Chess engines???

I bought rybka 4 for about £30 and when it analysis it only goes at 25 kN/s where as the free platform of area analysis over 1000 kN/s going to depths of 20 in less than a minute where as R4 takes over 5 mins to get to a depth of 18.

Have I just been totally ripped off or what????

Any insight would be very much apprieciated.

Thanks

Using the same computer I assume?

yes

No idea, perhaps you're using some weak setting in Rybka. Check through the settings is probably the only thing I can think of.

I had Rybka for a long time.  Nothing wrong with it, it is strong and does fine.  But once you get a taste of Houdini, Rybka is slow as hell.

Why would you waste money on Rybka when it is known that Houdini is a much stronger engine.  In fact Houdini is currently the strongest engine in the world.

The free version of Houdini, 1.5a, is stronger than Rybka.  I agree with the last two posters... Rybka seems slow by comparison and there's no way I would spend money on that engine.  (The fact that all of the awards it won were later taken away is irrelvant to me... I don't care about that.)

However, you can't compare the search depths or the nodes reached from one engine to another. 

It makes no sense to compare the search depths of different programs. It is common to refer to the numbers printed by the chess programs as the “search depth”, but this is very misleading.

No serious chess program today searches all lines in the search tree to exactly the same depth. Some lines are searched to many more plies than the search depth displayed on the screen, and other lines are pruned to a much lower depth. There are programs which extend (i.e. search more deeply) many lines and reduce or prune very little, and there are programs which do exactly the opposite. As a consequence, a "ply N" search can mean very different things for different programs.

The search depth displayed in the GUI is the iteration counter, nothing more. It can sometimes be useful for comparing different versions of a single program, but when comparing two completely different engines it tells you nothing of interest.

The best way to compare the search depths of two programs would probably be to compare the average depth of all nodes in the tree for both both programs. As far as I know, no current programs display such information.

Create an engine vs. engine tourament for a few hundred games with afew varions time controls, using the Rybka you purchased against whatever other engine you are referring to.  (I didn't understand that "free platform of area analysis" comment.)  If Rybka wins your tournament, then you can be happy.  Who cares what numbers are reported by each engine.

I tried Rybka against Houdini Pro 2.0c    I don't think Rybka ever won.  It got plenty of draws.  Houdini won quite a bit.  The more time you give each game, the better Rybka did, but still no wins, just more draws.  I don't know about the 1.5a free version of Houdini though.

The free version of Houdini, 1.5a and still available for download, can often defeat version 2.0.   The difference in strength between these two programs is not very much at all. 

There's been discussions in other forums that the free version, at longer time controls, is stronger than the commercial version!  However, thousands and thousands of games need to be played before that can be determined.

Next time try doing a little more research before plunking down cold hard cash for software, hardware, firmware or anything else. There's plenty of FREE chess engines and GUIs that would work just fine for you that you could've downloaded and checked out before buying anything - and you may have decided not to buy any chess software after checking out the free stuff. Just out of idle curiosity did you do any research at all into chess engines before purchasing Rybka?

If Rybka allows you to load other engines definitely get Houdini, Firebird and Stockfish free chess engines and don't feel too bad as long as you learned something - like doing a little research before buying stuff.

www.cln.org/searching_faqs.html/

http://websearch.about.com/od/searchingtheweb/a/holidaywebguide.htm

According to chess engine rating sites stockfish is just as strong as Rybka but free

Regarding the OP's original question about Rybka's nps...

Here's a very long thread in another forum regarding Rybka 3. I doubt much has changed for Rybka 4. The thread contains a wide range of opinions on the topic. The reader will have to decide for himself what to believe.

 http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?start=0&t=22900&topic_view=flat

One more...

 http://talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?start=0&t=30992&topic_view=flat

To express it in layman's terms, a depth of 13 or so on Rybka = 20 ply on Houdini.

Houdini is very impressive from a fritz 13 user. All the chessbase engine games have houdini there.  Also check out shredders website were 6 piece endgame tables are given. Very impressive and makes fritz 13 look pretty weak.

Thanks alot for all comments

No doubt , houdini is stronger than Rybka. But if someone is seriouse in chess , I recommend to use both or 3 , such az deep fritz 13. The algoryitm of thinking proccess in rybka is completely diferent than houdini. So when you compare their analysis in a given position , you"ll find great ideas either . This will promote your own thinking proccess in chess and will enrich it dramaticly.

Chess engines have some strange especiallities. For i.e in most comlpex tactical positions . Deep junior or critter may completely surpass the other ones !

Stockfish is another phenomen. It is always suitable for quick analysis , and again in the most recent matches with the same hardware it has defeated both Rybka and Houdini .

Rybka's not the best, but it's perfectly fine to use as an analysis tool. It is slower because of its position evaluation algorithms. Just remember that depth isn't everything -- it's only half the picture. If you don't have a good evaluation, depth means nothing. 

When you pay for a chess program, you are generally spending the money on the interface and its features, not on the engine itself, since great engines are available for free download (I highly recommend Critter). As long as your interface allows you to install new engines, you're good.

I use Fritz 13 for all of its wonderful features, but that doesn't mean I am always using the Fritz engine. The program has a lot of great training and organization features and it integrates wonderfully with ChessBase. The engine it comes with doesn't matter so much -- if you don't like it, replace it.