Questions tagged [engines]
Questions relating to chess engines: any computer program that is able to play/analyze chess positions.
898
questions
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4
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Lc0 vs. Stockfish
Stockfish analyses many positions per second and chooses the best line. Lc0 is a neural network that immediately ignores moves which don't work, but is slower. However, somehow Stockfish is better. ...
3
votes
1
answer
127
views
Machine Learning parameters for human vs computer detection
I would like to start a machine learning project that should recognize whether a player is a person or a computer.
I have a data set with labeled labels (computer or human).
In your opinion, what ...
2
votes
1
answer
296
views
Chess Engine with Python-Based / API?
I went through the most popular chess engines, e.g. StockFish, Komodo, Rykba and so forth, but I wasn't able to a.) find an API or b.) a python based Engine - does anyone know a suitable project?
I ...
10
votes
1
answer
2k
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Why does a chess engine not get excited about a piece exchange at the end of its analysis depth?
I read about the chess engine algorithms and came up with a question. If, for example roughly all (disregarding alpha-beta pruning) possible 20 moves variations are calculated, why does a chess ...
1
vote
1
answer
614
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Traxler Counterattack
I've had a few looks at the Traxler counterattack before. It seems fine for Black, but somehow the engine (Stockfish) says that White has a +2.57 advantage after Nxf7, but not much advantage after ...
6
votes
2
answers
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Where is the blunder that White made?
[Event "the_meayhi vs. oxygen2020"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2020-08-16"]
[White "the_meayhi"]
[Black "oxygen2020"]
[Result "1-0"]
[...
1
vote
1
answer
74
views
Finding a Kasparov Game
I remember seeing a Kasparov game, where Black played a classical bishop sacrifice. He was playing against a computer, and I'm pretty sure it was Deep Junior. I have tried to find this game, but it ...
29
votes
4
answers
7k
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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 ...
6
votes
1
answer
2k
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What does Stockfish NNUE mean for Stockfish? [closed]
Apparently there was a major update to Stockfish recently such that it gained +50 elo (per regression tests). I'm told that the difference is coming from the new NNUE (efficiently updatable neural ...
2
votes
1
answer
196
views
Engine vs Engine Database
Does anyone know of engine vs engine databases? Like stockfish vs leela vs komodo pgns for 1000s of games with a lot of time per move? I want data for how draw rate changes as engine rating goes up, ...
3
votes
1
answer
279
views
Transposition Tables
Are transposition tables (in engines) used for one or multiple games?
My current knowledge of transposition tables is that when an engine searches the game tree, there will sometimes be positions ...
5
votes
3
answers
4k
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Why is White's accuracy 99.7% instead of 100.0%?
Here is a short game played online at chess.com.
[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 d6 5. d4 Bb6 6. dxe5
Black resigned for some unknown reason; maybe a mouse slip or he/she ...
2
votes
1
answer
122
views
When are games against engines drawn?
When two engines play against each other in a game of chess, when is it appropriate to declare a draw when clearly no progress is possible?
For example:
8/6k1/8/R3K2p/2r3p1/6P1/7P/8 w - - 0 2
This ...
3
votes
1
answer
116
views
What are the most common checks in chess?
I read somewhere that to optimize move generation for a chess engine it's good to have fast detection of position where one side is checked (to eliminate illegal moves).
The author suggested that ...
1
vote
3
answers
963
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Chess engine with no evaluation
One of the most difficult parts of a chess engine is the evaluation function. Handcrafted evaluation functions are very long and complicated, while NN evaluations are hard to make and train. That's ...
-1
votes
1
answer
87
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Need help finding a tactics database with motifs [duplicate]
I am trying to make a neural network which could determine what chess tactic is present in a position. For this, I need to have a database of chess tactics labelled with correct motifs.
A similar ...
0
votes
1
answer
915
views
How many positions per second should my homemade engine calculate?
My program prints time spent on executing a function for doing/retracting move, and both take together an average of 00.0002 seconds. That means my engine can analyze at most 5000 positions per second,...
2
votes
1
answer
225
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Mac - Chess App
I was trying to play chess on the included chess app on mac, and after the computer's turn, it will not allow me to make any move at all, and I am 100% sure I am not in check as the game just started, ...
5
votes
2
answers
3k
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How to calculate percentage of accuracy of game-play based on the number of mistakes, blunders and inaccuracies?
For some time now, chess.com analysis suggests the accuracy of the gameplay based on the blunders, mistakes and inaccuracies, one committed during his/her gameplay. Now, my question is,
Whether there ...
1
vote
2
answers
96
views
Material score in analysis report
Is it possible to do an analysis using Scid vs PC or any other major chess program where it shows material score after each move in addition to showing the normal evaluation score? So for an endgame ...
4
votes
2
answers
787
views
Can I host lichess server to my local machine to use the study offline?
Lichess is a free, Ad-free and Open-Source chess server. To me, it has the best STUDY option over the internet. I am thinking whether it's possible or not to host a localhost setup using the source ...
5
votes
1
answer
109
views
What insights have neural networks revealed about chess?
I've been interested to see an analysis of the decision making processes of an NN in determining the difference between good and bad moves. The only writings I've seen is about how NN can be applied ...
3
votes
2
answers
615
views
Which engine is better at Chess960-Stockfish or Leela?
It seems that TCEC has seen Stockfish and Leela go back and forth. It is probable that these days Stockfish is a little bit better than Leela. I was wondering, since it is different in Chess960, which ...
3
votes
1
answer
144
views
How do I apply moves (bitboard) and continue searching? My current attempt is throwing a strange error!
Explanation
I have a list of all possible current moves in a position. At each node, I want to then generate all possible moves and continue. The problem is that my code is modifying the list of moves ...
