
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2
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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 ...
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1
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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, ...
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2
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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 ...
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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 ...
- 1,751
5
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1
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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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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 ...
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1
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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 ...
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4
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1
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517
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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 ...
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1
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161
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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 ...
user26887
1
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1
answer
99
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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 ...
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1
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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 ...
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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 ...
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1
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538
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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 ...
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3
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203
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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 ...
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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 ...
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1
answer
216
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What is the idea of 'ponder' in the UCI protocol?
I've created my own chess engine and now I'm trying to connect it into the Chess Arena. Everything is actually working fine when I play them together (Demo). But I tried to play with it and didn't ...
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2
votes
1
answer
210
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Null Move Pruning
I just downloaded the latest free version of Komodo 12 to try to disable the Null Move Pruning option. So, in my mind, I supposed that for depth 2, it will need 20*20= 400 nodes However I arrived at ...
- 153
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0
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513
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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 ...
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107
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Are there awards or titles for writing chess engines?
I recently found out that, in addition to the well-known titles for chess players, there are titles available for chess composers.
Is there such a thing as an award or title issued to those who have ...
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1
answer
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How to measure Leela Chess Zero improvement
I searched Leela website for some statistics about its self-training, the number of games it played with itself in order to assess its progress or to be able to predict whether it is going to win the ...
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A question about draw detection in chess engines
Let us look at this position.
[FEN "4k3/8/8/p1p1p1p1/P1P1P1P1/8/8/4K3 w - - 0 1"]
This is obviously a draw. Analyzing this with the Stockfish engine says that it is a balanced position. ...
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2
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1
answer
280
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limit stockfish 9 to a specific range of ELO rating
I am using stockfish 9 for our chess game project, and I want to limit the ELO rating of the engine to a range. I saw attributes like movetime and depth are used to limit the engine skill level, but I ...
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0
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1
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79
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Looking for a simple GUI for variants of chess
I am currently coding an engine for a variant of chess called Monster Chess. I was wondering if there a GUI existed that would simply take pieces from a square to another (eg e4 to e5) without ...
1
vote
1
answer
84
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Polyglot opening book: getting incorrect moves
I am in the process of adding an opening book to my C++ engine and I hit a problem. Here is what I have:
The Perfect2021.bin opening book that I would like to use.
The function that creates the ...
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1
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1
answer
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Depth problem in stf 12
I don't understand something about depth in STF 12, in fact i thought it was basically the number of anticipated half moves, but when I run it, I sometimes have results with higher depth and less ...
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votes
1
answer
417
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How often do hash collisions occur in modern chess engines?
This is a question I am asking for a chess engine I am attempting to create.
I have read that engines like Stockfish can look at around 100 million positions per second on a good computer. The code on ...
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11
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3
answers
914
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Chess positions that are easy for humans but near impossible or confusing for computers
I noticed that one student is performing exceptionally well and beyond his level during an online class. I was wondering if there are particular chess positions that I can use during class to find out ...
- 1,755
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2
answers
163
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How do endgame tablebases calculate checkmates to do retrograde analysis on?
I understand that once endgame tablebases get checkmates, they do retrograde analysis and are able to calculate forced wins. However, how do they calculate the checkmate in the first place? Do they ...
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