You have chosen a chess engine for your Mac. You intend to download it or have already done so. But... you have never used a chess engine downloaded from the Internet before. How to do it ? Will the chess engine work ? What should you pay attention to ? I will answer these and other questions in this How-to. How-To was prepared for users of macOS Monterey and older operating systems. Users of macOS Ventura & newer are invited here. How-To is intended for inexperienced users. Was written in such a way that anyone willing after reading it will be able to run a chess engine downloaded from the web. Millions of Macs are in use around the world. Macs have a reputation for being among the most secure. They are also stable, fast, quiet and energy efficient. Why not to use Macs for computer chess, for analysis and playing chess engines, for training and playing online ? Nothing stands in the way. For Macs, there is a lot of excellent software for all kinds of chess applications. It is worth using the best, strongest, most versatile and interesting chess engines together with good software. And they are available for Mac :) You can learn more from the article: Tools in a chess player's workshop - Mac Always download chess engines from safe places on the web with a good and established reputation. For starters, the good news is that getting the Chess Engine ready to run on your Mac is very easy. As you become practiced, it will literally take you seconds :) Koivisto, Lc0, Stockfish, RubiChess, MadChess, Velvet - these are just a few examples of notable and popular chess engines that you can download for free from the Files section and use on your Mac. There is the award-winning, unique and versatile Dragon by Komodo Chess. One of the few commercial chess engines that is worth its price. And it is available for Mac to download from the manufacturer's website. And finally, there is also Berserk - a powerful and free open source chess engine to which I dedicated a separate page on my blog. Using the Berserk chess engine as an example, I will show you how to run the chess engine on Mac. You can download the Berserk chess engine from the Files section. The Berserk chess engine and other related files (e.g. logos) are placed in a 7-Zip archive. This is to reduce the volume of downloaded files. Your Mac has a pre-built 7-Zip archive decompression tool. You don't need to install an additional application to support 7-Zip. By default, your web browser (e.g. Safari, Firefox, Chrome) should download Berserk to the Downloads directory on your Mac. After double-clicking on the icon of the downloaded chess engine, the archive will be unpacked and a directory with the same name will appear. When you enter the newly created directory (double-click it), you will see the contents. At this point you should choose the version of the chess engine you intend to use. The chess engine, which has the Apple Silicon in its name, is designed for Macs equipped with the M1, M1 Max, M2, ... CPU (see Wikipedia for details). In this case, it will be: Berserk-10_Mac_Apple_Silicon The chess engine, which has Intel in its name, is designed for Macs equipped with an Intel CPU (see Apple Wiki for details). In this case, it will be: Berserk-10_Mac_Intel To quickly check what CPU your Mac is equipped with, click on the apple icon, which is at the top left of the screen. Now click on About This Mac In the newly displayed window under the Overview tab, you will find the symbol of your CPU (Processor). Good to know: Macs with Apple Silicon CPUs are in most cases able to use chess engines compiled for Intel-based Macs. If successful, the same engine in the Intel version will be slightly slower than the same engine natively compiled for Apple Silicon CPUs. This is a difference of up to a few % in speed. Macs with Intel CPUs are not able to use the chess engine compiled for Macs with Apple Silicon CPUs. Now, it is time to give the chess engine the rights to run. We will open a program called Terminal. Click the magnifying glass icon, which is in the upper right corner of the screen. The Spotlight search engine window will open. Find the search field... ...type terminal and press the Enter key. Below the window, where the directory with the Berserk chess engine is located, the Terminal program window will open. On macOS (and in other systems, such as Linux, Android and Windows), 99.9% of chess engines have an executable attribute, which allows you to simply run them and use them for your own purposes. Sometimes, in order for a chess engine to run, it must be given the executable attribute. Regardless of whether the engine has this execute attribute or not, it never hurts to give it. It is a very simple and quick action. In the terminal window, type chmod +x press the Spacebar and click on the engine icon appropriate for your Mac. While holding down the mouse button, drag the Chess Engine icon to the Terminal field. Then release the mouse button. If your Mac has an Intel processor, then you should select Berserk-10_Mac_Intel. Press the Enter key. Excellent. The executable attribute has been given to the chess engine. This is important because macOS, when working with this chess engine, will "know" that it is a program and not, for example, an image or sound file. Now we are going to try the chess engine for the first time. For your Mac, this will mean trying to run a program from outside the App Store. Taking care of security, by default macOS is configured in such a way that in case of just such an attempt, an appropriate prompt will be issued. And this is what we mean, because we will make it so that the Mac always accepts this chess engine. Again, click on the chess engine icon and drag and drop it onto the Terminal program window. Press the Enter key. The mentioned prompt is displayed. Confirm by clicking on the Cancel button. The chess engine will not be started. Don't worry about it. Everything is fine - this is normal macOS behavior to ensure the security of the system and data on your computer. To authorize the chess engine to run, we will enter the system settings. Click on the apple icon in the upper left corner and then select System Preferences.... Go to Security & Privacy and in the General tab, click on Allow Anyway. Excellent! The prompt regarding the launch of the chess engine has disappeared. You can now close the Security & Privacy window. Go back to the Chess engine and Terminal windows. Click, drag and drop the chess engine into the Terminal window. Press the Enter key. In the newly opened window, click on the Open button. Has the chess engine been started ? Let's check it by typing in the terminal window: uci Press the Enter key. It is working! The chess engine works :) The engine reports its readiness for operation. Congratulations, you did all the steps very well :) Now you can close the Terminal window or type: quit (Enter key) The chess engine has been turned off. Your Mac will no longer warn you to run this chess engine, because you have authorized it in your system settings. That's the end of this How-To. Here are some examples of using the Berserk chess engine. Berserk 10 & Banksia GUI Berserk 10 & Hiarcs Chess Explorer Pro Berserk 10 & Scid vs. Mac Always download chess engines from safe places on the web with a good and established reputation. I wish you a successful hunt for chess engines :) In the Files area you will find free chess engines for download.

Files is a place from where you can download chess engines and programs, games, bases as well the other files. The necessary tools are also there. To access Files, simply click the Files link on the navigation bar at the top of the page. After a while a new window will be displayed - you are in the Files place :) Usage is very simple and resembles working with files on a computer. In addition to browsing and downloading, you can also use the file search engine. I have included all the necessary information in the files... Files Help.pdf Welcome to Files.pdf ...which are always visible on the first page of Files. In addition to games and bases (for example from MCERL), chess engines and programs will appear in Files. My goal is to make chess engines and programs available to the community using various devices. For example, if chess engine is not available in the Linux version, then I compile it (assuming, of course, that the source code allows it). In addition to the most common architectures such as x86-64 (Linux, Mac, Windows), I create compilations for ARM64 (Linux) and Apple Silicon (modern Macs), which are increasingly numerous and popular among computer chess enthusiasts. My compilation environment is always the currently supported operating systems along with the necessary tools (compiler, etc.) and updates. Below I have included the most important information about Files: All available files are safe and virus-free. All files have been checked with antivirus programs before being placed on the server. Files are stored in Google server space, which itself contains antivirus software that has also checked the files before they are made available. No commercial files or pirated software. In compliance with applicable licenses, e.g. GNU GPL, MIT, Apache, etc. The majority of chess engines were compiled - by Darius - the owner and creator of chessengeria.eu. Exception: chess engines compilations hosted with the permission of the author(s). Files are archived in widespread Zip, 7-Zip or Tar format supported by the most commonly used operating systems. If you need a tool to unpack archive or PDF viewer, there are programs dedicated to Linux, Mac, and Windows in the Tools directory.

You are cordially invited to read the 2022-12-24 edition of the MCERL rating list. " (...) The end of 2022 is a very interesting and fruitful period for lovers of chess engines and programs. The latest versions of Dragon by Komodo Chess, RubiChess or Lc0 are just a few of the new releases in late November and December. Particularly noteworthy is the Lc0 0.29.0 chess engine, whose Developers introduced support for the latest Mac computers, which had the effect of significantly increasing the power of this remarkable engine. ​ ​ Are the results achieved by chess engines running on a Mac surprising ? ​ Yes and No. ​ Yes, I'm happy to welcome the PowerFritz 18 to our rating list, which, it's worth noting, is the first chess engine in the Fritz family to work perfectly with Wine software, allowing it to be used seamlessly on a Mac. No, Stockfish consolidates its first position as the most powerful chess engine for Mac. Version 15.1 is a successful step forward. " Enjoy :)

Considered by many to be the most versatile chess engine. Source: komodochess.com Here's what GM Larry Kaufman wrote about Dragon 3.2 by Komodo Chess: " We have released Dragon 3.2 at komodochess.com, an upgrade of the engine that won the World Computer Chess Championship in July 2022 after a tiebreak match with Lc0. Dragon uses NNUE (Neural Network Updated Efficiently) technology, originally developed for the game of shogi. Komodo has a great deal of chess knowledge in its evaluation. Training an NNUE network based on this evaluation was both an advantage and a challenge, requiring experimentation with architectures and data generation of billions of positions. The reinforcement learning phase for Dragon has already made great strides. Dragon 3.2 is a huge strength improvement over Dragon 2, roughly 100 elo at blitz using normal openings, much more in MCTS mode or when playing Fischerandom (chess960). It is a significant improvement over Dragon 3, about 20 elo in all modes in blitz with normal openings. The gains over Komodo 14.1, the last pre-dragon release (Nov 2020), are in the 300 to 400 Elo range on one thread, depending on mode and game type, all at CCRL blitz time control (2' + 1"). The improvement over Dragon 3 is due to a newer net architecture, newer net, to speedups, and to search improvements and parameter tuning. The improvement from Komodo to Dragon is due to the embedded neural network providing much more accurate evaluation and also in some sense gaining an extra ply or so of search by seeing some tactics that a normal eval would not see. Our testing also shows that Dragon is especially strong in Fischerandom (960) chess. Dragon also won the 2021 TCEC Swiss and Swiss2 championships (normal chess). We believe that Dragon will play in a more human-like style than standard Komodo since it relies on learning what actually works in games rather than just on pre-assigned values for eval terms. The Skill levels have been replaced by Elo values, made much more human-like, and are now intended to correspond to human Fide Rapid ratings or chess.com Rapid ratings, so for example an 1800 FIDE rated player should be closely matched with UCI Elo 1800 at 15' + 10". In the grandmaster range this was confirmed by test games between Elo = 2600 setting and Grandmaster Alex Lenderman. Also the MultiPV play of standard mode is dramatically improved from the initial dragon release, on top of the actual strength gain. Other features added since Komodo 13 include Armageddon mode, MCTS Optimism, Personalities, and Auto-Skill. Standard mode is usually the stronger mode objectively, while MCTS mode is usually better at setting problems for human opponents as it does not assume perfect defense, especially with multiple threads, and is also stronger than standard mode when looking at several lines of play at once (MultiPV). Dragon 3.2 is about ten elo stronger in all modes than 3.1, and has scaled down the evals so that an eval of 1.00 will mean that the position is thought to be on the edge between a win and a draw. " In addition, on the TalkChess forum page, we can get some additional information from the same Dragon chess engine Developer: " (...) It is likely that 3.2 will be the last of the Dragon 3 series, and we don't know when Dragon 4 (or whatever it might be named) might be available. " On online forums dedicated to computer chess, users speculate whether this is the end of the development of the Dragon by Komodo Chess engine, whether the degree of difficulty in raising the strength of the engine is so large and time-consuming that the Developers ending the subscription model want to give themselves more time, or perhaps they are simply carrying the intention of selling their engine to another developer ? Or maybe there are other reasons for this ? Dragon by Komodo Chess is an extremely powerful chess engine. Its closest competitors, i.e. Berserk, Koivisto, RubiChess or Revenge engines, although consistently increasing in strength, in my opinion it needs at least 1 year to match Dragon 3 by Komodo Chess in strength. Dragon 3 by Komodo Chess is a sure No. 2 on the MCERL rating list. Source: MCERL (ongoing) Undoubtedly, today, the development of a chess engine at the highest level - which Dragon by Komodo Chess presents - requires the creative work of a team of dedicated Developers and many immeasurable hardware resources. This is the path chosen by Developers of free open source engines Lc0, Stockfish and several others. Entire communities are focused according to specific engines - developing them as a "never-ending" project. And you can see the tangible results of this. I have this feeling, although I could be wrong, that in the case of Dragon by Komodo Chess, in time it could be integrated into another chess and commercial project run by one of the biggest and recognizable brands dealing with the chess topic. What do you think about it? The comments section is at your disposal.

