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I have a really interesting game going with Cofail (Him Houdini, White, Me Stockfish, Black) where I wanted to test the Steinitz Variation of the Scotch against a strong engine. http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=44757202 White never lost the advantage, even got up to about 1.7 or so at a point. But, now in an unbalanced material ending, Black has built a little fortress, and White's task seems difficult. Interestingly, for the past few moves, Stockfish evaluates the position between 1.1 and 1.2. But that's not all, it gives exactly the same score for about the top 5-8 alternatives, almost any non-losing move scores that. For example, for Black's 62nd move, I have 6 moves evaluated at exactly 1.09. Is this a sign that Stockfish thinks White cannot make progress, and the game is headed for a draw? I know it's a game in progress, but seeing it's an unrated engine game. I don't think the normal rules apply.

To play the White side of a Scotch Game Steinitz Variation. I prefer 3 days per move, but whatever floats your boat is fine with me too :)

Here's my beast, custom made by myself: i7 970 (overclocked to 6 @ 4.375 GHz) Corsair H70 fixed loop water cooler (replaced the fans for Apache Black Silent PWM fans). ASUS P6X58D-E motherboard. 24GB of 1600MHz Kingston HyperX RAM overclocked to 1704MHz 2 x NVIDIA 2GB GTX 460 in SLI Boot Drive: 2 x OCZ Vertex2 60GB SSD in RAID0 Data Drive: 3TB Hitachi Deckstar. 1000W Coolermaster Silent Pro power supply. Antec 902 case. I had many a session putting this thing together and even a few beers. Under construction and testing, on the kitchen table: I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only geek here, so post your specs and maybe even a picture.

Hello, all! I saw some of you comparing kN/s, in another thread, so I thought I'd weigh in on this. You cannot compare Rybka's kN/s to another engine's kN/s. It's really sort of like comparing apples to oranges. You CAN, however, compare a specific version of one engine to the SAME version of the SAME engine on another machine. Each engine has different search algorithms and look for the best move in different ways. Compare it to searching for a lost child. Let's let one group of people wearing blue shirts, say 100,000 of them, look for that lost child in every city in the USA at the same time. Now, let's let another group of people wearing red shirts, say 10,000 of them, look at the same time, but in the city where the child was lost and in the city where his grandparents live. Which group is going to find the child first? We don't know. One engine may spend time looking like mad at every possible move, even the lame ones; and another might instead look hard at only what it feels are the good moves. Which chess engine will find the best move first? We don't know. As I understand it, Rybka might only have xxx kN/s on a basic system, but it's looking at what it feels are only good moves. I'm not touting Rybka, I'm just telling you how I understand it to be. See this article: http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=5727 From what I understand, Rybka has patented its search alogrithms. It doesn't need to look everywhere for the little boy, just in the cities w/ the best odds.

Hi, I just downloaded Arena and houndini, but when I click analyze the engine gives the same first move in almost all variations. So is there any way I can see alternative moves? Thanks.

A few places left, don't delay: http://www.chess.com/tournament/no-holds-barred

Run a tournament for some of the free engines I have with their default settings (hash table size was set to 512MB). They had 2 hrs for the first 40 moves and then 1 hr for the rest of the game (~6 hrs/game). The tournament had 6 rounds (126 games). Here are the results: Rank Engine Score To Ry Gl Fr Sp Na St S-B1 TogaII 1.4-5c 25.0/36 ...... ===110 1010=1 ==111= 11=11= =11==1 1====1 409.00 2 Rybka 2.2 24.5/36 ===001 ...... 01==== =11=== ===1=1 111=1= 111111 376.00 3 Glaurung 2.2 23.5/36 0101=0 10==== ...... ==111= ==1111 1=1=== 11=011 376.50 4 Fruit 2.3.1 17.0/36 ==000= =00=== ==000= ...... 010000 1=1111 111=11 252.25 5 Spike 1.2 15.0/36 00=00= ===0=0 ==0000 101111 ...... =1=001 ==10== 245.50 6 Naum 2.0 11.0/36 =00==0 000=0= 0=0=== 0=0000 =0=110 ...... =0=011 192.50 7 Strelka 2.0 10.0/36 0====0 000000 00=100 000=00 ==01== =1=100 ...... 171.75 Toga, Rybka and Glaurung got about the same number of points and were significantly better than the others. (Hardware: 2.5GHz quad core Intel Xeon)

