Come On Komodo, Let's See How Hard You Bite!
First off, summarizing the picture head used for this blog entry, is that how you're supposed to feel when playing against this engine? Yes? No?? Well, honestly I felt like a human buffet table going up against this thing for the first time, but we'll get to that later.
A few weeks ago, I decided to add several more chess engines to my ever-widening library, thanks to a post I saw on here many years ago, but coming across it in a google search made me go on a engine download rampage, and Komodo 7 is what I got (plus some of it's older siblings.)
Mainly, as computer chess software goes, my main combination is Fritz 12, followed up with Chessbase 11, and that's been my one-two punch for years now. During my download binge, I also got Lucas, Arena and SCID as well, but I mainly only use those for "pick-up" games, nothing overly serious.
I'm very OCD, so I made separate time-control-type databases in Chessbase 11 for each time control I will be using across ALL chess programs (which also includes Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition,) and a 3-page outline/journal/progress report file as a poor man's training guide on what to do each day and for how long.
Are you with me so far...? *crickets* Good. Then let's go.
Below, already analyzed, since I played it a couple of days ago, is the second game I played (that's right, I'm NOT showing you the first) in Fritz 12, using the Komodo 7 x 64bit engine, using a hashtable size of 8 GB (I have 16 GB total) on an i7 Quad core @ 2 GHz.
It is a 15|10 official FIDE classified Rapid game, and Komodo 7 drew from my 5 M+ game database as it's Reference Database and had 30 seconds to analyze each move, for both sides and giving me training diagrams to follow afterwards as well.
I used to do this kind of thing years ago, but since I am not one for public scrutiny and criticism, I stopped doing it, so I am finding the stones to do it today. So let me post this sucker, and tell me what you think. Now keep in mind as Komodo 7 was analyzing, I never got the "??" blunder symbol, but, eh, you'll see it for yourself. It gave me a black "Tactical Blunder" ribbon, but not the "??" but I seemingly walked into a mate, which I thought would be the blunder. Anyway if you have any comments or words of advice, let me know.
*Deep breath* Here is the game:
I'm not saying what I thought about the game or anything other than I'm happy that I was able to last to long against Komodo, win or lose. Despite it being Rapid time controls, the game went on for a good bit and the analysis took over two hours.
Be gentle, and thanks for reading. 
-Mark
Super Admin/Co-Founder of the Official Chess.com/TV Group