Nibbler is the most advanced graphical interface for operating the Lc0 chess engine. It is recommended by the developers of this remarkable engine. Nibbler for Mac icon Nibbler for Mac and Nibbler for Linux & Windows is a free open source program under the GPL 3 license. With Nibbler, you can conveniently access all the key parameters of the Lc0 chess engine and maximize its potential and power during play and, above all, for analysis. Created and developed as a dedicated tool for the Lc0 chess engine, Nibbler offers capabilities not found in other chess GUIs. Only Banksia GUI offers similar functionality, but it is not a tool specialized in cooperation with Lc0. Recently, Mac users received a beautiful gift of the Lc0 0.29.0 chess engine capable of harnessing the power of modern Macs. And the result is amazing: the latest Lc0 plays several hundred Elo stronger than its predecessor (measured on a MacBook Pro M1); about 3400 Elo with short time to think (1 minute / game + 0.6 seconds / move) and of course stronger with more time. This is due to the use of the so-called Metal backend, through which Lc0 accesses the most powerful Mac computing accelerators (hardware-accelerated graphics). Nibbler and Lc0 0.29.0 ready to use the resources of the MacBook Pro M1 using the Metal backend. Users of older Macs can also use Nibbler and the latest Lc0 but (depending on Mac hardware resources) the Metal backend will not always be available - less Lc0's strength. Nibbler and Lc0 0.29.0 ready to use the resources of the iMac mid-2014 using the OpenCL backend. Here's how Nibbler looks during the analysis with Lc0: Nibbler for Mac offers the same capabilities as its Linux and Windows versions. Lc0 is a very "sensitive" chess engine in terms of choosing the right version for your computer and the neural network used. A good choice will provide high strength when analyzing and playing chess. This correlation is the same when Lc0 is used in Linux and Windows environments. My Mac compilations are "universal" and work well with the vast majority of computers. However, if you want to maximize the power of Lc0, then I encourage you to compile this chess engine yourself or (which is also a very good option) download it using the brew package manager. Brew is able to download and install Lc0 in such a version that will efficiently use the resources of your computer. I wrote about the installation and use of the brew package manager in this article. Due to the great interest in using the Lc0 engine has the Mac platform, I will probably publish a proper how-to soon. If you don't want to wait, then... Feel free to download Nibbler. Mac Apple Silicon – with latest Lc0 0.29.0 & default net (791556) Mac Intel – with latest Lc0 0.29.0 & default net (791556)

Welcome to the next and final part of the course on Debian and computer chess. In the previous two parts, we learned how to obtain and install the Debian system from scratch, and we learned methods for customizing and preparing this system for use with chess software. This the third part is related to the article: Tools in a chess player's workshop - Linux - there I present the best free software for various chess purposes. Now, I will show you how to install these interesting programs designed to run on Linux. Additionally, we will acquire and prepare for use a chess database of over 5 million games ! Like the first two parts of this course, this part is designed more for beginners. All information will be presented in enough detail that anyone who has acquired knowledge from the previous parts of this course will be able to install the programs presented. 1. Lucas Chess - Training /Practice Go to the Lucas chess program download page: https://lucaschess.pythonanywhere.com/downloads Download the installer marked with a red border. You will be taken to the SOURCEFORGE page and after a few seconds the download will start. Select Save File and click OK. Good. The Lucas Chess program installer has been downloaded. Open the Terminal program. Let's go to the Downloads directory. Type in Terminal: cd For your reminder, press the Enter key at the end of each command. Now type: cd Downloads (Enter) And type: ls You should see the downloaded installer. Let's run the installer. Type: sh LucasChessR2_01c_LINUX.sh The installer will start working. Then a window will appear where we can choose whether to install Lucas Chess or run it without installation. Our goal is to install, so click on Install. After a while, the program will be installed and a window with a message will be shown. When you click Close, the Lucas Chess program will automatically start. Excellent :) Now you can use Lucas Chess ! 1.1 Lucas Chess - Launch & Shortcut to the program. Lucas Chess can be started as standard, via Show Applications. After typing the first letters of the name, the program icon should show up. Clicking the left mouse button will launch Lucas Chess. Instead, if you right-click on the Lucas Chess program icon, then an additional menu will appear where you can, for example, add a shortcut to this program to the Activities bar. When you click on the Activities bar, a shortcut to the Lucas Chess program will appear. Of course, you can change the position of the shortcut to your preference by left-clicking and dragging it to the desired location on the Activities bar. In this way, you can add and remove from the Activities menu other shortcuts to programs that, for example, you don't use very often. 2. PyChess - PlayChess Offline & Online Open the Software program. Type PyChess in the search engine. PyChess should appear in the search result. Click on it; you will be taken to a window containing a description of the PyChess program. From this window, you can install PyChes by clicking on the Install button. Confirm the installation by entering your account password. When finished, press the Enter key or click Authenticate. Installation will take a while. After the installation is complete, you will be able to start the program immediately from within Software by clicking on the Launch button. Congratulations! You have installed one of the most interesting chess programs for Linux :) At the time of creating this part of the course, PyChess available through Software is in the stable version number 1.0.0. And this stable version I recommend to use. However, if you are interested in using even newer versions, keep a close eye on the PyChess program messages right after you start it. To install the latest version of PyChess, go to: https://github.com/pychess/pychess/releases And download the latest installer with the .deb extension In this case, the latest one is: python3-pychess_1.0.3-1_all.deb Before installing the latest PyChess, I suggest you remove the currently installed version of this program. To install PyChess downloaded in .deb format, we will use the GDebi program that we previously installed in Debian 11 (for details, see Part 2 of this course called: Linux for Chess Part 2 - Debian 11 customization). When it starts, click File - Open... Point to the downloaded installer, which should be in the Download directory. Then click Open. Now, when you click on the Install Package button. PyChess will be installed. If a window appears asking you to authenticate this installation, then enter your account password and press Enter. We can watch the installation progress of the latest version of PyChess. Installation completed. You have installed the latest version of PyChess. In the same way as with Lucas Chess, we can add a PyChess shortcut icon to the Activities bar. After removing unnecessary shortcuts and installing the two chess programs described above, my Activities bar looks like this: 3. Scid s. PC - Chess Games Annotations / Database / Analyzes As in the case of PyChess, just with a few clicks we can install Scid vs. PC via Software. Also in this case we do not have the newest version of this program, but a high version number: 4.21. On the day I created this part of the course, the latest Scid vs. PC is version 4.23. To install it, you have to download the source code of this program and compile it. I invite you to check out my article detailing how to do this. If you are interested in Scid vs. PC version 4.22, you can download this version as an installer with .DEB extension here. Install using the GDebi program. In my opinion, the difference between version 4.21 and 4.23 is not big. If you want to avoid compiling this program, it is a good idea to install it through Software. Open the Software program and in the search area type: scid Install in the same way as the previously mentioned PyChess program - click Install and continue the process. This is what Scid vs. PC 4.21 looks like after its first run. How to use Scid vs. PC effectively, I described in free courses I published on my website. First part of the course about Scid vs. PC is available here: Scid vs. PC - Efficient work with a chess database Although the appearance of Scid vs. PC is not modern, don't let it confuse you. Scid vs. PC is the most powerful free program in the class of chess programs supporting chess databases. In many applications it is not inferior to its commercial counterparts such as Chess Assistant and ChessBase. 3.1. Scid - Chess Games Annotations / Database / Analyzes When writing about Scid vs. PC, one cannot forget about the Scid program. The similar name of both programs is not accidental. Scid is a program - the "older brother" of Scid vs. PC. More or less since 2009 Scid vs. PC has gone its own way introducing new features. Scid is also develop and mainly focused on working with large chess databases and using chess engines. Undoubtedly, Scid is a very good program, if you don't care about additional features and you value stability, give Scid a chance and install it. If you would like to use the latest version of Scid, please go to this page. From there, you can download the source code or the installer in DEB format (ready to install with GDebi). If you are more interested in working with the most stable version of Scid, then you can download it via Synaptic Package Manager. a) Open Synaptic Package Manager If a window appears requiring authentication, type the password for your account and press Enter. b) Type Scid in the search engine. c) Now click on the square next to the scid name to mark this program for installation. A window will appear asking whether to install the add-ons and required packages. Confirm by clicking on the Mark button. d) You can mark other components for installation that you will use while working with Scid. I additionally chose data useful for working with databases and Stockfish chess engine. e) When you have selected everything you need, click Apply. f) Before you start installing Scid and components, you can browse the list of packages after expanding To be installed or click Apply. g) The files will be downloaded... ...And installed. h) When finished, the installed Scid and the added packages will be highlighted with green squares in the Synaptic Package Manager window. You can close Synaptic Package Manager. Scid is available among other programs, we can run it using shortcut. Scid 4.7.0 is ready to work. 3.2. Scid s. PC / Scid - Downloading and installing a big and good chess database. For free and legally we can download Caissaase, a chess database containing as many as 5.61 million games (January 2022). This is an excellent database where you will find the newest chess games, but also the oldest ones. Caissabase is updated regularly thanks to the work of a man nicknamed @caissabase (link goes to Twitter page). Caissabase can be downloaded from: http://caissabase.co.uk/ Installing Caissabase is very easy. Download and unzip Caissabase. Then run the program Scid vs. PC and open the unpacked Caissabase. In the Scid program, opening Caissabase is the same way. Within seconds, Caissabase will be opened and installed in Scid vs. PC. The window with the list of chess games can be opened through the Windows menu. Scid vs. PC sample view with Caissabase's list of chess games. Scid sample view with Caissabase's list of chess games. In the future, after opening Scid vs. PC there is no need to install Caissabase again. It is available from the File menu. 4. Arena - Chess Engines. Arena is yet another example of a very good Linux software that is not inferior to its commercial alternatives. This program stands out for its richness of useful functions and stability of operation. Arena can be downloaded from: http://www.playwitharena.de On the main page click on the visible link named: Arena 3.10beta for Linux (Fix for Debian) Download the installation file by clicking on the link marked with a red border. Click OK button. The file will be downloaded to the Downloads directory. Extract the file. To run Arena, first open the arenalinux_64bit_3.10beta directory by double-clicking with the left mouse button. Then right-click on the selected file named Arena_x86_64_linux and select Run. (You can also run Arena by double-clicking the left mouse button on this file) Arena program will be launched. After selecting the language, click the OK button. I suggest approving the installation fonts by clicking Yes. It is also a good idea to agree to a desktop icon with a shortcut to the Arena program. Click the Yes button. Now, you can use Arena on a Debian system. If Arena is going to be a frequently used program by you, it's worth putting it on the Activities bar. 5. Banksia GUI - Chess Engines Home page: https://banksiagui.com/ Banksia GUI is a dynamically developed project with frequent updates. The program is strongly focused on the use of chess engines with a particular emphasis on matches and tournaments. Among other things, the program is distinguished by the ability to play many simultaneous matches at the same time, which makes it a useful tool when, for example, testing, calculating rankings and looking for novelties in chess openings. To download the latest version of the Banksia GUI, go to this page: https://banksiagui.com/download When you click on the link highlighting the file for Linux, the download will begin. When the download is complete, go to the Downloads directory and extract the file containing the Banksia GUI. The newly created directory with the program can be moved to any place of your choice or just left in the Downloads directory. To start the Banksia GUI, let's open the directory of this program to reach the launch file. The startup file is BanksiaGUI.sh IMPORTANT! Before running Banksia GUI, make sure that the option to run executable text files is checked in the Files program preferences - see image below. Running executable text files is explained in the second part of this course: Linux for Chess Part 2 - Debian 11 customization. When double-clicked, the Banksia GUI program will be launched. We have the latest version - Banksia GUI 0.54 beta (as of June 2022). Fantastic! You can use another great chess program :) 6. ChessX, Jerry, ... And other chess programs - install in the same way as the programs presented in this part of the course. 