Stockfish 4

Now available.   Should be interesting.

Cool! I just tried it on Analyze This app and it is quite faster compared to Critter (my earlier fav!)

In this amazing game played by Kamsky yest, Stockfish is nearly 10-20s faster in finding mate in 9, compared to Critter!

I guess we will see another release, as something is not terribly right with the initial one. The official x64 (modern/SSE 4.2 compiant) build crashes right after loading it to the GUI, and there is no other x64 build available. The machine I've tried to load the engine is fully 64-bit/SSE 4.2 compatible.

But the devel "modern" x86_64 version works just fine. It certainly looks faster than the 3 version, while the CPU load is on par (very low, compared to Houdini, or Critter).

I mainly use Linux, and I always compile Stockfish there using my own cflags and parameters, and version 4 compiles and runs just great, without any issues.

I can't verify ATM the claims about significant improvement on playing strength, but I guess these are quite founded.

Hi pfren,

There are more x64 builds on the Development page, if you want to try them.

http://abrok.eu/stockfish/

Yes, I know.

Under Linux, I can set everything as desired (and I do use the Intel compiler instead of gcc, since the builds it produces are smaller, and faster).

I have tested all the precompiled windoze builds, and only one works as expected. There is also an automated windows build platform, which never worked fine for me, and setting MingW to build Stockfish under windoze is rather too much of a fuss, since I am not a windoze user.

Based on the early results I'm seeing, it looks like Stockfish 4 might be edging out Houdini 1.5a.   (Not that it matters a whole lot.)

Update - I'm almost at 40 games, which isn't a lot, I know, but my SF4 is just smashing H1.5a. I saw another report from some testers showing maybe +12 elo above Houdini, but I'm getting something like +100+. I know this can't hold, it's gotta tighten up. I've rechecked my settings, and everything looks OK. (I'm only using 1 thread per engine; I'm using the Windows 64-bit sse42 compile.)

@EscherehcsE: Maybe Stockfish 4 is relatively strong on machines that don't have "unlimited" resources?

So Houdini 1.5a might need more resources to get close to the level of Stockfish 4, and with limited resources Stockfish 4 may outplay Houdini.

As I suspected it might, my Stockfish 4 vs. Houdini 1.5a tournament has tightened up. At 100 games, Stockfish leads Houdini by +56 elo (58% score). That's close to what the IPON rating test is around right now (except he's testing Stockfish 4 vs. Houdini 3; atm he's showing Stockfish at 14 elo over Houdini 3). If this is close to right, that puts Stockfish 4 close to, if not slightly above, Houdini 3. Houdart had better pull a Houdini 4 out of his hat real fast. (And I'd expect him to.)

Do you happen to have a link to the games or anything like that? And also, will the Stockfish app be updated to Stockfish 4 soon?

it does look like stockfish is having some trouble with komodo cct

I don't see a link to the actual games, but here's one to the ongoing IPON results:  http://www.inwoba.de/

And my games are on my computer.

btw, it looks like the CCRL testing is showing Stockfish not doing quite as well as in the IPON testing. We'll just have to wait and see where everything shakes out in time. But Stockfish is really getting close.

Sorry, I don't know anything about Stockfish apps - I just download and install the engines for PC use.

Oh, your just a tester... You made it seem like you were the creator of it, with all your information and testing...

HaHa, I'm not even an official tester...just idle curiosity. Sorry if I caused you to think I was somebody important.

hi pfren, what GUI are you using? i'm not having any problem with Stockfish 4 x64 SSE42 with Fritz 11 GUI under sandybridge celeron

I used the instructions here to compile it on my Debian Linux system.  It works fine.  I am not familar enough with chess engines to comment on it's performance.

CB 2009 Premium. My main system is not SSE 4.2 compliant (an eight years old Core2Duo 6600 with 6 GB RAM) but the one I had these issues is the one of my chess club (Athlon II X4 640 with 8G DDR3 which is fully popcnt/sse42 compliant).

well i made stockfish-4 play  some  bullet games against houdini 1.5a with no book for either engines and ponder on.

i found that houdini is better than stockfish-4 in bullet games. however as soon as i made both of them play longer games.  stockfish-4  clearly outplayed houdini

Quite expected. Stockfish is slower than Houdini, and at the same time way less CPU-intensive.

well later on, i had stockfish 3 with me. in the downloads, they offer 2 types of stockfish engines. one is stockfish-3 32 bit  and another one is stockfish-3 legacy-ja.  

so i made stockfish-3 legacy-ja  play some bullet games with houdini1.5a  . i found that stockfish-3 legacy-ja was better than houdini. houdini was able to draw some games but could never defeat stockfish-3 legacy-ja

i thought that stockfish-3-legacy-ja might be stronger than stockfish-4. so to check this fact, i made stockfish-4 and stockfish-3-legacy-ja play some bullet games. the result stockfish-4 was better than stockfish-3-legacy-ja.

quite surprising and weird results.

houdini beats stockfish-4 .  stockfish-3-legacy-ja beats houdini.  stockfish-4 beats stockfish-3-legacy-ja.   

after some time, i will hold a bullet tournament with all the 3 engines participating it. only then i can get a concrete conclusion.

well i finished the tournament of bullet games . there were 4 rounds and 12 games were played .so here is the table of tournament

engines             houdini1.5a     stockfish-4     stockfish-3-legacy-ja  points

houdini1.5a        ~~~~~~~~        1-1-0-1                   1-0-0-0               4/8

stockfish-3         0-1-1-1           0-0-0-0                  ~~~~~~~               3/8 

stockfish-4         0-0-1-0          ~~~~~~~                  1-1-1-1                5/8

 so i can say that stockfish-4 is better than stockfish-3 . no doubt about it.

however, it is still not better than houdini in bullet games

also , stockfish-3 is quite good at playing at bullet games than houdini1.5

but as soon as i make them play games of 30 min.  stockfish-4 clearly beats stockfish-3 and houdini1.5a

so, i can say that in bullet , houdini is better than stockfish-4  but not better than stockfish-3-legacy-ja

but in standard games, stockfish-4 rocks!!

(PS: i know that in order to judge an engine, i should made them play more than 100 games. however i don't have time to make them play 100 games )