Some computer chess tournaments aim to determine the best chess program by running all the engines on the same hardware to create a level playing field.
The Open Dutch Computer Championships in Leiden, now in its 30th year, dispenses with such limitations for a no-holds barred smack-down between the top engines.
The most jaw-dropping hardware this year was the mind blowing 800 cores monster powering Jonny.
Twenty 'players' competed in a nine round Swiss competition and the winner was top seed Rybka with a near perfect 8.5/9 score, way ahead of the rest. Only Spark escaped with a draw against the 'little fish'.
Since Rybka was created by IM Vasik Rajlich (pictured), it has dominated the computer chess world and become the engine that sets the standard for others to beat.
The Rybka 4 engine is available in both Aquarium and Chessbase GUIs.
Some of Rybka's games can be found below.
The final standings:
| 1 |
Rybka |
Lukas Cimiotti cluster, 248 Intel Nehalem cores, 2.93 Ghz and up |
8.5 |
| 2 |
Spike |
AMD Phenom X6, 6x2.8 GHz, 4GB RAM |
6.0 |
|
Deep Sjeng |
Cluster 32x8 AMD Opteron, 2.4 GHz (256 cores) |
6.0 |
|
Hiarcs |
12 Intel cores, 3.33 GHz |
6.0 |
| 5 |
Spark |
Quad Core I7 2.6 Ghz |
5.5 |
|
Deep Shredder |
12 core Intel Nehalem cluster |
5.5 |
| 7 |
Jonny |
Cluster 800 Cores Intel I7 , 2.2 Ghz |
5.0 |
|
The Baron |
Dual Intel Xeon W5580 |
5.0 |
|
The King |
Intel Core2Duo 2.4 GHz, 1 core in use |
5.0 |
| 10 |
Scaramanga |
Core I5, 1 core in use |
4.5 |
|
Nightmare |
Core i7 980X, 6 cores on 3600 MHz |
4.5 |
|
Rookie |
6 Core AMD Phenom2 3.7 GHz |
4.5 |
|
RedQueen |
Intel I7-720QM 2.8 GHz / 4 Cores / 4 GB RAM, 1 core in use |
4.5 |
| 14 |
Hermann |
Core i7 860, 8GB RAM, Windows 7 using 4 cores |
4.0 |
|
GoldBar |
Core I7, 4 cores on 3600 MHz |
4.0 |
| 16 |
Kallisto |
Intel CoreDuo 1.8 GHz, 1 core in use |
3.5 |
| 17 |
Joker |
Intel Core2Duo 4 Ghz, 1 core in use |
3.0 |
| 18 |
Hansdamf |
K8-x2 |
2.5 |
| 19 |
Fridolin |
Quad-Core (4 cores in use) |
1.5 |
| 20 |
Dolphin |
E8600 Intel Core Duo 4 Ghz, 1 core in use |
1.0 |