7. Chess engines The natural way to obtain chess engines in Debian 11, is to download them from the official repositories via Synaptic Package Manager. This has the advantage that you will get engines that are stable and work perfectly on your system, and that are ready to go as soon as you download them. The engines available for download are not many - a dozen or so. They represent different chess power. For example: Gnome Chess, PyChess - average player Sjeng - a strong club player Phalanx - a master Fruit - grandmaster Glaurung - strong grandmaster able to beat any man including the World Champion Ethereal, Stockfish - super grandmasters capable of winning 100 chess games out of 100 against any human and most other chess engines. Some of them, e.g. Stockfish can be force-adjusted - that is, set the game of the engine so that it will be an equal opponent for e.g. a beginner (Stockfish level 3: 1000 - 1300 Elo). Here is the list of available chess engines for Debian 11 via Synaptic Package Manager (June 2022). Most of these engines also allow you to configure specific parameters of their game. This is a very useful capability, allowing you, for example, to completely change the playing style of a particular chess engine. Galurung provides so many important parameters that the user can even create different personalities, playing in very different styles. The chess engines in the Debian repositories are a nice thing, but not without certain weakens. Due to regular but not always timely updates, some of these engines will not be in their latest versions. As an example, the Stockfish engine is version 12 in the repository, while the latest version available for download from the engine's website is Stockfish 15 . However, if you don't care about the super playing power of the latest versions of chess engines, then you should definitely consider downloading the chess engines listed above through Synaptic Package Manager. Probably most Linux users download latest chess engines prepared for their system from verified sources such as developers' websites (e.g. Komodo Chess, Stockfish, Koivisto) or from hosting services (e.g. Berserk - GitHub, Stash - GitLab, Olivechess - SourceForge). The most convenient way to use chess engines is with specialized programs. In Debian 11 system, any of the programs described here, especially Arena, Banksia GUI, Scid or Scid vs. PC. As an example, I will show how to install the Stockfish chess engine in Scid. I assume you downloaded the Scid program and Stockfish engine using Synaptic Package Manager. This way you have this software ready to use. a) Start Scid and under Tools menu open Analysis Engine... b) In the newly opened window, click New... c) In the next window, fill in the Name and Command fields. After clicking OK, the Stockfish chess engine will be available for use in Scid. d) To test the engine, double left click on the line with the name Stockfish 12. In the main window of Scid, the analysis tab will open: Analysis: Stockfish 12. As you can see, Stockfish 12 works well. Wasn't it simple ? :) And this is what working in Debian 11 with good software can be like: easy, quite pleasant, fast, and efficient. It is a good idea to make sure that your Debian system is well prepared and customized for your needs. This will make it easier to install programs and chess engines from various sources and also to compile them. At the end of this course, I thank you for your trust and wish you many successful installations and most of all satisfaction while using cool chess programs for Linux. This is the end of the course: Linux for Chess Part 3 - Installing chess software in Debian 11 I invite you to choose the next course :-))

In this part of the course, we will prepare Debian 11 for comfortable install and use to work with modern chess software. Like the first part of this series, this part is also designed more for beginners. All information will be presented in sufficient detail so that anyone who has already installed Debian 11 can successfully prepare and customize the system to suit their needs. All operations described below - are optional. If you are interested, I suggest you read about them first, and then decide whether to use them. 1. Additional respositories. Debian by default has access to a huge base of software of all kinds. However, sometimes it can be useful to have even better drivers e.g. directly from the video card manufacturer (proprietary drivers), codecs, fonts and much more. Once logged in, click on the Activities button that is at the top left of the screen. As in this case - if needed - buttons and places will be marked with a red border. Then click on the Show Applications icon. Select and click the middle program icon with the short name: Software & Upd... Under the Debian Software tab we should select the two options shown in the picture below. After selecting the first option, a window will appear asking you to authorize this change. After entering the password for your account (in my case I entered the password for my chessengeria account) and clicking the Authenticate button, the system will allow you to check the options. After making changes, click Close. Now click on the Reload button to have the changes made immediately using your internet connection. Good. An information window will appear and disappear shortly (depending on the speed of your internet connection). 2. Installing proprietary drivers. This is useful if your computer uses a graphics card from AMD or Nvidia and - besides typical chess applications - you intend to use graphics acceleration or just play games. 2.1. Installing Nvidia graphics card proprietary drivers. Open a terminal in the same way as shown in the previous section (type terminal in the search engine). And type the command: sudo apt install nvidia-detect After typing, press the Enter key to run the command. The first time using the sudo command in the terminal, Debian shows this information: Enter the password for your account and press Enter. Ok, the program has been installed. Now run it by typing: sudo nvidia-detect If your computer does not have an Nvidia graphics card, you will get the message I received: If your computer has an Nvidia graphics card, you will receive the same or a similar message, depending on the model of your graphics card. So, install the proprietary driver for your Nvidia card using the command: sudo apt install nvidia-driver When you press the Y key or the Enter key, the drivers will be installed. When the driver installation is complete, reboot the system. 2.2. Installing AMD graphics card proprietary drivers. Open Terminal and type the command: sudo apt install firmware-linux firmware-linux-nonfree libdrm-amdgpu1 xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu When you press the Y key or the Enter key, the drivers will be installed. Now we will add Vulkan support for AMD graphics card. Type the command: sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers libvulkan1 vulkan-tools vulkan-validationlayers When you press the Y key or the Enter key, the drivers will be installed. If you intend to use OpenCL, you need to install Mesa OpenCL. Type the command: sudo apt install mesa-opencl-icd When you press the Y key or the Enter key, the drivers will be installed. When the driver installation is complete, reboot the system. Proprietary drivers should improve the performance of your graphics card. 3. Installing Microcode. Microcode is a CPU firmware that controls how CPU works. It is a good idea to have an updated Microcode. To make sure you have the latest version of Microcode installed, run Synaptic Package Manger and search for microcode. Depending on the type of processor your computer has, install Mcrocode for Intel or AMD processor. My computer uses Intel 64 bit processors, so I chose the package: intel-microcode. Once checked, confirm with Mark the additional necessary software that must be installed from Microcode. After clicking Apply, the Microcode will be installed. Click Apply. The installation progress will be visible on the bar. 4. Installing build-essential. Build-Essential is a powerful and useful software package that is used to compile programs including chess engines. It is a good idea to install it shortly after starting a new Debian 11 system. Open Terminal and type the following commands: sudo apt install build-essential Press the Enter key. Confirm by pressing the Y key or the Enter key. Let's verify that the GCC compiler included in the build-essential package is installed, type: gcc --version Perfect! Build-essential package and GCC installed. Now we will add the linux-headers package. sudo apt install dkms linux-headers-$(uname -r) Yes, approve. 5. Installing restricted extras. We will install useful add-ons such as codecs, fonts, support for RAR archives and more. Open Terminal and type: sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer rar unrar libavcodec-extra gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly gstreamer1.0-vaapi Of course - confirm. After a while we receive messages - everything has been installed without errors. 6. Installing Microsoft fonts compatibility. If you want fonts in Debian 11 that are almost identical to those in Microsoft Office, install the alternatives with a command: sudo apt install fonts-crosextra-carlito fonts-crosextra-caladea 7. Swappiness - configuration. In today's computers, RAM is fast or ... very fast :) To easily improve the performance of Debian 11 even more, decrease the swappiness value. This will result in Linux using RAM instead of the hard disk (which is slower than RAM) when needed. Important! This method is not recommended if you are using an old computer with slow RAM - it can lead to intermittent operation and crashes of Debian 11. First check the current swappiness value, type: cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness # 60 (default) As you can see, the system returned a default value of 60. Let's change this value to 10. Open /etc/sysctl.conf file as an administrator: sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf At the end of the file, add vm.swappiness=10 which will reduce swap usage. Press CTRL + O to save changes and CTRL + X to exit the nano editor. Reboot the system. Let's verify that the system is working with the changed swappiness value. It is ok. 8. Faster system startup. Each time Debian 11 is booted, a welcome screen is shown and after 5 seconds a boot sequence is executed. We can configure the boot loader to boot immediately. Type: sudo nano /etc/default/grub Change the value of GRUB_TIMEOUT from 5 To 0. Press CTRL + O to save changes and CTRL + X to exit the nano editor. Update the boot loader by typing the command: sudo update-grub Reboot the system. If in the future you need the boot loader (GRUB) screen, you can display it by pressing SHIFT when starting Debian 11. 9. Firewall installation The fact is that there are not many viruses and malware on Linux. And this is very good news for us - users. Almost all modern Internet access points (e.g. routers, mesh sets) have built-in Firewall. However, it's not a bad idea to take additional proactive steps to further protect the data on our system. You can install a firewall in Debian 11. This is optional, but advisable. Type: sudo apt install ufw Activate the Firewall by typing: sudo ufw enable Let's check its current status, type: sudo ufw status verbose Everything is fine. The default settings are appropriate for most users. 10. Install BackUp Program. There is a saying that "users are divided into those who do backups and those who will do backups." Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth in this, and some users find out when they (for various reasons) lose important data. On a Debian 11 system, I recommend backing up your data with Timeshift. Open Synaptic Package Manager, search for Timeshift and install it. Confirm by clicking Apply. Once installed, we can open Timeshift using the program finder. After starting Timeshift we are shown a Setup Wizard with which we can configure the program. The setup is simple. You can choose how many snapshots Timeshift will perform / store on a monthly, weekly, daily, hourly and boot basis Allows you to decide which folders Timeshift will back up. You should prioritize your home directory, but depending on your space, it won’t a bad idea to include /root directory as well. Setup completed. Timeshift program has been activated. Of course, you can change the settings as needed. 11. Enable GNOME extensions. The desktop you use in Debian 11 is called GNOME. Right out of the box, GNOME is minimalistic and "almost" invisible to the user. The intention is that once Debian has GNOME installed, nothing should distract the user and everything should work perfectly. Indeed, it does. However, if you wish to enhance GNOME's capabilities, there is nothing stopping you from doing so. First check which extensions are already installed and which you can activate. Find Extensions in the program browser and open it. As we can see, the system puts quite a few different extensions at the user's disposal, they are disabled by default. I suggest enabling: User Themes, which will allow you to make easy changes to your system's appearance. Window List, which will make all open programs visible as bars at the bottom of the screen; making them easier to access. Now with Firefox web browser go to GNOME Extensions website and install their browser extension first if you don’t have it already. Install the Firefox extension by clicking the link marked with a red border. A window appears in which you click on Continue to Installation. Click Add. Click Okay. The Firefox extension has been installed. Now you can install any GNOME Extension with a few clicks :) We will use this functionality in the next two sections. 12. Enable Tray Icons. Some programs can be used through their icon in the tray. For example Dropbox, Skype, Zoom and many others offer this possibility. To make this work in GNOME we will install an extension called TopIcons Plus. Go to: https://extensions.gnome.org Search by topicons name. Click on the name of this extension. Ok, now click the button located at the top right of the window. When you click this button, it should show ON. When you start a program that can use the tray, you should see its icon at the top of the screen in the tray. It is a good idea to place this icon on the side of the screen so it is not centrally visible. Go to GNOME Extensions, click on the gear wheel - TopIcons Plus extension settings. And select the Tray location on the screen. I chose the right side. Perfect! That was the point. 