/r/ComputerChess

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Chess engines, hardware, tournaments and matches.


Rules of /r/ComputerChess
  • Keep your posts focused on computer chess.
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Computer Chess Resources

Rating Lists

Live Tournaments

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"Though I would have liked my chances in a rematch in 1998 if I were better prepared, it was clear then that computer superiority over humans in chess had always been just a matter of time."

β€” Garry Kasparov

/r/ComputerChess

7,076 Subscribers

3

More RAM or Cores?

Actually using 2 old "MULE" machines for running Arena tournaments on my fav variations, 48 moves per hour time setup, to get in hundreds games few interesting ones. Got a white MacBook 4gb dual core, and a AMD quad core with 16gb ram, both Win 7 64. For a more modern setup, you guys would rather invest more on memory or CPU cores?

3 Comments
2024/11/28
10:03 UTC

1

Are E-Boards Worth It? | Chessnut Pro Review

1 Comment
2024/11/28
06:29 UTC

2

πŸš€ ChessPredict Update: New Interactive Analysis Feature [Early Access Demo]

Hey r/computerchess! Wanted to share a work-in-progress feature we've been developing. You can now scan any chess position to get an interactive board and analyze moves in real-time.

https://reddit.com/link/1h0xvwo/video/awcwf2szzd3e1/player

How it works:

  1. Scan any chess position from your screen
  2. Get an interactive chess board
  3. Make a move, get instant analysis of its strength and detailed explanation of why it works (or doesn't)

Coming soon:

  • Analysis for any subsequent legal moves
  • Loading indicators
  • Audio control options in the Chrome extension
  • More features based on your feedback!

We're still refining things and would love to hear from the community. What features would make this most useful for your chess improvement?

Try it yourself (new feature only on website for now, chrome extension pending):Β chesspredict.com

0 Comments
2024/11/27
06:18 UTC

2

Toga 2 executable

I tried to download the toga2 exe file but only found the source code. When I tried to compile it myself, it wouldn't run in my gui cuz it said it's 16bit and doesn't support 64bit. Does anyone have the 64 but supported exe file for it?

7 Comments
2024/11/25
02:07 UTC

8

Who is competing in FIDE x GOOGLE Optimization challenge?

"You're challenged to devise innovative and efficient solutions to play chess against other agents, thereby further expanding the frontiers of AI research. Your exploration of novel, optimized techniques can address a growing complexity and scale of problems, like advancements in modeling and inference techniques and improvements upon traditional heuristic-based algorithms, beyond the realm of chess."

Basically i have got a cheat code idea if nothing works. But i would like to dive deep into some algorithms and come up with new techniques for that

7 Comments
2024/11/23
14:09 UTC

13

SanChess: Chess game using Standard Algebraic Notation

Link: https://sanchess.app

I built this simple chess game where you have to type in the moves (e.g. e4, Nf3, etc). I made this to work on my visualization. Built with stockfish.js and chess.js

Would appreciate any feedback.

29 Comments
2024/11/19
02:39 UTC

1

Syzygy tables working slow...

Hi there. . I have a quick question about this endgame trainer app https://chess-endgame-trainer.firebaseapp.com/home (only I use the app version).

My question is, sometimes on my phone the app will alert Me that syzygy (I have syzygy tables turned on- that is best yeah?) Is working slow and it's switching to stockfish.

Does the engine/computer start using syzygy again as soon as possible after this alert, or do I have to switch the syzygy tables off & on again in the app (or even close the app completely & restart it) before syzygy tables start working again? Thanks!

0 Comments
2024/11/18
17:26 UTC

5

Amateur chess engine missing a move type

Hi All,

I'm implementing a chess engine as a programming challenge. It seems to work okish, but on the 4th ply it generates 9 fewer moves than the expected 197,281. Also, 19 few captures and 9 more checks than expected.

Does anyone know what I've likely overlooked?

Thanks in advance,

Steve.

βœ“ PASS Depth: 1 Combinations: 20 Expected: 20

Captures: 0 βœ“

En Passant: 0 βœ“

Castle: 0 βœ“

Check: 0 βœ“

βœ“ PASS Depth: 2 Combinations: 400 Expected: 400

Captures: 0 βœ“

En Passant: 0 βœ“

Castle: 0 βœ“

Check: 0 βœ“

βœ“ PASS Depth: 3 Combinations: 8,902 Expected: 8,902

Captures: 34 βœ“

En Passant: 0 βœ“

Castle: 0 βœ“

Check: 12 βœ“

FAIL Depth: 4 Combinations: 197,272 Expected: 197,281 Delta: < -9

Captures: 1,557 Delta: -19

En Passant: 0 βœ“

Castle: 0 βœ“

Check: 478 Delta: 9

14 Comments
2024/11/18
17:16 UTC

5

Twice win rate as white when engine playing itself

So I've been working on a chess engine for some weeks now. It's a basic alpha-beta pruning running at a fixed depth and a simple evaluation function counting just material.

