Questions tagged [stockfish]

Stockfish is a strong open-source chess engine.

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14 votes
5 answers
4k views

Is there a way to use Stockfish to see tactics that aren't necessarily great?

Basically - I want to utilize an engine to see tactics through the whole game, regardless of whether they're a good move or not. Sometimes, Stockfish may say a position is absolutely winning, but the ...
3 votes
1 answer
106 views

How to run lichess stockfish analysis locally?

I am working on a research project where we need to run stockfish on hundreds of thousands of pgns we have collected. We need to extract all information generated from stockfish like centipawns, ...
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2 votes
1 answer
198 views

Is there a way to get blunders, mistakes and inaccuracies using Stockfish?

Stockfish provides the best moves/lines but is there a command or technique to get inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders? How is this done by lichess or chess.com? They also have the ability to show an ...
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0 votes
2 answers
112 views

Chess game/gui in C++/SDL. Integrating Stockfish. Mostly all is working, but is it possible to find all legal moves for a specified square/piece?

I've never worked with Stockfish or anything command line based like this before, so it took me a lot of getting used to in send/receiving the messages etc. I do now have a C++ game project set up and ...
1 vote
1 answer
809 views

Would Quadruple forking be considered a brilliant move according to Stockfish?

Is a quadruple fork (the image above) considered a brilliant move according to Stockfish? I was just curious to know if Stockfish considers this a brilliant move, but at the same time, I'm not sure ...
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2 votes
2 answers
99 views

What does Depth mean in Stockfish Game Analysis?

When I'm observing a game, the evaluation bar works and above the moves list, there is a numerical value for depth. But what is Stockfish depth and what does it measure or tell?
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1 vote
1 answer
66 views

Extract evaluation data from Stockfish in Cpp

I am working on a chess player-rating system based on engine evaluations. As part of this I would like to extract evaluation data from Stockfish for the top 10 moves in a given set of positions. ...
  • 113
2 votes
1 answer
104 views

Macintosh: Seeking client with better listing format than Stockfish

I currently use the Stockfish client on my Macintosh, but don't like the way it displays the moves (left to right, no line breaks between moves, annotation in-line, branches hard to follow). Are there ...
  • 294
7 votes
2 answers
708 views

Does normal Stockfish handle Chess960?

Is vanilla Stockfish perfectly capable of understanding Chess960 games (including the way castling works), or do you need to use something like Fairy-Stockfish to get the best results? It seems like ...
4 votes
1 answer
174 views

Does Stockfish 15.1 view the stage of the game continuously or discretely, if at all?

If I understand correctly, Stockfish (15.1 at the time of asking this) values material differently according to the stage of the game, "stages" being analogous to what we call opening, ...
1 vote
2 answers
73 views

How to arrange engine games

I have heard in various places that we can make engines play against each other from a certain given position. I want to know how exactly to do that. Is there a website where I can put a position and ...
0 votes
1 answer
157 views

What is the Depth reached by chess-AI agents on a regular computer?

I'm looking for some reference for the number of lookahead steps typically used by chess agents (Stockfish / Leela Chess Zero / others?) From a quick search I found that: the answer depends on: ...
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2 votes
1 answer
48 views

What determines length of stockfish 'pv'?

Normally the length (sequence of moves) of what stockfish info prints out as 'pv' matches the search depth, but sometimes it doesn't. When determines its length?
0 votes
2 answers
249 views

Why does stockfish give "-28.8" as the evaluation number for this position?

[FEN "5K2/8/5k2/5b2/6b1/5b1b/4b1b1/7b w - - 0 1"] This game is an immediate draw by insufficient material (Doesn't Stockfish know this?). I am wondering what the reason behind the score &...
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10 votes
5 answers
3k views

Why doesn't Stockfish announce when it solved a position as a book draw similar to how it announces a forced mate?

I notice that when Stockfish has solved a position to mate it announces that checkmate is unavoidable in some number of moves so it's impossible to mistaken a position Stockfish has solved as a win ...
2 votes
0 answers
88 views

Are these depth-41 Stockfish evals the result of a horizon effect?

I was using lichess's analysis board for Stockfish's analysis of this line in the French: [Title "French Defence, Steinitz Variation"] [StartFlipped "0"] [fen ""] 1. e4 ...
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-1 votes
1 answer
120 views

Why does Stockfish evaluates the trade of a B vs N that bad, while the trade has the King in the open and doubles pawns?