13. Install additional GNOME themes. Go to the website: https://www.gnome-look.org You will find hundreds of different extensions for GNOME. They are categorized for easy site navigation. Let's install something cool :) When you go to the Rating tab, you can see the top extensions sorted by user ratings. I chose Orchis gtk theme. Once you have navigated to this extension, under the Files tab, click on the package marked with a red border. When the download is complete, go to the Downloads folder and extract the downloaded package. A directory named orchis will appear. Double-click the orchis folder to open it. Select everything and... move it or copy it to the .themes directory. The .themes directory should be in the Home directory. If it is not there, create one. Remember to show hidden directories (they have a dot in front of the name) using the CTRL+H shortcut beforehand. Open Tweaks. Proceed to Apperance. After expanding the Themes components, you can choose Orchis or any other theme you have downloaded. In the case of Orchis, it is possible to select it for Applications and Shell. Immediately after selection, GNOME components are changed. In this way, you can customize the appearance of the entire system - all of its components - according to your preferences. Example in the image below, in addition I added wallpaper and orchis icons (a .icons folder must be created in the Home folder). 14. Add user image. When personalizing Debian 11 don't forget to add a picture representing the user of this system :) Open the system settings and go to Users. When you click on the icon (in my case named C), you can take a picture or select a picture file. Here is the look after the change. 15. Add the minimize and maximize button. By default, GNOME does not provide a minimize and maximize button. We can change this. Open Tweaks, go to Window Titlebars and select the appropriate options. 16. Enable Nigh Light. Open Settings, go to Displays - Night Light and select the appropriate options. 17. Enable FlatPak and Snap. FlatPak and Snap are application packaging formats used in many Linux distributions, including for Debian 11. It's worth having them installed, even if you don't use them very often. For example, the latest version of the good chess program Jerry can be installed using Snap. Open Software program. In the search box, type: gnome software and click on Software. At the bottom of the newly opened page, check both options. Confirm by entering your account password. Flatpak and Snap will be automatically installed. Close and then restart the Software program. The directory from these two packages will be loaded when you run Software, Let's test if Software is able to find the chess program Jerry that is in the Snap package. In the search box, type: Jerry It works! After clicking on the program icon a new window will open where we can read about Jerry and install it. 18. Running executable text files. Some Linux programs are run using what is called an executable text file (script). Such programs include Banksia GUI - a Free Chess Graphical User Interface. But no worries, there is no need to create such a file; there is an executable file in Banksia GUI. In this section, I'll show you what to do to make Debian 11 run Banksia GUI the standard way, by double-clicking on the executable file with the left mouse button. First, open the Files program. Now click on the options icon. A menu will be expanded. Click on Preferences. On the Behavior tab, select Run them. Close the Preferences window. From now on, after double-clicking the executable text file, the program will start. Important ! If you do not make this small but important change in the Files program, then when you double-click on an executable text file - it will be opened by a text editor. And this is not what we want - we want to run the program, not edit the startup script in a text editor. 19. Create a program shortcut. Sometimes there is a need to create a shortcut to a program. For example, if you download a program from a developer site that is not in DEB format and is not listed in the Debian database (Software, Snap, etc). This situation can also occur with a chess program. For example, if you do not have or delete the shortcut to the Arena program, you will only be able to run it when you enter the directory with that program. In this section, I'll show you how to create a shortcut to Arena. Let's get started. 1. On my computer, the Arena program is located in the Downloads directory. Check the computer you are using to see which directory the Arena program is in. 2. Launch your favorite word processor. I chose the system Text Editor. 3. Fill in. Make sure you fill it out correctly. For your convenience, I have included this text to copy to the clipboard. You can use it. [Desktop Entry] Type=Application Name=Arena Exec=/home/chessengeria/Downloads/arenalinux_64bit_3.10beta/Arena_x86_64_linux Path=/home/chessengeria/Downloads/arenalinux_64bit_3.10beta/ Icon=/home/chessengeria/Downloads/arenalinux_64bit_3.10beta/Arena.ico StartupNotify=true Terminal=false Categories=Game; If the Arena program is in a different directory on the computer you are using, make the appropriate changes to the text. 4. Save the file by clicking the Save button - A new window will open. In the Name field, type Arena.desktop Specify the save location to: ~/.local/share/applications Click Save to store the Arena.desktop file in the selected location. 5. Now, I suggest you log out and log in (or reboot the system) to have the system place the icon-shortcut to the Arena program in Applications. If we did everything correctly, the Arena shortcut will appear among the shortcuts to other programs. 20. GDebi installation. Debian is one of the most popular Linux distributions, and consequently many companies such as Microsoft, Google and others provide software for it. Debian users can install programs via DEB packages. Just as, for example, in Windows the programs are in EXE format, in macOS in PKG format, so for Debian the programs prepared for installation are in DEB format. Instead of using the Terminal command line to install programs in DEB format, you can use the gdebi program. With gdebi and its graphical interface, you can easily install and uninstall DEB programs. Use the Synaptic Package Manager to install gdebi. Below is an example of using gdebi to install Dropbox. 21. Extend the Battery Life. If you use Debian 11 on a laptop, you can install tlp, a power management tool. Open a Terminal and type: sudo apt install tlp When you press Y or Enter, the program will be installed. After the installation is complete, restart your Debian 11 system. In the next and last part of the course: Linux for Chess Part 3 - Installing chess software in Debian 11, we will, as you may have guessed... installing chess software in Debian 11 :) This is the end of the course: Linux for Chess Part 2 - Debian 11 customization. I invite you to choose the next course :-))

This is the first part of the course where I will introduce the installation of Debian 11. It will be installed on a computer based on a popular architecture: AMD64. The course is aimed at beginners. The content includes a lot of details and is written so that everyone is able to install Debian 11 on the computer. The full name of the system: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye). Website: debian.org Below, in the first section of this course, you will learn how to properly download the installer. However, if you are interested in purchasing pre-prepared installation media or a computer that already has Debian installed, you will find the information you need here: https://www.debian.org/distrib/index.en.html 1. Downloading the Debian 11 installer file. To download the installer, go to the Debian website: https://www.debian.org Once at the Debian site, click on the Download button to the right. After clicking on the link marked with a red border: debian-11.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso the installer will download. Debian 11 can be installed on many different architectures and in many different ways. To simplify the installation process of this system, the creators of Debian 11 have provided the so-called netinst, which is an installer of a small size that will download all required and latest programs at runtime. We will use this installer in this part of the course. IMPORTANT! Depending on the computer on which you want to install Debian 11, you will need to choose a suitable installer. In this case, I chose an installer suitable for the AMD64 architecture, one of the most common, which is for computers based on 64-bit AMD and Intel processors, among others. If you: need an installer for a different architecture, such as ARM64 or you have a computer with a 32-bit processor or your Internet access is not fast and you would like to install everything from a USB stick or CD/DVD etc. Then go to this page: https://www.debian.org/distrib/index.en.html to download the appropriate installer. 2. Preparing the Debian 11 installer. To install Debian 11 from the downloaded installer, which comes as an .ISO image, you need to burn it to a USB flash drive or a CD / DVD. If you are going to install Debian in a virtual machine, then the modern software you use (e.g. Parallels Desktop, Virtual Box, Vmware, etc.) can use the downloaded .ISO installer without additional operations. Depending on the system you are using, prepare a Debian 11 installation media with the help of these guides: How do I write an ISO image under Linux/Unix? How do I write an ISO image under Mac OS? How do I write an ISO image under Windows? Usually, preparing the installation medium is a simple operation. For example, on recent versions of Windows, this can be done natively by right-clicking the ISO and selecting "Burn image to disk (or similar)". If you have questions that are not answered in this part of course, I suggest you visit: https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/index.en.html 3. Installing Debian 11. Launch the installer. The welcome screen should appear. If you see it - congratulations! We start installing your new Debian 11 system :) Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to select: Graphical install and press the Enter key. A window will be shown in which you should select the language that will be used during installation and will be the default language when Debian is installed. Installing Debian 11, which is a modern operating system, is not difficult. The installer is designed in such a way that even a novice user should be able to cope, as all the most important installation parameters will be automatically prepared during the process. The installer window at the top tells you the current installation parameter. You can control the installation process using the keyboard and mouse cursor. Select a language and then click Continue. Now you need to select your physical location. Once you have made your selection, always move on by clicking Continue. Darius, the author of this course lives in Europe. In Poland. In the next step, select local settings... ...And keymap to use. Good. We have selected the basic parameters of the installation. After clicking Continue, the installer will begin to check the installation media. And it will automatically configure the available network connection. Specify the hostname of the available network. Optionally, you may - but do not have to - provide a domain name. I have not entered anything here. Now it's time to configure important accounts. You may not enter anything in the screen below. This will cause that already after installing the system, when you need administrator privileges, you will get them after using sudo command in terminal. In the next window you can enter the full name of your account. Now enter the user name of your account. Enter the password for your account. Now it's time to allocate storage space for your Debian 11 installation. ... This is just so "scary to read", but thanks to the automatic configuration by the installer, it usually comes down to approving the proposed configuration. I suggest you dedicate an entire disk to a Debian installation. This way you will avoid having to do any manual configuration. Of course, if you have the knowledge and know what to do, the installer gives you the option to enter the partitioning parameters manually. In the next step, the installer shows you the disk whose contents will be deleted before the Debian installation process. If you want to correct something, you can do so by clicking on the Go Back button. If you agree to proceed with the process, then click Continue. I suggest you choose the first and selected option from the top. In the next step I also suggest to accept the installer's proposal and choose the first selected option: Finish partitioning and write changes to disk. In the last partitioning step, if you are approving the previously selected parameters, then select Yes and click on Continue. After a short while, partitioning will be complete and the key components of Debian 11 will be installed. In the next window, the installer will ask if you want to scan other installation media to get components for the installation. If you are using the same installer I chose, which is debian-11.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso, there is no need to do this. You can select No and click Continue. Debian is a popular system, and the software is available for download around the world. Please choose a location near you. In the next window, based on your previous selection, the installer will offer you the fastest archive mirror from which it will download the software. If you use a proxy, you can enter the appropriate data. I do not use a proxy, so I have not entered anything here. The installer downloads the next key and latest components for your system. You can participate in an anonymous program to share data about your use of Debian 11 software packages. I marked Yes because I feel it is important to support Debian developers who can create even better software using this data. In the next step, you can select some key system components that will be installed next. In the second and third parts of this course we will be working with GNOME (a graphical user environment), so it is a good idea to choose GNOME at this point . If you are a novice user, then I suggest you make a selection like the one shown below in the image. After selecting the components and clicking Continue, the remaining Debian 11 components will be downloaded and installed. This is the longest installation step for this system. On my eight year old computer it took about 5 minutes. That's not a long time, is it ? In the next step you should accept the installer's proposal (Yes) and click Continue. In the next step (we are almost done), please select /dev/sda and click Continue. After a few seconds, the boot loader will be installed. And the last operations to install Debian 11 will be completed. Congratulations! Before starting Debian 11 for the first time, follow the installer's advice and remove the installation media. Clicking Continue will close the installer and launch the new Debian 11 system for the first time. You have just installed Debian 11 :) 4. First time starting Debian 11. On the start screen, we see two choices. You do not need to do anything. After 5 seconds the boot loader will boot the system. For the next few seconds, messages will appear on the screen - this is OK. Finally, we will see the login screen. After clicking on the user's name and entering the password (the same one you entered during the installation), the first login of the user (that is you) to the Debian 11 system will take place. You will be greeted by a neat, clean, and minimalistic system design. In the next part of the course: Linux for Chess Part 2 - Debian 11 customization, we will prepare and adapt Debian 11 for convenient installation of modern chess software and its use. This is the end of the course: Linux for Chess Part 1 - How to install Debian 11 I invite you to choose the next course :-))