I noticed that running the engine against itself at depth 5, it will win like 100 games as white, 70 as black and 70 draws. For shallower depth it will be something 100 to 50 as black.

I randomize the first two moves for both sides to get different games each time.

Is this a normal outcome? Maybe randomizing only the first move is not enough to steer the engines to "different" games? Or I am just seeing white's advantage to move first?

thanks :)

3 Comments
2024/11/17
02:40 UTC

17

Playing my Saitek Centurion. A jewel of past times.

1 Comment
2024/11/15
18:32 UTC

5

Why do nodes/s drop off during analysis?

When analysing a single position (Stockfish 17 in this case) I notice that the nodes/s start the highest and drop of as the eval goes longer and longer. Why is this?

0 Comments
2024/11/11
19:08 UTC

4

HELP! I'm trying to modify Fairy-Stockfish to support a new variant

Hello everyone! I'm a chess lover and amateur programmer interested, as the title of this post says, in implementing a couple of new rules into fairystockfish in order to play this variant:

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/banzai-chess

I've already done some changes in order to account for both the Push and the Bounce rules but, for some reasons which I'm not able to understand, the engine seems not able to correctly process these different kind of moves...

Does anyone in here have some experience with this stuff? Can someone interested in this project maybe reach out to me and give me an helping hand? After all it is a pretty simple variant and the new rules are already somewhat implemented but, unfortunately, not really working as intended.

Thanks to everyone who will answer <3

7 Comments
2024/11/09
12:42 UTC

4

DIY Simple Smart Chess Board

I'm relatively new to chess, having installed the chess.com & Lichess apps about 2 months ago and starting to try to learn the game (I played a bit as a child, but nothing beyond the basics). I have a couple of physical boards but rarely have someone to play against so mostly play on the app.

My brother has a beautiful wooden set and I had the chance to play against him this past weekend. I found that playing with physical pieces OTB is very different proposition to clicking on a screen. (I lost badly also)

I'd like to play more games OTB and was thinking it would be cool to have a physical board to connect to my phone to allow me to play against bots and other online players in that way.

Looking at the price of products like this on the market, it's a fair bit more than I am able to spend at this early stage of the hobby.

I've seen a few DIY projects online but they seem to vary significantly in complexity.

I've done a bit of electronics tinkering so I'd be keen to give such a project a try.

Does anyone have any recommendations? Has anyone tried such a project and had success/failure?

5 Comments
2024/11/08
10:46 UTC

2

I would love feedback on my free tool.

Hi guys,

I've been working on a project called Chess Predict: chesspredict.com, for a little while now, it provides analysis best moves and hints from a screenshot of a chess position. I'm aware of other tools that exist that do a similar thing that have been around.

I am looking to grow Chess Predict features to do things that you wish to see in a chess analysis/learning application that may not exist already. One thing Chess Predict does that other tools do not is provide you with a spoken natural language explanation of why the best move, and the line that follows it.

I am waiting on approval to make public the chrome extension for it, which will make it easier to get best moves from screenshots without needing to upload the screenshot manually for analysis.

I am also working on cheating detection research as part of my Master's thesis, and I hope to implement this work in a new feature on the chrome extension.

I've been told by a chess coach that it would be helpful if you were able to continue the best line on the app, as opposed to just getting the initial best move, and having only the spoken language analysis explain the line. This is one of many features I plan to add!

Please give me any and all feedback! I really value this community. Thank you guys :)

2 Comments
2024/11/04
21:24 UTC

2

How to encode FEN strings into shorter strings?

FEN strings are quite long. Are there any approaches of encoding them into shorter strings?

15 Comments
2024/11/03
02:11 UTC

3

Anti-Human bot?

I've been thinking of building something like an anti-human bot using a combination of Maia and Stockfish. So for individual positions, you use the Stockfish eval as usual. The bot also considers moves of its own side as usual, but when calculating the human's side it only considers the 95% most likely moves a 2000 elo player would make (I'm guessing there would be a more sophisticated way to go about this, but this is a simple example of the type of bot I'm talking about). The goal is basically to be extremely aggressive against 2000 elo players specifically, so even if the bot is in a material disadvantage it would still try to "manipulate" the human into getting a win.
Does something like this already exist? If not, how feasible is this to build for a complete beginner?

7 Comments
2024/11/01
11:22 UTC

1

Finding x repeated positions across a database.