In this position (White to play) (Picture credits to the chess compass extension that analyzes a chess.com game after it ended) The current Stockfish evaluation (before White plays) is ~0.0. But SF ...
  • 605
3 votes
2 answers
197 views

Why does stockfish make these strange recommendations?

The FEN is: r2qk1r1/ppp2p1p/2n1bn1Q/4p1B1/8/2P4P/PP1NpKP1/R5NR b kq - 0 1 Clearly black is winning because the white bishop can be captured (with a discovery available if white recaptures). However, ...
  • 542
4 votes
1 answer
128 views

Are endgame tablebases included with Stockfish?

I just downloaded Stockfish as a .exe file for use with SCID vs PC. Are tablebases included with the executable? If not, how can I make Stockfish use them while analysing a game with SCID vs PC? I ...
  • 461
0 votes
1 answer
136 views

Game analysis app for Mac?

I am using a Mac and trying to find an app that can analyse the whole game and tell me where the mistakes/inaccuracies/blunders are, instead of just telling me what I should do for the next move. The &...
  • 193
8 votes
3 answers
4k views

Why does Stockfish suggest this move (25. Qxa6?)

In this position, why does Stockfish suggest the move 1. Qxa6? Also, after 25. ...bxa6, Stockfish also suggests 26. Rd7+, which is followed by 26. ...Bxd7 and 27. Rxd7+. White would just have traded a ...
  • 193
0 votes
2 answers
189 views

I downloaded stockfish 15 ,the POPCNT version. It downloaded, but I don't know how to open it to play chess. Can you help me?

I downloaded stockfish 15 ,the POPCNT version. It downloaded, but I don't know how to open it to play chess. Can you help me?
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6 votes
2 answers
581 views

How to program Ruthlessly Aggressive Chess AI?

For the past few months, I have been experimenting with Stockfish with the goal of making the AI more fun to play against. Stockfish is obviously a very powerful Chess AI but it plays very ...
2 votes
1 answer
204 views

How can I query the current value of an UCI option?

I've got a (simple) question regarding the UCI options and their current values: I start my engine (e. g. Stockfish). The console opens and I enter "uci" and press [Enter]. As a result, I ...
5 votes
0 answers
168 views

Why does Stockfish change evaluations and best moves depending on the number of displayed variations?

No matter whether I test it online on lichess or locally: Stockfish shows different variations and evaluations depending on the number of variations displayed. Where does this behaviour come from, and ...
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4 votes
1 answer
118 views

How do I get the solutions of the puzzle using stockfish?

I have a list of PGN files that are games between top grandmasters where one player resigned at the end of the game. I am looking to find solutions to those position using stockfish/or another chess ...
1 vote
2 answers
5k views

What is Stockfish 15's FIDE calibrated Elo rating?

Elo rating only makes sense based on the population of players. So I wonder, has Stockfish's Elo been calculated in a pool including humans or human-calibrated engines? Related: How accurate are chess ...
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8 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why does Stockfish recommend this queen sacrifice in this puzzle?

[Variant "From Position"] [FEN "r1b1r1k1/pp3ppp/2p5/2Ppn1q1/1P1Q2B1/4P1N1/P4PPP/R4RK1 w - - 9 18"] [Title ""] 1. Bxc8 Raxc8 2. f4 https://lichess.org/training/fRzq3 The ...
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8 votes
1 answer
716 views

Why do Engines show a fraction for the "Depth" and "Current Node" values?

Forgive me if this has been asked elsewhere, but I've both Googled and searched here at CSE and cannot find an answer. When I'm using an Engine for analysis (in this case, Stockfish 15), I've noticed ...
2 votes
2 answers
952 views

Can't properly use python stockfish package in Mac

I'm trying to get stockfish for python working but I am running into issues. This is my code so far. from stockfish import Stockfish stockfish = Stockfish('/Users/Me/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.9/site-...
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1 vote
1 answer
633 views

StockFish under WIndows 8 doesn't work

I'm trying to run StockFish under WIndows 8.1, but I'm just getting the prompt as copied below. Also, Winboard Load First/Second Engine doesn't work: nothing is happening. How can I run StockFish ?
2 votes
1 answer
878 views

Using stockfish from command line to calculate the total number of legal moves for each side after a given move

I am running stockfish 15 from the command line. I'm wondering if there is an easy way for Stockfish to report the total number of legal moves (safe, or otherwise) for each side after a given move. ...
4 votes
1 answer
439 views

How do you nerf Stockfish to analyze the same position multiple times?

I want to make some statistics by analyzing the same position, multiple times, at different levels of Stockfish. Precisely, I would like Stockfish to analyze a specific position at different "...
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14 votes
4 answers
3k views

What does it mean when stockfish evaluates a move as an inaccuracy after previously thinking it was the best move?

