Why do people buy chess engines?
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BeepBeepImA747
Jul 13, 2017
0
#1
The strongest chess engine (Stockfish) is completely free. Why would I spend 100+ on Houdini/Rybka/Fritz/Deep Insert Your Engine Here?
Curious what engine chess.com uses when playing against computer?
Stockfish, I think. I'm not sure which version.
Jul 13, 2017
0
#6
will_n wrote:
The strongest chess engine (Stockfish) is completely free. Why would I spend 100+ on Houdini/Rybka/Fritz/Deep Insert Your Engine Here?
1) If you are a professional and need all the edge available in having two computer "opinions."
2) If you like to support the competition and are the sort of person who makes a donation to Stockfish even though you don't have to.
3) If $100 is just not a big enough deal to you to be worth worry about it.
Jul 13, 2017
0
#7
Ignorance (which I suppose means a lack of market research).
#3 from @RCMorea's post above. There are people in the world fortunate enough not to have to count dollars, never mind pennies.
Commercial support?
Access to a particular feature not offered by Stockfish.
Simplicity, e.g. if the choice is for a combined engine plus user interface plus regularly updated opening database.
A few thoughts. It's capitalism at work. If the developers of the commercial products (HiARCS is another one, although I think OS/X now MacOS only) stop making money presumably they'll move to something else.
In the commercial IT space free and commercial products have learned to coexist. MS Exchange and Postfix/qmail/sendmail. MySQL and PostgreSQL are free but Oracle and MS SQL remain profitable.
In the end, if you're happy with Stockfish, be happy. I bought HiARCS (when $100 didn't matter much) and I sometimes compare its analysis with Stockfish's, and if I ever (rarely) play a game against a computer I would choose HiARCs with the strength turned down or Chess Genius on my phone over Stockfish. On the phone it may be familiarity rather than features guiding my choice; I don't know. It's been a while since I regularly commuted on public transport, and now I usually have online games I can continue in spare moments also.
To ask a different question: why do people buy watches (still) when their phone practically certainly shows the time? Answer, many do not. Some do: preference, it's easier to look at your wrist than pull a phone from a pocket, style/fashion/status (Rolex doesn't advertise to sell watches as nearly as much as to reassure their existing customers).
Jul 13, 2017
0
#9
Purchased engines work seamlessly with database software in ways that Stockfish does not. They also support tablebases. I use both.
Jul 13, 2017
0
#10
Stockfish isn't the strongest--Komodo is.
And Stockfish has very few functions on its own.
Still great for a free engine, though.
You usually don't just "buy engine", but rather you buy packages that are built around an engine, but with a lot of special analysis functions. I had the Shredder software around 10 years ago, and aside from the engine with multiple difficulty and play style settings, it also featured a large master game database, an opening explorer and many interesting analysis tools; I'm sure, since then, the features have been improved and added significantly.
Sure, you can get each of these elements for free, but a dedicated engine software will merge them seamlessly, something which is much harder to accomplish by putting together various unlinked tools.