Say I have a database. I would like to analyze it somehow to find a list of positions that have been repeated at least x amount of times.

No, I’m not talking about finding a specific position in a database. That’s just easily done with chessbase. No, I am talking about telling the database: hey show me all positions that occur at least say 25 times in this list of games.

This is in order to find tabias and key positions that may arise after different move orders, but without previously knowing which these positions may be. In other words, from a database, spit out a list of tabias.

Would anyone know how to do that?

5 Comments
2024/10/31
21:56 UTC

3

Stockfish set at depth 20 for an endgame trainer app

Hi

I use an endgame trainer app where the idea is that you can practice endgame positions such as queen vs rook and 100s of others against the engine (stockfish, not sure which version though). I have the depth set at 20 and the move time at 15 with syzygy tables on.

Is depth 20 enough or is this possibly making the endgames easier to win for the human player? As in is the engine using a strong enough defence against my moves? Thanks :)

9 Comments
2024/10/31
15:19 UTC

3

Does anyone here know where Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition keeps the models for its 3d chess sets?

I'm specifically asking because I want to use the models for the "Staunton glass", "Staunton marble" and "Staunton metal" chess sets as models for 3d printing physical pieces.

Many thanks to who can find them!

9 Comments
2024/10/28
09:48 UTC

3

Issue with Komodo's time management

I'm having an issue with Komodo Dragon 1: when I set a skill level lower than its maximum, it plays extremely fast, responding instantaneously. When I paired two of them, they played a 50-60 move game in about 2 seconds. I tried raising their "Time Usage" parameter, changing time control and everything, but it doesn't change. I even tried setting an infinite time control but in that case the engines won't play at all. I'm using Cute Chess GUI and other engines work normally, as well as Komodo itself when at its maximum skill level. How can I make Komodo play at a realistic speed and fix all of this?

4 Comments
2024/10/27
18:21 UTC

5

Which piece(s) should Stockfish 17 be taken away to have a balanced game with Magnus Carlsen?

12 Comments
2024/10/26
16:59 UTC

4

Opening Book for stockfish

I am using En croissant chess GUI. I wanted to know how to put an opening book in stockfish and which one. I also have Lc0 and Komodo on that so I wanted opening books for them too.

3 Comments
2024/10/23
08:55 UTC

2

Lc0 with Maia weights in WhitePawn (or any other Android GUI)? Problems with engine parameters...

I'm trying to get Lc0 to work with Maia weights in WhitePawn. I have successfully installed Lc0 on my phone, used my PC to transfer the Maia weights files to the WhitePawn app folder, added the path the weights in WhitePawn, and the engine seems to work and will play rather subpar (as expected) when using the 1100 weights (so the weights must be working since I don't have a chance against Lc0 normally!).

However, the issue is that for Maia to function as intended you have to modify engine parameters to set nodes = 1 (and I wanted to edit some other engine parameters anyway, but no matter how I try to enter them in WhitePawn the engine then refuses to make any moves.

Has anyone successfully modified the engine parameters in WhitePawn? If yes, how did you do it? Alternatively, is there another chess GUI that has the option to add the equivalent of command line flags (that's how I did it on the PC)?

7 Comments
2024/10/19
23:51 UTC

5

Looking for a digital chessboard for my nephew

Is there a chessboard that connects to wifi directly (instead of via smartphone/app?)

My nephew lives far away and is learning chess. Nobody else in the family plays so I want to work with him, but he’s only 10 so he doesn’t have a phone and has limited screen time.

What I’m looking for is a digital chessboard that connects directly to the internet so we can play. Bonus points for async so we can play games over multi-day periods, whenever we have time to make a move.

Any suggestions?

5 Comments
2024/10/18
01:03 UTC

7

Magnus Carlsen against Deep Fritz 10 - who wins?

Kramnik vs Fritz 10 was the last man vs machine match. Kramnik lost 4-2. But would Carlsen have done any better? I like this question because this computer opponent was in between the eras of when computers were beatable and when they were unbeatable. And since Carlsen is both considered one of the greatest (if not 'the' greatest', and is also a positional player, which suitable for playing against an engine.

As a big fan of human-computer chess, I currently think that if they played, there would be six draws (3-3). I mean that if Carlsen *today* plays against the engine. So, more opening theory and so on.

Thoughts?

9 Comments
2024/10/14
19:23 UTC

2

Good look up table for openings

Hello

I'm making my first chess bot and I want to use a look up table to program the openings. I can't seem to find any downloads for opening tables online. Does anyone know where I can download one for free? The format doesn't really matter.

Thanks,

Michael

1 Comment
2024/10/14
13:54 UTC

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