I stumbled onto this position from a game posted on reddit. Stockfish gives the best move as cxd4, which it evaluates as +2. If you play cxd4, it then says cxd4 was an inaccuracy (only being +1), and ...
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-2 votes
1 answer
216 views

Why does Stockfish miss mate in 5 with only two legal moves?

I'm interested to understand what is going on for Stockfish on Lichess here. There are only two legal moves for Black, and it gives the position mate-in-14 for white. When asked to play its ...
2 votes
2 answers
326 views

Stockfish NNUE vs handcrafted Evaluation

I read up on Stockfish NNUE and as far as I understand it, Stockfish NNUE was (at least in early stages) trained by positions which were evaluated by the hand-crafted eval. function by stockfish. The ...
8 votes
1 answer
252 views

Why does stockfish move quality increase non-monotonically with increasing depth? -- selected moves at depth 3 are worse than depth 1

I have been working on a project looking at how stockfish moves change with increasing computation time (here search depth), and have found something peculiar - namely that the quality of moves that ...
2 votes
1 answer
155 views

Neurons Stockfish NNUE

I am referring to this picture. What do the individual neurons in the ANN do? Do they represent criteria for the evaluation, like for example material, pawn structure, king safety and so on?
1 vote
1 answer
228 views

Did Lichess Level 8 truly lose this game?

Jonathan Scrantz played this game against Lichess Level 8: [Title "Jonathan Scrantz VS Stockfish Level 8 (3000) after 9. Kh1"] [FEN ""] [Startply "17"] 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 ...
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4 votes
0 answers
293 views

Understand Stockfish NNUE [closed]

I am currently trying to understand the Stockfish NNUE HalfKP 256x2-32-32 neural network, which is listed on chessprogramming.org. I understand the way how the board is interpreted. What I don't fully ...
1 vote
1 answer
543 views

Optimising Stockfish parameters when batch-analyzing with python-chess

I am running a python script that analyzes a large batch of PGN games (each of ~5,000 games) across and exports the games evaluations. It calls Stockfish 14 to analyze each game at depth 20. **[EDIT: ...
2 votes
2 answers
230 views

Python Efficient Board Scoring Function To Use As Placeholder

I'm building a chess engine in Python. I'd like to find a board evaluation function that would be easy to put into my engine as a placeholder while I work on other aspects of the engine first. I would ...
2 votes
1 answer
482 views

What does "hashfull 1000" mean in Stockfish?

When I use Stockfish, the "hashfull" value climbs up to 1000 and then stays there. I was wondering what this means. The documentation says : * hashfull <x> the hash is x permill full, ...
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4 votes
1 answer
221 views

How to compare Stockfish move preference every 1000 nodes

I would like to test how Stockfish or other Engines change their moves and evaluations as the number of nodes increases. Is there a way to run Stockfish (or another engine) and force it to output its ...
3 votes
2 answers
712 views

Why does it take stockfish depth 35 to find mate in 7?

My underlying question here is: What is depth? I know depth is supposedly the number of half-moves or plies from the starting position that it has calculated, in at least one line. But I feel this ...
  • 141
14 votes
2 answers
5k views

Why does Stockfish suggest h4 here?

Analyzing my latest game on chess.com, Stockfish says that h4 is the best move here: I followed the line, but I failed to understand the reasoning of this move. Is it for some long-term advantage? ...
  • 381
1 vote
0 answers
219 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 ...
  • 667
6 votes
4 answers
374 views

Why does Stockfish give an evaluation of +7.42 here?

[fen "r3k1nr/pppqn2p/5p2/b5p1/3PP3/1BP2QBP/PP1N2P1/R3K2R w KQkq - 3 14"] This game was played by me on chess.com recently. (I am white). The material balance is +1 (for white). Then why is ...
  • 199
1 vote
3 answers
582 views

How good is 1. e4 c5 move for black? Why does Stockfish play it?

I've been running some engine vs engine games out of boredom and noticed Stockfish, when playing as black, 90% of the time played c7-c5 on white's e4. I've never actually seen a human play this, in ...
5 votes
2 answers
435 views

Techniques used for Stockfish engine selectivity

Example puzzle (I'm sure there are numerous that fit this bill): [FEN "rnbq3r/pppp4/3b1pkp/5p2/2BP4/4P3/PPP2PPP/RN1QK2R w KQ - 0 1"] [Site "Earth"] [White ""] 1. Qh5+ ...
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