I have been part of this group for a long time I noticed that there was little discussion about exactly how to use your engine to its full potential. I am not very experienced so I am hoping for some good players to chip in. Anyways, these are my methods: -Use infinite analysis mode, then look at the top 3 lines. -Decide which one looks most attractive (if unsure, choose the first line) -Play out the moves in the analysis to make sure that you don't fall for the horizon effect trap. At the end of the line, the evaluation should be the same or better. -If you have Rybka, use the Monte Carlo analysis. I feel it is more effective at finding the best move.

Greetings all, I've never owned or set up an engine before, so I'm bewildered by the technicalities. My machine is an i7-920 running on 6Gb of DDR3 RAM and I'm an approx 2000 FIDE rated player, I'm thinking we might make a half-decent centaur. So here's the thing: 1. Please explain the components required to make a good "chess playing device". 2. Please suggest some bitchin' "builds" given my hardware. Links to trusted download sites would be appreciated, as would someone taking me under their wing, for a little while. I hope that I don't ask too much.

Anybody interested in playing an advanced chess game with me?

Is this position drawn? Technically material is equal but that doesn't necessarily mean anything with the imbalances on board. If white can use his pieces to pick off black's pawns, he should easily win. Black can't make any passed pawn threats, as white can easily pick them off. Should black just try to draw? Can white make anything? Also, I think we should start another vote chess game. I would be interested to see how engine vs engine played out this ending.

Currently I use the chess.com opening database for the opening. My current plan is to trust the engine when there are less than 100 master games in that position. When do you guys start trusting the engine over opening books?

Do you think we could start a team match with another group? (I'm not exactly sure how this works, do we send out a seek?)

Who wants to play a centaur game starting from the position after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nxe5 (Halloween Gambit). I'll take either color at any time control.

Anyone else get hot knees from these chess engines?... guess it only applies to those with laptops. The real question: Is there a way to save what the engine has analysed and then come back to it later without having to get there again? Maybe I'm way off with how these things work but just thought I'd check, don't really want to break my fan. I'm using Rybka v2.2n2 with Arena GUI. Also just a few noob questions: Is "ply" the same as depth? What is the usual range of depth that is accepted for analysis? Does each move need new analysis even if the move is within the line found? I'll pick it all up quick, but it's always best to ask. Thanks in advance.

I started a thematic tournament: Najdorf, English Attack. AC is allowed and tournament is unrated. http://www.chess.com/tournament/najdorf-english-attack-advanced-chess-allowed

I think this is the best place to post it, but if not please tell me. I wanted to make this post for what happened recently in the game against computers 2, that i told that i've downloaded an engine, and some of you (or maybe all, but only some talked) told me that what i was doing was wrong, and told me that if it was downloaded it shouldn't be used. I don't agree with this, but also don't want to, in certain way, make you do something you don't agree with, that would be accepting the analysis that i post. So in that case, i wouldn't have any engines to contribute with the group, and i think that we were linked here in part for that. So if that's the case, i should quit the group. So please tell me if it bother you this or what in order to know what to do Thanks Seidel

Anybody up for a challenge?  I don't really want to start randomly challenging people, however, I do want to play a couple games of "Advanced Chess".  I played a person, and they 'blindly' followed the engine moves.  Their king moved about 5 times by move 30. Watch the black king!       So, I would like to find out how strong my chessmaster 10 is against a rybka or fritz 11.  I also want to play other games of advanced chess!

I would like to get thoughts about whom to add to the team.  It is clear we are looking for people who will read the forum and vote for moves based on the consensus of the engine analysis.  I would assume we also want people who have strong software available.  Should there be a ratings cutoff for that software?  Should we use the CEGT ratings list for Elo at 40 moves in 120 min and not admit someone whose software isn't comparable with what we have?  Or should we be more open and allow anyone interested even if their software is obsolete.  Here is the CEGT site:  http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/40_120_ratinglist/ratinglist/rangliste.html) 

After we're done playing with webgogs, can we play cheater_1? Read here:  http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/my-ultimatum Cmon people...you know you want to...