3
votes
2
answers
333
views
Compiling Stockfish to disable own castling while allowing opponent castling
For artistic purposes, I would like to create and study engine games in which only one side is able to castle.
For this, I need to compile a version of Stockfish which never castles, and doesn't ...
20
votes
4
answers
6k
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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, ...
5
votes
1
answer
108
views
Hosting bughouse server for local competition?
I'm interested in running a local competition for bughouse engines. What chess server software can I use to run the games? The most relevant question I found was but the answer is almost 4 years old.
...
0
votes
2
answers
102
views
Is there a standard way of scoring a position for chess programs?
It seems most chess programs score a position basically the same way, give or take a few tenths of a point, for a given position. For example, Stockfish might score a position as .65 while Houdini ...
1
vote
1
answer
329
views
Why is stockfish not accepting my move?
I am trying to play with stockfish from terminal.
I entered the following commands:
position startpos e2e4
d
The output was:
Why is stockfish not accepting my move?
3
votes
1
answer
129
views
Are there any cloud engine services solely 'pay per use'?
I'm looking for a chess cloud engine service where I only have to pay for the time I use.
I thought chessbase.com provides that, but you have to get a premium membership first (as far as I understand)....
1
vote
0
answers
116
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Magic bitboards: My indexing doesn't seem to work! [closed]
I am beginning to understand magic bitboards. I have successfully implemented them with Rooks, and I am currently working with Bishops. The method is very similar though.
Problem
I have a bishop on g7 ...
4
votes
3
answers
417
views
Is there a standard system of classification of games?
Given there are practically infinite number of chess games possible, does there exist a standard system of classifying or naming games simlar to how there are rules for naming a chemical compound ...
1
vote
1
answer
199
views
Mate In N algorithm-Lichess Computer Analysis
Is it possible to have the computer analysis report mate in 12 moves to only change that to mate in higher number of moves, like 15 for example, after it searches deeper?
3
votes
2
answers
468
views
How to get static evaluation from Stockfish in case that a king is in check?
I am working on a program that should recognize the difference between human and computer players. For this purpose, I need some parameters. A part of them would be the individual values of the static ...
1
vote
1
answer
251
views
How to store moves for a magic bitboard system?
I am currently trying to implement magic bitboards into my chess engine. Let's just talk about rooks here. Given a square, what I can currently do is:
-Calculate the sliding moves on an empty board.
...
1
vote
1
answer
229
views
Calculating the precise number of combinations of possible moves from a given position
I was surprised Bobby Fischer couldn't find a mate in 3 within 30 minutes in this problem by Pal Benko. This made me wonder-how many actual moves are possible with so few pieces left in only 3 moves?
[...
28
votes
8
answers
6k
views
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 ...
1
vote
0
answers
74
views
Multi-thread performance [closed]
I'm implementing multi-thread in my engine but I think I'm not getting the expected performance boost. Below are the results from the initial position to depth 10. The single thread version takes ...
7
votes
2
answers
2k
views
How are online chess engines' architecture designed?
I recently build a chess engine using javascript (https://github.com/Ram-the-coder/ai-chess-engine-v2). It runs on the browser - because of this when the chess engine is computing the best move, the ...
1
vote
1
answer
177
views
ELO change of engine from pure material to very good evaluation
I am currently rewriting a chess engine with a friend. We decided to first work on the search and only later if the search works really well, we will do some very good evaluation.
The engine itself ...
1
vote
1
answer
56
views
Static null move CPW engine
I have two questions about a code implementing a static null move. The questions are in the code.
The code is extracted from here: CPW engine search code
if (depth < 3
&& !...
1
vote
1
answer
99
views
How do you manually set switches when you are compiling Stockfish in Visual Studio? [closed]
How do you manually set switches when you are compiling Stockfish in Visual Studio?
In the type.h file it saids:
When Makefile is not used (e.g. with Microsoft Visual Studio) some switches
need ...
6
votes
2
answers
19k
views
Is there a list of approximate ELO ratings for each Stockfish level?
I want to create something that will select an appropriate Stockfish difficulty setting automatically given the player's rating. The straight Stockfish v11 that I've downloaded has 20 difficulty ...
3
votes
1
answer
894
views
What do these numbers mean on chess.com?
What do the numbers in the top right corner signify?
2
votes
1
answer
90
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Engine is evaluating the same position at the same depth with different score
My engine is evaluating the same position at the same depth with a different score inside the search tree, is that normal?
[Title "depth 1 ply 3 alfa -20 beta -15 score -15 (1.Na3 a5 2.Nh3)"]
[FEN ...
10
votes
1
answer
8k
views
Which is better-Stockfish 10 or AlphaZero?
I know AlphaZero (an AI) is one of the best top chess engines but Stockfish is also improving. Which one is better at chess?
4
votes
1
answer
300
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What should the practical meaning of "blunder" be? [closed]
There have been questions about the reliability of computer evaluation, and famous cases in which computers miss-evaluate positions have been given. What I want to ask is more related to the practical ...
2
votes
2
answers
181
views
Setting up BugHouse on my computer
I want to have a setup on my computer to play BugHouse with three engine. One engine would be my partner and the other two would be the opposing team. How can I setup such a scenario? I use Linux but ...
3
votes
2
answers
695
views
Can someone explain the positional advantages for white?
[FEN "3r1rk1/7p/bq2ppp1/p1R5/Pp2P2P/4QB2/1P3PP1/3R2K1 w - - 0 1"]
As far I can see, Black’s bishop has more scope than the white one, White has some isolated pawns, and the Black pawns rule the 5th ...
9
votes
1
answer
508
views
Positions that stump engines
Chess engines are so strong that it is becoming increasingly hard to find positions that they are demonstrably evaluating incorrectly. I'm interested in collecting examples—if there are any&...