4PC Engines! Info + Q&A

how can i play with these engines?

No, because Terminator is private bot

NO NECROPOSTING

can we play them

You don't need a computer to tell you that 4-Player Chess (4PC) is more than just twice as complex as its 2-player counterpart. The game of 2-player chess has been around for centuries, and it's been decades since us mortals could defeat the best of what computer engines can do. Stemming back to Kasparov's 1997 defeat at the hands of IBM's Deep Blue, man is no match for machine in one-on-one chess. So the question arises, how do engines perform in 4-player?

The resources of the 4PC community are far less than what's available to the teams behind DeepMind's AlphaZero, Romstad, Costalba, & Kiiski's Stockfish, or Komodo, by Kaufman, & Dailey, although that hasn't stopped some AI-savvy programmers from building some very talented engines. Currently, there are 3 engines, each in various states of revisions and self-learning. As of yet, the engines are only learning how to play as teams. FFA and Solo are much less predictable, and the challenge of programming an engine increases exponentially as the element of luck and randomisation increases.

These engines have the ability to host rated or casual teams games within 4PC, and will only ever be partnered with themselves. Aside from the fact that it's a bot controlling the moves instead of a human, the gameplay, rules, ratings and mechanics are the same as usual. The games hosted by the engines will be given a custom title (i.e. "Phoenix Challenge"), and are available to any player. If you see these games, and want the chance to play against an engine, join to try it out!

Prior to any of these engines being developed, our very own developer from 4PC, @spacebar, created a two types of bots for testing purposes. These are the Mr.Random Bot and 4-Comfuter, which do not play games on their own, nor can they be invited to rated games.

Let's meet the engines!

Terminator by @Tony

• Programmed in C
• >10,000 lines of code
• Alpha-beta searching engine, similar to non-neural 2PC engines
• Comments from the creator:
  • Its development started in March 2019, and the first version to play online was from October 2019. When the current version plays against the Oct-2019 version, it wins over 95% of the games, so it has improved a lot. However, it is still not unbeatable in games with human players. I think it's very likely that some other engine or engines will surpass TeamTerminator in 4PC teams strength in the future.
• @TeamTerminator1
• @TeamTerminator2

Machina by @kooser6

• Programmed in C++
• 3174 lines of code
• Follows standard UCI protocol
• Comments from the creator:
  • I am currently working with different pruning methods, and different depth extensions to get the strongest play. Also I just started working on a NNUE version of machina just like Stockfish NNUE. In the next couple of years you can expect a 3000+ rated machina.
• @TeamMachina1
• @TeamMachina2

PhoenixZero by @omatamix

• Programmed in C
• 2513 lines of code
• Comments from the creator:
  • PhoenixZero only has 110 thousand self-play games (compared to AlphaZeros 40 million). With 4 player chess being so complex, it might be a while before PhoenixZero becomes unbeatable. In the future I plan on building a computer which can train the AI’s network faster. I am currently working on making a MuZero implementation of PhoenixZero.
• @PhoenixZero1
• @PhoenixZero2

A 4th engine, as a collaboration between @omatamix, @kooser6, and @GTSWPM150 is in the works, under the title of ZivaZero. One area of focus for this new project is openings, and in particular, discovering new, more dynamic teams openings. As of right now though, we'll have to wait in anticipation!

Many thanks to the creators and collaborators on these projects, both for their investments in 4PC engine creation, and specifically for their contributions to this article. I'm sure I speak for all of us in the 4PC community, when I say we are excited to see what the future holds.

so they aren't bots at all?

ok that makes sense

and they also chat with the players?

hi