Posts tagged with “Computer Chess”
A not so really impressive performance by Deep Rybka 4 in the tournament that feature as well Rybka 3, Deep Rybka 3, and Fritz 12.
Shredder Chess for the iPad. Check out the features here.
Results of the Computer Chess Tournament (CCT) 12
Hannibal and Deuterium tied at 9th to 12th places with 5 points out of the total 9 games. Congratulations to Ed Apostol (co-author — Hannibal) and Ferdinand Mosca (Deuterium). Check out the standings (standard play) below: Read More »
Scid: A Free Chess Database App →
Welcome to the website for Scid ("Shane's Chess Information Database"), a chess database application for Windows, Linux and Mac OS operating systems.
With Scid you can maintain a database of chess games, search games by many criteria, view graphical trends, and produce printable reports on players and openings. There are many more features as well; the screenshots show just some of what Scid can do. With Scid you can also play against various engines, or on Internet (FICS).
The 12th Annual Computer Chess Tournament
News from FICS:
The 12th Annual CCT (Computer Chess Tournament) Tournament will be held on FICS from February 20-21, 2010. The CCT Event was started for computer chess authors that couldn't travel to in-person tournaments.This is an exciting event, as amateur computer chess authors and their programs get a rare opportunity to play and converse with the professional authors like Amir Ban from Junior, and Stefan Meyer-Kahlen from Shredder. Spectators can also talk with their favourite program author while the event takes place, and is quite welcome. As the medium of the internet allows people from all over the World to participate in a truly World Class event, it also allows fans to see the massive cluster (32+ CPU) programs like Sjeng and Rybka live and in person so to speak. This year there is a deep field that 5 or 6 programs could quite easily find themselves crowned the CCT 12 Champion.
Check out more info from the CCT website.
We have been busy following here the games of our own Filipino GM Wesley So. But what about the feats of some of our own chess engines — created by fellow Filipino progammers?
Have you heard of Deuterium - the first Winboard chess engine from the Philippines? The engine author is Ferdinand Mosca. It's joining the 12th Annual CCT. Last year, it finished tied at 13th to 17th place with 4.5 points out of 9 games.
What about Twisted Logic by Edsel Apostol? That placed tied at 7th to 10th place last year in 11th CCT? I wonder now why Twisted Logic is not joining this year's 12th CCT. Or not yet? But Apostol appears to be a co-author of another participant in CCT12, Hannibal.
One thing for sure, we're gonna watch out how these Filipino (and/or half-Filipino) chess engines fare against the best there are in the field, in the likes of Rybka, Deep Junior, Hiarcs, and Shredder.
They are better players because of it, and they’re achieving more at a younger age. Bobby Fischer was considered an anomaly when he earned the grandmaster title at 15. Today, if you aren’t a GM by the age of 14 or 15, you probably won’t go far in chess. Talent will always matter, but technology is helping talented players learn faster and better.
Machine vs. Machine: Chess Tourney 3 on ChessHive; Battle of the SuperMachines
The environment: 1PC Windows XP Basic SP3 T2050 @ 1.60GHz 1596 MHz 1GB RAM (2CPU) 32-Bit Operating System
Game Details: Time Control 5min Blutz, Single Round-Robin, 256MB hashtable size each
The interface: ChessProgram12 (Fritz12).
The result was quite interesting. Fritz12 beat Deep Rybka (2CPU) during their face-off but the latter ranked higher at the end of the tournament. Nevertheless, Fritz12 ranked higher than the rest of the Rybka version. The TogaII 1.4 running on 2 CPUs ranked high as well.
| Rank | Engine Name | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rybka3-2cpu | * | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 7.0/8 |
| 2 | Fritz 12 | 1 | * | 1 | ½ | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6.5/8 |
| 3-4 | TogaII1.4-b5c-2cpu | 0 | 0 | * | 1 | ½ | 1 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 5.0/8 |
| 3-4 | Rybka3-1cpu | 0 | ½ | 0 | * | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5.0/8 |
| 5 | Rybka2.2n2-2cpu | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ | * | ½ | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4.5/8 |
| 6 | Rybka2.2n2-1cpu | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ½ | * | ½ | ½ | 1 | 3.5/8 |
| 7 | Fruit 2.3.1 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 0 | 0 | ½ | * | 1 | ½ | 2.5/8 |
| 8 | Crafty 23 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 0 | * | 1 | 1.5/8 |
| 9 | Twisted Logic 20100131x | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 0 | * | 0.5/8 |
We'll see in the next tournaments how Fritz 12 will fare further against the toughest. Check out the games of this tournament.
What of the Aquarium Chess Software that I Really Hate?
The software is very much unstable. It's very buggy. I'm already running the latest version, 3.2.1, on a Windows Vista machine. Maybe the "free" Arena could even be more stable that it.
I recently hosted an all-engine tournament using Aquarium. It was a 10-engine (so no bye) 5-round Swiss format tournament. When the tournament was finished, I just couldn't understand the results using the Aquarium interface. There is no crosstable view to offer.
So what I did was export the games to pgn and imported them back inside ChessBase's Fritz12 (ChessProgram12). Then this is how it turned out in Fritz:
See that? Some engines finished with only 4 games, some 6, some 7. I mean, what the f*#k is going on in here?
Machine vs. Machine: Chess Tourney 3 on ChessHive; Rybka 3 vs. Crafty 23.1
It was an overwhelming win by Rybka 3, hands down! 6 wins, 0 loss, 0 draw.
The environment: 1 PC Windows Vista Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.20GHz 1.00 GB RAM 32-Bit Operating System
Game Details: Time Control 4min + 2sec, 6 rounds, 128MB hashtable size each, Opening Books: Fritz12 for Crafty 23.1 and RybkaII for Rybka 3.
The interface: ChessProgram12 (Fritz12)
| Engine Name | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rybka 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6.0/6 |
| Crafty 23.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0/6 |
If I had a hard time beating Crafty, how else can I beat Rybka?
Replay their games here.
Machine vs. Machine: Chess Tourney 2 on ChessHive; Fritz 12 vs. Rybka 3
It was a convincing win for Rybka 3 in 6 rounds of blitz games vs. Fritz12.
The environment: 1 PC Windows Vista Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.20GHz 1.00 GB RAM 32-Bit Operating System
Game Details: Time Control 4min + 2sec, 6 rounds, 128MB hashtable size each, Opening Books: Fritz12 for Fritz12 and RybkaII for Rybka3.
And the result:
| Engine Name | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rybka 3 | ½ | 1 | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 4.0/6 |
| Fritz 12 | ½ | 0 | ½ | ½ | 0 | ½ | 2.0/6 |
In case you may be interested at how the tournament went, replay the games at this page: Fritz 12 vs. Rybka 3 Round 1.