This article was inspired by MartinPL1977. Thank you :) Your Linux and favorite distribution. You have perfected it down to the smallest detail. It looks beautiful, it is functional, the programs do their job. The whole system for you works better than any Windows or macOS machine. You are proud of it and would like to be able to use modern engines and useful chess software. But... not everything you are interested in is ready to work immediately. It has to be compiled. Is it difficult ? Does it require specialized knowledge ? How to do that ? I will try to answer the questions posed above. This article is for those who understand how Linux works and know what commands typed at the Linux command line do. First I have some good informations for you. Compiling engines and programs in most cases is not difficult and comes down to typing just a few commands in the command line. Typically, properly and independently compiled chess engines run slightly faster on the same computer on Linux than the same engines on a Windows computer. Why is this the case ? The easiest way to understand this is to use the example of buying a suit. When you buy - even in the best store - a suit, you choose a particular size. The suit fits and it's fine. On the other hand, when you go to a tailor, who will tailor the suit to your exact measurements, you will not only get a suit that fits, but one that is exactly tailored to your measurements. And this tailor-made suit will fit you perfectly. Without going into technical details - it is similar with compilation of chess software, which due to its specialized nature - works best on the machine on which it was compiled. It is not a coincidence that at important competitions where chess engines have participated and are participating, they are run on Linux - in the environment where they were previously compiled. How much difference in speed can there be between an engine compiled for a particular machine versus the same engine not optimized for that machine ? The difference can range from a fraction of a percent to several percent. Is it much or is it little ? It depends. During usual chess engine activities, such as chess game analysis or training applications - it does not matter much. But if the engine participates in competitions or it is important to get as much power as possible or you use it to analyze difficult positions in correspondence games or looking for an effective novelty in a chess opening - then the speed higher by "just" a fraction of a percent will be important, it may increase the chance of a draw or even victory in an important chess game. You don't need specialized knowledge to compile a chess engine or program properly. You don't even need to know how to program. However, it is worth reading with concentration and understanding, because usually in the sources of the program there is a file describing the steps of compilation of the given engine or chess program. Ok. So without further ado, what are we going to compile ? First, we'll take a compilation of two free modern and powerful chess engines, Berserk and Stockfish. Then we will take a compilation of the best free chess database program Scid vs PC. What do you need to compile ? 1. Linux Distribution. It doesn't really matter what distribution it is. It will compile the same way on Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu or any other distribution. It doesn't really matter if the Linux distribution you are using uses an AMD, ARM or other processor. 2. Compiler. We will compile software written in C / C++ so we need a compiler called GCC (GNU Compiler Collection). 3. Source code. It takes source code in file/s form for the GCC compiler to be able to create a working engine / program. 4. Anything else ? In some cases, depending on, for example, the installed version of the GCC compiler and the Linux distribution libraries, you may need to install components specified by the compiler. 5. Time. How long does it take to compile ? On a modern computer, it usually takes tens of seconds to compile. Even on older computers, e.g. 10-15 years old, compiling a chess engine will take from tens of seconds to several minutes. The compilation of a program like Scid vs. PC may take a little longer because of its larger size. Will the compilation be described in detail ? All compilations will be explained and presented in such a way that the Reader, by following all compilation steps - will be able to compile the software described below by himself. Due to the nature of the compilation process and the required knowledge of the Reader, the compilation descriptions will not address detailed issues of how Linux works and the effects of executing command line commands. Workshops for compilation. I am using Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster). This distribution is supported until 2024 (LTS - Long Term Support); it is a very stable and high quality distribution with frequent updates. Debian runs on my computer with ARM64 processors. The compilation will be performed by GCC version 8.3.0. If you do not have the GCC compiler installed, I would refer you to the help system of the Linux distribution you are using. There you will get information how to install GCC. In Debian, the following steps are required to install GCC: 1. Update the packages list: sudo apt update 2. Install the build-essential package by running: sudo apt install build-essential 3. You can skip this step. You would like also to install the manual pages that includes documentation about using GNU/Linux for (among others) compiling. sudo apt-get install manpages-dev 4. To confirm that the GCC compiler is successfully installed type: gcc --version A compilation of the Berserk chess engine. Berserk is licensed under the GPL v3.0. We will be compiling the latest publicly available version of this engine. The Berserk source code is available on GitHub at: https://github.com/jhonnold/berserk To compile Berserk we will use the information on this engine's page. 1. In the first step, we will select the directory where the source code will reside. Type: cd Of course, you must press the Enter key after typing each command. 2. In this, step we will download the source code. Type the command: git clone https://github.com/jhonnold/berserk If the download does not start, it is likely that git is not installed on your system - then install git and repeat step #2. How to install git sudo apt install git On my internet connection, the download took about 30 seconds. 3. Type: cd berserk/src 4. Type the command: make basic Now the compilation will take place. If any errors occur during compilation, the engine will not compile and the GCC compiler will show messages on the screen. Unfortunately, the compilation failed. Why? Look carefully at the messages the compiler gave you. GCC suggests that the stdlib.h library should be added to the nn.c file. Open the nn.c file in any text file editor - I used the system Text Editor. In line number 20, type: #include Save the file and then close it. Go back to the command prompt and type again: make basic make basic Success! Berserk chess engine has been compiled :) So let's see if it works. Type: ./berserk And then type: uci Confirm with the Enter key. Perfect !! The latest Berserk 20220603 is ready to go :) When you type: quit (Enter) the engine will be switched off. Below I share the source code and compiled Berserk 20220603. A compilation of the Stockfish chess engine. Stockfish is open source (GPLv3 license). We will be compiling the latest publicly available version of this engine. We start similarly to the previous case. We select a directory and download the source code. 1. Type the command: git clone https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish.git Good. The Stockfish engine source code has been downloaded. 2. Type the command: cd Stockfish/src 3. Type the command: make Stockfish can be compiled on many different architectures. The make command will list all available architectures. It is important to choose the correct architecture to which Stockfish should be compiled. 4. For my architecture, the appropriate compile command is: make -j build ARCH=armv8 or: make -j profile-build ARCH=armv8 COMP=gcc (Faster build with profile-guided optimization, thank you to user kramnik for pointing this out.) After some time, the compilation is finished. 5. One more step. Type: make strip and confirm with the Enter key. Perfect! The Stockfish chess engine is ready to go :) Let's see if it works by typing: ./stockfish And then type: uci Confirm with the Enter key. Oh yes, Stockfish 090622 works! When you type: quit (Enter) The engine will be switched off. Below I share the source code and compiled Stockfish 090622. Scid vs. PC program compilation Scid vs. PC is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.0 (GPLv2). Scid vs. PC is a program not inferior in functionality to professional database programs such as Chess Assistant and ChessBase. With two previously compiled chess engines available (Berserk & Stockfish), it would be nice to use them with good software. If you want to learn how to use this program in various purposes, I invite you, dear reader, to the course area: Scid vs. PC - Efficient work with a chess database If you decide before compilation that you want to use the already compiled Scid vs. PC prepared for installation in a .DEB package, you can download it from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/linux%20packages/ It is worth noting that the Scid vs. PC developers state that: "These are third party packages, not compiled by the ScidvsPC team." So you download at your own risk. Also, in the above pasted location, there is no .DEB package for the latest version of Scid vs. PC 4.23 ( as of 2022-06-09 ). Ok, let's get started then! 1. After selecting the directory where the compilation will take place, we download the Scid vs. PC source code from: http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/ 2. After unpacking the source, go to the command line and type: cd scid_vs_pc-4.23/ 3. In the next step, execute the command: ./configure This is a very important step before compilation begins. There will be a check that all the necessary requirements are met for the compilation of this serious project to be done correctly. 4. Great. We have received important information. a) My environment has the Tcl/TK package installed, which is crucial for proper Scid vs PC compilation. If you don't have the Tcl/TK package, you obviously need to install it before compiling Scid vs. PC. b) The configuration program did not find the Tcl and TK libraries. And that's bad news, because not knowing where those libraries are located the compiler will surely spit out runtime errors - which will result in compilation failure. Why did this happen? Be calm - it is not your fault. In the Linux environment, which is very rich in distributions, different versions of packages and libraries, sometimes some of them are in other places, sometimes you have to manually make some adjustments. What are those ? Such as we made before compiling the Berserk chess engine. To find out exactly what the problem is, always run the compilation, then GCC will give you detailed information about possible errors. And these errors can be eliminated. c) The configuration program has created and saved a Makefile, which is necessary to complete the compilation. 5. Ok, now knowing that the compilation fails, let's see what information GCC will give us. Type the command: make (Enter) As we expected, the compiler aborted after encountering an error. How to interpret this error ? In the file pgnscid.cpp in line number 30 the compiler could not find tcl.h according to the file path specified there. What should we do? Open the file pgnscid.cpp and correct the path. In the image below, the appropriately corrected entry in line number 30. After saving the file, close it. Again, at the command prompt, type the command: make and confirm by pressing Enter. Let's see what the compiler has passed on this time. The good news is that the compiler no longer showed the same error as before, which means that the change made to the pgnscid.cpp file was done correctly. The next information is that a similar error occurred again - but in a different file. What should I do? Make a correction in the same way. For my environment, the same error occurred in across several files. I made the appropriate corrections and restarted the compilation by: typing the make command. This time the compilation was successful! GCC did not find any errors :) 6. Time to install Scid vs. PC. Type the command: sudo make install (Enter) Scid vs. PC and its components along with the default engines (Phalanx, Scidlet and Toga) will be placed in their respective locations. 7. Is Scid vs. PC 4.23 ready to go ? Let's check it by typing command: scid It's working !! As of the date of writing this article, the latest Scid vs.PC 4.23 has been compiled and ready to go. Below is the information and diagnostic data. Below I share the source code that was used to compile Scid vs. PC 4.23. Is this the end of this article ? Let's install compiled Berserk and Stockfish engines in latest Scid vs. PC :) This is how Berserk and Stockfish look like while working in Scid vs. PC 4.23. There is one more thing... Before I started writing this article, I wondered what engines and chess program to choose to show the work and flow of successful compilation. I chose the Stockfish engine because it is so well written by its Community that its compilation is almost always bug-free, seamless, and possible on a wide variety of hardware and software architectures. Of course, it is worth noting that the compilation environment is also important here. If it is equipped with e.g. an appropriate compiler, libraries - then the chance for a successful compilation increases significantly. I also chose Berserk from the chess engines, which on some architectures sometimes requires user intervention in the compilation process. I did this to show how to handle such a situation. And at the end of this article I have chosen a program - Scid vs. PC 4.23, the compilation of which is not an easy task, although with a little determination you can achieve success. Big Success. Because we gain one of the best database programs in its class. I would like to sincerely thank the Authors / Community of all the software described in this article. Without your knowledge and talent, such great software would certainly not be available.

