Darius's comment
 

The beginning of 2023, time to clean up the rating list and add new players :)
I try to make sure that in each segment of the ranking score, interesting and new chess engines are presented.

Starting from the bottom of the list, I welcome the Spartan and Mess engines. Both deserve special attention for several reasons. The latter is an actively developing project that, although only at version 0.0.2, is playing with a strength of about 2000 Elo. The former, Spartan, is a work several years old with available source code written in a clear and understandable manner - ideal material for a didactic engine and/or for further development.

Other new engines that have made their way to MCERL include Carp, Peacekeeper and the latest final version of Kimbo 1.0.0, which has significantly increased in strength compared to its predecessor (Kimbo 0.2.1).
I am also very pleased with the presence on our ranking list of the Princhess engine, which - as one of the few - uses the MCTS algorithm, which undoubtedly affects the attractiveness of its style of play.

Among the many other debuts in the current MCERL, I would like to draw attention to the Frozenight 6.0.0 engine, which reached an excellent 3310 ranking points!

The latest Koivisto 9.0 has reached a dizzying 3600 Elo, which at this level for an engine that is not a Stockfish clone - is quite a feat. Congratulations to the authors !
A clear progression is recorded by Uralochka, who is approaching the high threshold of 3500 Elo. I'm impressed!

The development versions of the Stockfish engine are not noticeably stronger or weaker than the official release of Stockfish 15.1, although the developers are trying new solutions, algorithms and neural networks. One can see the determination and hard work to make this remarkable work of the chess community even stronger. I hope that there will come a time when Stockfish (or maybe another engine / project) will also be developed in other directions, not only in terms of strength.... This will probably be a topic for another article on the chessengeria.com blog regarding future prospects for chess engines.

Summing up this edition of the MCERL, I am constantly pleased to see new chess engines appearing, and existing ones being developed and growing in strength and capability. This is a good prognosis for the whole year 2023!
 

And lastly...

I invite you to watch the beautiful chess games from MCERL competition :)

​