It took me a long time to figure out what to write at the beginning of my review of the Deep Shredder 13 chess program and engine for Windows. Does it matter that the engine Deep Shredder 13 (DS13 for short) has won the World Championship of chess engines 19 times ? Does it matter that the author of Shredder Mr. Stefan Meyer-Kahlen is one of the creators of UCI (Universal Chess Interface) which is used by almost all chess engines nowadays ? Does it matter that Deep Shredder 13 has the so-called Triple Brain - a unique tool to combine the advantages of two different chess engines during analysis or game play ? Does it matter that Shredder has been present in the computer chess world since 1995 ? Does it matter that Shredder is available on all popular hardware platforms such as but not limited to: Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, iOS ? Does it matter that Shredder is purchased in over 100 countries ? Does it matter that.... Everything I wrote matters ! The most successful chess program that for the last several decades has been the computer partner for chess players around the world when playing, learning, training or analyzing chess. Shredder was and is a chess program that made and continues to make beautiful computer chess history. And it is this chess program - Deep Shredder 13 - that I have come to review for you, dear readers. First, let's take a look at some of the data in the table below. Table of Deep Shredder 13 specifications. Deep Shredder 13 released in October 2016. In 2022 we can use its updated version available for the latest Windows family systems. The program and chess engine Deep Shredder 13 is also available for other operating systems such as Linux and Mac. Unfortunately, the versions for these operating systems are truncated compared to the Windows version reviewed in this article. On the internet "birds are chirping" that Mr. Stefan Meyer-Kahlen is working on the next version of Shredder. So it is worth taking a look at Deep Shredder 13 and through this review we will try to answer the question, is Deep Shredder 13 still the leading product in the chess software market in 2022 ? Can Deep Shredder 13 compete with other modern chess software such as Fritz or Hiarcs Chess Explorer ? Like the reviews of other chess programs on this blog, this one is divided into several topic segments. This is to make it easier for readers to possibly compare different programs. Deep Shredder 13 in comparison with the other two versions (Shredder Classic, Shredder 13 Windows) is the best equipped version containing: Latest Shredder user interface The strongest and latest Shredder chess engine. All 5 men endgame super fast Shredderbases Extra large opening book with latest opening theory Runs on all cores simultaneously Best performance on your computer DS13 user gets a complete set for playing, learning and analysis along with a chess engine. Interface, Appearance, Access to Program Features. DS13 has a customizable interface. The elements-windows and toolbar-can be active or inactive. After launching, the program greets us with a Tip of the Day window from which we can learn a lot of interesting and useful information and tips. The toolbar contains icons with shortcuts to the most frequently used functions. You can customize it according to your preferences by adding or removing elements. You can also change the size of the icons. If we so desire, the DS13 look can be minimalist... ...With several windows active... ...With a chessboard of various sizes... ...And colors... Of course, there is also the option to change the theme of the chess board and pieces. A three-dimensional chessboard is also available. However, I have my favorite set with warmer colors, because I spend a lot of time working in front of a computer monitor and it makes my eyes less tired. Access to the most frequently used functions is provided by the toolbar at the top of the interface. Using the drop-down menu, you get use of all the other functions and capabilities DS13. Some panels have context icons that when right-clicked, open windows. The interface and all DS13 messages have been translated into several languages, which will certainly please users who prefer to use this program in their native language :-) To sum up this part of the review, I have mixed feelings. The interface is a little outdated by today's standards. The font in some panels is either too small or too large. Some embedded color themes and piece sets are not very clear. Example 1: Example 2: The 3D chessboard - I wasn't able to comfortably play a single chess game using the 3D chessboard. It is a pity that there is no dark mode available, although you can compensate for this a bit by choosing a theme with slightly warmer colors. It is good that the program allows modifications and thus you can customize its appearance, window layout, font size and colors. On the attached images above I tried to show the most interesting themes and interface elements. In general, if you are lucky enough to find the right theme for you, or if you take your time and set up the DS13 interface according to your own preferences, you will definitely enjoy using this program. Power of play. In addition to an impressive number of Championship wins, in the past Shredder has topped the rankings multiple times. The name of the engine does not come by chance, over the years the Shredder chess engine has made a name for itself as a merciless shredder of its rivals. Shredder has "always" been seen as a chess engine with great knowledge and a very balanced evaluation of chess positions. It is these qualities that often determined that Shredder was and still is one of the most chosen engines for training and accurate chess analysis. It is worth noting that the reviewed Deep Shredder 13 engine (in May 2022) is almost 6 years old, which in the world of computer chess is a whole era. Despite this, DS13 will play two matches against modern and contemporary chess engines so that we can evaluate "how the old Master" will do in this challenge. Also, DS13 will play in the tournament along with some of the strongest engines currently available. First, the Toga IV engine released in March 2022. Toga IV uses a modern NNUE (Efficiently Updatable Neural Network) and is currently a dynamically developed chess engine. Each engine had 4 CPU at its service and 1 minute per game; Deep Shredder 13 GUI and opening book. Deep Shredder 13 won that match, winning 18 more games than Toga IV. 56 Elo points difference in this match between these two engines. And two images showing what a match between two engines might look like. An eye-pleasing, easy-to-read view. Next, result from match consisting of 100 games Deep Shredder 13 against the Fritz 18 Neuronal. Fritz 18 Neuronal is one of ChessBase's flagship and modern chess engines that is currently in sales and further active development. Just a month ago, at the end of April 2022, the Fritz 18 was upgraded to Neuronal version, making it even more powerful. Each engine had 4 CPU at its service and 1 minute per game; Fritz 18 GUI, Prefect 2021 opening book. Result: Fritz 18 Neuronal won this match, scoring 62 more Elo points. Is this a convincing victory ? In my opinion, absolutely not. Out of 100 games, the almost 6-year-old Deep Shredder 13 against Fritz 18 Neuronal - the latest version of the commercial engine - was able to win 18 chess games and as many as 44 draws. And a little more challenge for Deep Shredder 13 and more computer opponents. There were 15 engines in the tournament. Each engine had 4 CPU at its service, game time 1 minute per game +1 second extra for each move. DS13 GUI, Perfect 2021 opening book. Below is the tournament table with results. Deep Shredder 13 finished in a good 7th place at the top of the table achieving a ranking of 3165 Elo ! DS13 was up against some of the strongest current engines such as Dragon 3 by Komodo, Stockfish 15 or Berserk 8.5.1. The tournament also featured other renowned chess engines such as former World Champion Deep Junior, Deep Hiarcs and once one of the strongest engines Zappa. The DS13 gave way to the newest and most modern chess engines, outperforming all other rivals in this tournament. Deep Shredder 13 currently (May 2022) is still a strong chess engine capable of winning against challenging opponents. It is evident from the match and tournament results achieved that it is inferior to the world's top chess engines. However, let me emphasize again, this engine is almost 6 years old, does not use the latest techniques (e.g. NNUE) and is able to win against some modern engines (Toga IV). This is a good sign for the future; the new version of the Shredder engine will certainly be more powerful and perhaps join the top of the strongest chess engines. Syle of play. The most natural way to recognize Deep Shredder 13 style of play is to play games against it. Which I did :-) I played 30 games in ranked mode with adaptive strengths enabled. Time for each player: 3 minutes + 2 seconds after each move. Below are 16 of the 30 ranked games I played against Deep Shredder 13. These are games from round 15 to 30. I don't have the earlier ones (1-14) because I lost them due to a external hard drive failure. Let's start at the end - with the ranking I achieved according to the DS13 measurement. 2010 Elo, after 30 chess games. For comparison, Hiarcs Chess Explorer Pro calculated my ranking at 2216 Elo after 31 games. And on the PlayChess server, where I regularly take part in tournaments, my average ranking usually oscillates around 2150-2250 Elo. According to my feelings and experience, ranked games opposite DS13 are hard. My first few chess games against opponents rated 1600-1800 I alternated between winning and losing. Any "human improvisation" on my part, tactical or strategic traps - most of the time - did not result in victory at best - and usually led to my defeats. The games in which I won - almost all of them were long, where I laboriously built up a strategic advantage and after 50-60 moves led to the surrender of my computer opponent. In general, you can "feel" that Deep Shredder 13 even playing at lower ranking levels has extensive chess knowledge. In practice he very rarely makes tactical mistakes; strategically it plays well or at least correctly. This is not the way people play on that rating levels. Not for 30 games in a row. Therefore, when playing against DS13, I felt all the time that I was playing against a computer opponent who is programmed to make some strategic inaccuracy or tactical mistake once in a while (rarely) - but always at level 1400, 1600 or whatever level Shredder is currently playing at. People playing at level 1600 will sometimes play a move at level 1000 or 1200 during the same game and sometimes a move or moves at level 1800 or even higher than 2200 will appear in the same game. Shredder always plays at the same level during one gme - this is my subjective feeling. I was "banging my head against the wall"; to each game I had to approach with maximum focus. I will add more in the section describing training opportunities with DS13. It's one thing to play with DS13 in ranked mode, but how will the engine do when analyzing games played by people - very high level games ? I have chosen games from games played by humans, with difficult positions for chess engines. My goal is to test the Deep Shredder 13 engine on 10 positions giving it a maximum of three minutes of thought per move. I have assumed that these will be positions played by people who have allotted up to a few minutes for a move. Therefore, I did not take into account positions created in correspondence games. During testing, DS13 used 4 CPUs and a 1024MB Hash table. We start with a relatively simple position for a man to solve - the only effective option is to break the black pawn barrier by sacrificing the Queen. DS13 failed to find the correct Qxb5. The engine sees a very big white advantage, but does not indicate a winning continuation. In the following final position, the elegant c5 wins! This time DS13 found the best move after 2 minutes and 42 seconds. And another ending, this time much more complex. DS13 failed to find the correct ...Rxb3. The following position is from a match between then World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov and the computer Deep Blue. G.Kasparov surrendered the game in this position, although the draw was led by Qe3!! The correct continuation was noticed by DS13 after only 6 seconds. Another position involving titled players. A tactical Queen play to the d3 square DS13 finds after 29 seconds of thinking time. In the following position, on the other hand, the winning move is Knight's "quiet and inconspicuous" move to field c7. For many years this was an unsolvable position for many chess engines in a reasonable amount of thinking time. DS13 failed to find the correct ...Nc7. In the following position many chess players are able to point out the strongest move Qf6+ although it is harder with justification :-). DS13 failed to find the correct Qf6+ in 3 minutes, and during the analysis I saw that in under 3 minutes DS13 started to consider the best move, which is confirmed in the analysis after 4 minutes and 5 seconds. One of the most difficult positions for chess engines. To successfully launch an attack on the black King, white must clear the lines for Rooks by maneuvering with the King. DS13 perfectly "feels" this position and almost immediately proposes the strongest move Kf2!! In this position, what can white do with one less piece and a black king in the middle? Of course, destroy the black King's position by hitting the Rook on e7 ! The chess player notices that after removing the black pawn - the defender of the enemy King - another white Rook, Bishop and Queen joins the attack. The attack of these three strong figures guarantees at least a draw. For a human this maneuver is relatively easy to see, for a chess engine giving up one more piece (Rook) is not so obvious. In this chess game 15-year-old Carlsen did not play well and the game was won by Svidler. In this position there is theoretically a draw. DS13 saw the best move after 87 seconds. And finally, a position in which GM Anish Giri played a beautiful move with a pawn on a4. This is an extremely difficult position for chess engines, as the solution requires sacrificing the pawn and then exchanging Rooks. This seemingly contradicts the chess rule of avoiding sacrifices and exchanging pieces - if the opponent has a material advantage. In this position, the sacrifice of a pawn and exchange of Rooks by white is justified because the binding of the black Knight by the white Bishop is inevitable without the loss of that Knight - leading to black's defeat. DS indicated the best move after only 3 seconds. To conclude this section, Deep Shredder 13 plays in a balanced style; it can find tactical hits in very complex positions, as well as non-obvious continuations in positions requiring deep strategic understanding. This balance means that he doesn't always point out the correct solutions in the shortest time, but he can usually point out the best continuation line after some thought. He has a great knowledge of chess, which you can especially feel during direct matches in ranking or training mode, and you can also see it watching him play against other engines, with whom he usually achieves good results (wins and draws). Training. Before you start playing ranked games against a computer opponent, it's a good idea to check out the training options for each phase of the game that DS13 offers. Opening Training. We have a wide selection of dozens of different chess openings available. From the shortest and simplest ones to long and complicated variations. Some examples. After choosing the opening and the game side, the program will make the appropriate setting on the chessboard - you can start training / playing / analyzing / learning. Endgame Training. As in opening training, we have sets of endings grouped thematically. The sets are well thought out, we can choose the most common ones e.g. rook or pawn endings or the more difficult ones with uneven material. After choosing the endgame and the game side, the program will make the appropriate setting on the chessboard - you can start training / playing / analyzing / learning. Middlegame Training. To train the middle part of the chess game, DS13 offers puzzles. There are over 1000 of them. Depending on your needs, you can choose puzzles of varying difficulty from the easiest to the most difficult. The puzzles are interesting, at different stages of the game. Sometimes very easy, sometimes you have to think a lot to find the right move. You can always ask the Trainer for a Hint and/or get information about the Attacked Pieces. Puzzles are great and fun way to train the middle part of the game, but also other phases. If you don't have time for a full game, but want to stimulate your "grey cells", choose puzzles :) Handicap Games. This can be a way to play against a stronger opponent with a chance to win. DS13 offers many handicap options to choose from. Some examples. Training - playing chess with Shredder. The DS13 allows you to precisely select the playing strength from Begginer with limited knowledge of chess openings... ...to the Grandmaster with full use of the knowledge of chess openings. There is also a full game force setting limited only by the hardware resources of our computer. The playing strength slider can be moved, so there is no obstacle to manually set yourself, for example, the level of an intermediate player who does not have much knowledge of chess openings. Before starting chess training, it's a good idea to check the Coach is Watching option, which will allow the Coach to make a running commentary during the game. If you plan to play at least a few chess games, it is a good idea to check the Auto Adjust Strength option. Then our opponent's game strength will be automatically adjusted depending on our progress. Just before the game starts, DS13 offers choice of rating and non-rating games... ...and a selection of opponents with different playing strengths. if we have already played a few chess games and calculated the ranking, we can choose an opponent with my strength. When you play with Coach is Watching enabled, it comments on the chessboard situation if a mistake is made. Of course, we can ask for a hint at any time during the game. If you want to practice playing on time, you can choose the pace of play that interests you. To show how the computer trainer works, I have collected below in the form of pictures the different types of messages it gives during the game. The initial phase of the game, just after the start. Clear view. No distractions. When you click on the Moves tab, the coach will show you all the available moves to make in the current position on the chessboard. After each move, the program automatically (this can be turned off) records in notation, among other things, the evaluation of the position and the thinking time for that move. When you click on a piece, the trainer shows you with colored dots where you can place the clicked piece. Squares that are safe for movement are colored green, squares that are not recommended are colored pink/red. At the end of a game won by the user, if it did not end in a mate, the Coach surrenders the chess game and offers to continue the game. We do not have to agree to this. At the end of each game, the Coach shows a window with information about the ranking achieved by the student, informing with what strength the program will play the next game. During a practice - ranking game with undo moves disabled, if we want to undo a move, the Trainer will communicate that we cannot do so. If we offer a draw and the opponent does not agree, we will receive a message to that effect. If all available time is used up, Coach will not forget to let us know. When you lose a ranked chess game (also during training), the strength of your computer opponent's game is automatically lowered in the next game. After playing a few games, it is worth checking our progress. This is done using the My Results option. During the practice game, clicking on the question mark icon... ...we get a hint from the Coach marked with a green arrow on the chessboard. Deep Shredder 13 in training mode plays a variety of different styles of play. He can play positionally and also attack by sacrificing material. Cool example below. In a situation where I managed to defend myself, and my opponent was worse off materially - he offered me a draw ;-)) And below is an interesting position where I strategically outplayed my opponent. Despite equal material, DS13 offered me a draw. I didn't accept and won the game :) Above, are examples illustrating Deep Shredder 13's behavior during a training game, quite accurately simulating human play and behavior. It definitely made the gameplay more interesting! When the coach determines that you made a mistake in your last move, then will respond with a message suggesting a better move and offering to take back. Example 1 Example 2 Chess960 Game... Another added training option is the ability to choose to play chess in the Chess960 (Fischer random chess) variant format. The Manual for DS13 says roughly something like this: "(...) You can use your brain right from the start instead of learning long opening lines." ;-) Example of Chess960 run. Analysis. In practice all engines are supported: those working according to the UCI protocol and those using the WinBoard protocol (usually older chess engines like Crafty, Phalanx). Using a single chess engine, you can analyze one continuation line or multiple continuation lines at the same time (if the engine supports it). Single line analysis - this is a standard feature found in many chess programs. It is worth noting that the Shredder GUI program displays a lot of useful information during analysis (e.g. hash table usage, analysis time and depth, etc.) in an organized and readable way. Analysis of selected moves. This is an extremely useful feature in the work of a creative chess player. What is it actually about? For example: in a certain position you are not sure if this or that move is the right one. You have turned on the analysis, but it goes on and on, and you don't see any significant progress, the engine doesn't indicate any significant continuation. And at this point it is worthwhile to use the analysis of the selected move(s). Surely you have some of your types, maybe two, maybe three moves, of which this one is potentially the best one. The DS13 manual says: "Hold down the Ctrl key when entering a move on the board. This will tell Shredder to only analyze this move. You can repeat this to select any number of moves to analyze. If you enter a move again with the Ctrl key pressed it will be removed from the list of moves to analyze. Compared to a normal analysis the program can search faster as not all moves need to be examined. However, it is up to you to pick the right moves for analyzing. Similarly, you can enter a move with the Shift key pressed to exclude the move from the search. You can use this feature if you do not like the best move suggested by Shredder. " OK, so let's examine the possibilities of such an analysis. This is the first of two examples. In our review, in the content above - we tested the Deep Shredder 13 in very difficult positions. DS13 had 3 minutes to solve each position. Below is one such position where Deep Shredder failed to find the right move in the required time. This time, after choosing the move 1.Qxb5 and starting his analysis, Shredder rated the move higher after only 10 seconds than he did during 3 minutes of traditional analysis. After 2 minutes, DS13 found a continuation leading to a mate! And one more example from the set of test positions. During a traditional analysis, DS13 found the correct move 1.Rxe7 leading to a draw after 87 seconds. When the analysis of the selected move was turned on, the move was found almost immediately, before the first second of thought! Analysis of selected moves is a very powerful tool that can give you an advantage or even win against the toughest opponent. I think that such a great analytical tool which is the analysis of selected/selected moves - should be more exposed for the user to use. Deep Shredder 13 interface has no direct reference / shortcut to this tool. Only in the manual is this tool described. With this tool, you can much more quickly identify relevant/important moves, novelties (!), find the best continuations and further game plans. This tool can be a secret weapon in the hands of a correspondence chess player. Undoubtedly, the more chess knowledge and experience the user has, the best results will come from using such a tool. Multi-Engine Analysis. The Shredder interface allows you to use multiple chess engines simultaneously. You can use up to 10 engines simultaneously in Shredder (!!). Example 1. Example 2. Looking for ideas, concepts, new continuations - given enough hardware resources (e.g. 1 CPU for 1 engine) - we get a great analytical tool! Triple Brain. According to Shredder User Manual: "The Triple Brain is a new and unique concept to combine the strengths of two different chess engines. Two 'normal' chess engines are analyzing a position and a third program determines which move alternative is the best. In Shredder this module is called Triple Brain. In his own engine window the Triple Brain shows an evaluation value between 0 and 100%. This value indicates how sure the Triple Brain is when choosing a move." Triple Brain is a great and extremely useful tool in analytical work. Very effective during hard analysis of correspondence games and searching for e.g. new ideas in chess openings. Example 1. Example 2. Example 3. Example 4. Irreplaceable in difficult and complex positions where two engines and a control program work together to find the solution / best move / continuation ! Analyse Positions. Analyse Positions is a tool to automatically analyze all positions grouped in one file. Shredder supports files in .EPD, .PGN and .CBF formats. Such an option can be useful, for example, to test the chess engine in different positions, in different configuration settings, etc. Below are three examples of position analysis taken from the arasan21.epd test prepared by Mr. Jon Dart. DS13 found the correct move ...e4. DS13 did not find the correct move. The best move is 1.Bxh6. DS13 found the correct move 1.Kb2. When the analysis is completed Shredder displays a statistics with the solution times for all positions. Also two files with the statistics will be generated in the Shredder directory. One is in EPD format and one in CSV format which can be directly imported in many spread sheet programs for further examination. Below is an example of a .CSV file with data (results after Bratko-Kopec test). Analyse Game. You've played some cool chess games in an online tournament, or managed to win against DS13 in a practice game, or just want to analyze the latest game of your favorite chess player. Nothing prevents you from using the Analyse Game tool. It is worth noting that when analyzing a chess game, Shredder works at its maximum strength by default. This ensures great analysis quality. Shredder allows you to change the analysis parameters. For example, you can specify the sides to analyze (white / black, both), the number of moves to analyze, etc. And what's important - the analysis time. The longer the analysis time of e.g. each move, the better the analysis and the more accurate the evaluation of moves and continuation lines (variants). How much time to give Shredder to analyze a chess game ? It depends on many factors, including the resources available on the computer and the level of the game to be analyzed. Usually 5-15 seconds for 1 move is enough to get a meaningful analysis. Remember that DS13 - this is Shredder - a powerful chess engine that even against the strongest grandmasters would win easily. Ok, below is an analysis made by Deep Shredder 13. This is one of the few games where I managed to beat Shredder in a training game :) Here is a notation of that chess game after it has been analyzed by Deep Shredder 13 along with variants, move evaluation and commentary. You can add your own comments, an example of which is the text after white's move number 16. I am sharing this chess game in .PGN file format. Computer vs. Computer. This is the menu containing the option to use chess engines. Shootout & Histogram. Shootout is an option where Shredder plays with himself. This can be useful during training to see how a chess game could continue from a given move. How to choose from which move Shredder should play with itself? With a tool called the Histogram. The histogram shows the entire chess game on a graph. To create a Histogram of a chess game, right-click in the Histogram window and choose Make Histogram. Shredder will begin to create a graph of the entire chess game. The creation of the Histogram will continue " over and over" until you stop the process by clicking on the Stop button. The Shredder, after making a "pass" through the entire chess game, begins creating the Histogram again, each time analyzing deeper and more thoroughly. This is to create as accurate a Histogram - that is, a graphical representation of the progress of the chess game - as possible in the time it will have available until the process is stopped. With the Histogram ready, we can take a look and select the move from which to start the Shootout. In the example below you can see that black's move 20...f4 was not the best - so we will start the Shootout from there. Shredder will begin playing with itself, making a record in the notation of the new variant. As we can see, instead of 20... f4 Shredder played 20...c4 - which is a better move not leading to an almost immediate defeat for black. Autoplayer. Shredder has a built in interface to the auto232 system. With auto232 chess programs can play each other automatically on two different PCs. Engine Match. That is, the automatic play of two chess engines against each other. After selecting the chess engines we can set other match parameters such as opening books for each engine, hash table size, number of chess games, time. The games of the match will saved in a PGN database. I've already shown images of the match between engines above in the review; below is another example of engine play. Engine Tournament. That is, playing all chess engines against every tournament opponent. Just like when setting up a chess engine match, in this mode we have a number of parameters that we can set according to our preferences. Everything is available in one clear window. During a tournament, Shredder can automatically create a tournament table with the current chess engine classification. Here is the table created during the first chess game of the tournament. A tournament (as well as other games such as matches) can be stopped by the user at any time. This is useful when, for example, you want to change the parameters of a tournament. Use of an external chessboard. Shredder supports the electronic chess boards of TASC and DGT. You can make moves on those boards which will be automatically sent to Deep Shredder 13. According to the instructions, the TASC board is only working with Windows 95, 98 and ME. Unfortunately, the author of this review does not have an external chessboard, which made it impossible to review this interesting capability in the DS13 program. Opening book / books. For those who want to work on their chess opening book, Shredder offers dedicated features that you will find in this program. You can edit and extend all books in Shredder and also create your own book. There is no size limit the opening books in Shredder. With the "Online" button at the bottom of the book moves window Shredder can directly access a huge online opening book with 16 million moves. Your computer needs to be connected to the Internet to use this feature. When working with the opening book, we can change various parameters. With this function the opening play of Shredder / other chess engine - can be influenced. Endgame Database (tablebases). Shredder supports the use of many different formats ending databases. DS13 have proprietary databases with fast access to data called Shreddebases. We can also use the less commonly used Nalimov databases or use the most popular Syzygy TBS. Shredder also offers Internet access to endgame databases by selecting the Endgame Database function (image below). Here is an example of how the chess ending database is used by the Deep Shredder 13 engine during analysis. Endgame Oracle. This is a very interesting tool for considering ending chess positions. Nalimov ending databases must be installed and active to use this tool. How to use this tool is described in detail in the Deep Shredder 13 manual. For the purpose of the review, I will show the result of Endgame Oracle and write what this tool can be used for. In the following example, we see a simple KPP vs KP ending. White's move. When you click the Search button, after a few seconds you get: An example of a much more difficult position. Black's move. Result: Endgame Oracle... can be used as an analysis and/or training tool. You can use it to find out the winning percentage of black and white in a given position, what maneuver with a given piece or pawn will lead to a draw, whether a given checkmate will occur within a few moves or extend the checkmate to several dozen moves, etc., etc. Endgame Oracle... is perfect for advanced analysis of endgame positions in correspondence games when searching for the best continuations. It also does well when verifying the endgame positions of games we have previously played. Working with chess databases. Load, Save, Replace, Delete, Search - these chess database functions are provided by Deep Shredder 13. Program uses the .PGN and .CBF format databases. And this is how the game search window looks like: DS13 does an excellent job with these most commonly used chess game database functions. I really need... Help ! Deep Shredder 13 offers a Manual, which can be accessed by entering the menu of the same name. Manual describes all options and capabilities of Deep Shredder 13 program in great detail. It is written in simple, yet understandable and concise language. Manual is divided into thematic parts, what makes it easy to find interesting information. Deep Shredder 13 Manual: first page The Manual, like other Deep Shredder 13 features, has not been treated casually, but is written honestly and thoroughly. Every time I needed it, I found the information I needed in the Manual. Although, to be honest... I rarely used Manual because Deep Shredder 13 is an easy program to use. Based on my experience, customer service and support is at such a high level that other developers can follow suit. Undoubtedly, it is very important for us - users, because in this way a good relationship is formed, the fruit of which is the trust between the creator and the customer. Summary. Here's what the Shredder developers wrote on their website. Source: Shredder chess programs website (2022-05-22) Is DS13 in its essence such a chess program as its creators assure ? Yes. Is DS13 still the leading product in the chess software market in 2022 ? Without a doubt - Yes. Can DS13 compete with other modern chess software such as Fritz or Hiarcs Chess Explorer ? Yes, definitely. DS13 is a mature product. A chess program that doesn't pretend to be anything more or anything less. Deep Shredder 13 does what it is supposed to do. And it does it at a very high world-class level. Every user - even a beginner - will use Shredder to their advantage. The program is very easy to use and at the same time has powerful features that make it one of the best and maybe even the best chess program in certain categories of use, such as analysis with chess engine(s). Undoubtedly, an area for improvement is the look of the interface and color themes with a particular focus on the 3D chessboard. Surely the program would be even more pleasant to use if this was changed. I think that one of the training modules responsible for playing full chess games deserves changes. I am referring to the Shredder play, which is very challenging. During the thirty games I played in training with Deep Shredder, even at the lower difficulty levels I had a hard time beating my computer opponent - of course the program had the option enabled to adjust the strength to my level. Overall, the training capabilities of the program are rich and at a good level. You can train every phase of the game - in different ways. The stability of the program is worth noting. DS13 is like a monolith, stable, not crashing. It works fast and always without unpleasant surprises - that is, always correctly. Considering the main application of the program, which is an analytical tool and for playing between chess engines - this is a critically important feature. And this is the feature that Deep Shredder 13 has. The program is ideally suited for testing and playing chess engines, analysis ordinary chess games and heavy position analysis from correspondence games. Deep Shredder 13 offers unique capabilities that may turn out to be an "ace up your sleeve" such as: Triple Brain, analysis of selected moves, Endgame Oracle or... support for the use of engines working under the Winboard protocol (yes, it is still worth using such engines, some have a extraordinary style of play :) ). The longer and more often I used Deep Shredder 13, the better it got. After a while, the program inspires confidence and encourages you to use more functions. There are no unnecessary features in Deep Shredder 13, no experimental modules or underdeveloped options here. Everything that is available to the user is combined into a logical whole, which works as it should. I will certainly give Deep Shredder 13 a chance and I encourage you to do the same. Deep Shredder 13 score.

Right now, there is a chess engine match going on, or a tournament with your favorite players. Right now there is a broadcast of this important event for you. Are you on a walk, spending time sitting on a park bench or maybe you are just traveling by train, or just preparing a meal at your place ? Whatever you are doing right now, at any time you can live stream chess games, see and listen to the video broadcast, analyze ongoing and completed games and much more using smartphone with the FollowChess app by Mr. Asim Pereira. FollowChess is an app available on Android and iOS smartphones and through the website live.followchess.com. This review will show images from the FollowChess Pro version 3.6.13 on Android system - the latest as of the date of this writing. Versions for both systems are functionally almost identical, they differ, for example, in color themes. If the review remains showing a screenshot of the iOS version, it will be explicitly described. FollowChess comes in two versions: Free and Pro. Free has ads and has limited functionality, e.g. Free can not view all Standings only top, Pro can view all standings, etc. The Pro version costs $0.99 per month which is less than one coffee from Starbucks. It is also possible to buy a lifetime version, which will be Pro forever, without any limitations. After launching the program, we are greeted by a screen with a list of chess matches and tournaments. There are a lot of them, as by default, in addition to live events, already completed ones are also available. The user has the possibility to filter the events and leave e.g. only the live ones. When you tap on a selected event, such as one being played live - FollowChess will take you to a screen where you will see multiple chess boards with open chess games. Here is round 6 of one of the live events being played: And below is another tournament, also broadcast live. In real time, the chessboards are updated when players make a move. It's cool to be able to watch multiple games being played at the same time :-) FollowChess can operate in portrait mode (above images) or in landscape mode (below). The landscape mode is especially convenient when using a tablet or larger smartphone. By pressing any chessboard you will be taken to the view of that selected and enlarged chessboard; the game notation will be shown and icons for selecting various functions will be displayed. Below, the game in a vertical setting. And here is a chess game in a horizontal setting. At any time if we wish to change the chessboard design and color themes, this can be easily done in the app settings. The choices range from light to dark color themes. You can also change the appearance of the chess pieces for your own convenience. When a chess game interests us... ...We can add it to the WatchList... ...To return to it at the appropriate time. Favorite chess games after pressing the icon with a heart goes to the Favorites list. But before that, we can add an appropriate label with a short description to the game. Sometimes it happens that we are looking for a game that we have seen before but we don't remember exactly which one it was. In this case, the function Recently Viewed will help us remember all the chess games we have seen before. The app also allows you to share the game you are watching with others. For example, you can send a link via e-mail, instant messenger, bluetooth connection or forward the game to another application on your smartphone (e.g. for analysis). The application also allows you to send a graphic file with the current situation on the chessboard and explanations in the form of colored arrows. Using FillowChess you can automatically play a chess game according to the notation. In the settings there is an option to set time between moves. Each position and game can be analyzed by the chess engine. In the open chess game view this can be done in two ways: 1. Via the Share button pass the game to another application. or 2. Press the robot icon and the Analyze This application will open. The Analyze This application is by the same author as FollowChess. It can function as a standalone application, or you can integrate it with FollowChess via the robot icon. Both applications work perfectly together, forming a harmonious duo: FollowChess allows you to watch games, tournaments, video broadcasts, etc. Analyze This is an application for analyzing chess positions and games. The games can be shown in graphical form on the chessboards or in text form. When you tap the cloud icon, the app will download all the chess games (.PGN) of that event to your smartphone's storage. If an event is broadcast, FollowChess will allow you to watch that broadcast while also following the game or watch the broadcast after the game is over. Below are some images with examples. We also have access to the scores for each round and the final scores. The app allows you to keep up to date with comments during games and join in discussions. Noteworthy is the search engine that allows you to quickly find a specific event, tournaments. For example, when you type "tcec" into the search box, FollowChess shows all played tournaments of the TCEC event between chess engines. As in the examples above, here too we get access to the results, detailed statistics, comments. A nice addition to the app are interviews with interesting people in the chess world. A useful addition is the option to choose how often you receive notifications. Summary FollowChess is one of the best - and perhaps the best - smartphone app for tracking live matches, tournaments and broadcasts of chess events. Visually very attractive, easy to configure and not overloaded with unnecessary features. Potential integration with the Analyze This app by the same author, makes FollwChess even more advantageous by allowing analysis by a top chess engine (Stockfish for iOS and Stockfish or any other by user-installed on Android). The application does what it was designed to do and does it brilliantly. The author of this review in many years of using FollowChess has never experienced this app malfunctioning or crashing. Many satisfied users have made this clear in comments on the Google and Apple stores recommending FollowChess. The app basically has no weaknesses. The only thing I could wish is that it was translated into other languages, which would allow many users to use it even more comfortably in their native language. FollowChess score

This time we will take a look at one of the TOP chess engines. According to the Creators: a lot of improvements, some new features, development of a "human" style of play. Is indeed the new Dragon By Komodo Chess worth interest, is the MCTS algorithm a useful alternative to engines using standard search functions? I will try to answer these and other questions in this review. Source image by ChessBase By way of introduction, I'm pasting information from one of the Komodo Dragon GM Larry Kaufman, who unveiled the latest version of this engine in December 2021. [December 20, 2021] We have released Dragon 2.6 at komodochess.com. Dragon uses NNUE (Neural Network Updated Efficiently) technology, originally developed for the game of shogi. Komodo has a great deal of chess knowledge in its evaluation. Training an NNUE network based on this evaluation was both an advantage and a challenge, requiring experimentation with architectures and data generation of billions of positions. The reinforcement learning phase for Dragon is in its infancy, but is already showing great promise. Dragon 2.6 is a huge strength improvement over Dragon 2, roughly 70 elo at blitz on four threads and 83 elo on one, more than 100 elo in MCTS mode and for playing Fischerandom (chess960). It is a significant improvement over Dragon 2.5, about 18 elo on one thread blitz, about 25 elo in MCTS mode or playing chess960. The gains over Komodo 14.1, the last pre-dragon release (Nov 2020), are in the 250 to 350 Elo range depending on threads, mode, and game type, all at CCRL blitz time control (2' + 1"). The improvement over Dragon 2 is due to a larger, "smarter", and better-trained net, to deeper search due to search enhancements, and to parameter tuning. The improvement from Komodo to Dragon is due to the embedded neural network providing much more accurate evaluation and also in some sense gaining an extra ply or so of search by seeing some tactics that a normal eval can not see. Our testing also shows that Dragon is especially strong in Fischerandom (960) chess, which was confirmed when Dragon won the TCEC FRC 2021 championship, and again in our latest testing that shows Dragon 2.6 convincingly defeated Stockfish 14 in a 2000 game blitz Fischerandom match. Dragon also won the 2021 TCEC Swiss and Swiss2 championships (normal chess). We believe that Dragon will play in a more human-like style than standard Komodo since it relies on learning what actually works in games rather than just on pre-assigned values for eval terms. The Skill levels have been replaced by Elo values, made much more human-like, and are now intended to correspond to human Fide ratings in Rapid chess, so for example an 1800 FIDE rated player should be closely matched with UCI Elo 1800 at 15' + 10". Also the MultiPV play of standard mode is dramatically improved from the initial dragon release, on top of the actual strength gain. Other features added since Komodo 13 include Armageddon mode, MCTS Optimism, Personalities, and Auto-Skill. Standard mode is usually the stronger mode objectively, while MCTS mode is usually better at setting problems for human opponents as it does not assume perfect defense, especially with more than a few seconds to consider, and is also stronger than standard mode when looking at several lines of play at once (MultiPV). It sounds very interesting, doesn't it? Table of Komodo Dragon engine specifications. Before I get into specifics, a brief history of this chess engine. Komodo Dragon (Dragon for short) is a commercial chess engine that is a direct successor to the Komodo engine. Dragon has a long history and many different successes. It is a multiple-time Computer World Champion. Its development over the years is regular. Every few months the Developers release new updates and new versions of this engine. Power of play. Dragon is a very powerful chess engine with an established reputation, which usually occupies the top spots in chess engine ranking lists. Source: CCRL Attached for download is a match consisting of 100 games of Dragon against the Rebel 14.2 engine. Each engine had 1 CPU at its service and 1 minute per game; Fritz 18 GUI, Perfect 2021 opening book. The result of the match shows the colossal difference in playing strength between top engine Dragon (over 3500 Elo) and very strong engine Rebel (about 3200 Elo). Out of 100 games: Dragon won 81 and tied 19. Rebel won 0 games and drew 19. The image below shows one of the games in progress. Style of play. Dragon plays positional style chess by default. Of course, an engine that plays with a strength of about 3500 Elo will excel in positions that require a tactical approach. Undoubtedly, Dragon's style of play has not changed dramatically compared to its predecessor, and it still favors a more maneuverable game leading to an advantage rather than a frantic attack paid for by the sacrifice of pawns and pieces. Invariably, the ability to select predefined personalities that allow the user to easily customize Dragon's playing style for their own needs is a delight. Using three examples from my practice, I will show how Dragon can play. For comparison, I'll contrast Dragon's suggestions with those of the super-powerful Stockfish engine. The following examples are from my correspondence games. 23... Ne3 ! - this impressive and - as it turned out later from the course of the game - effective move is suggested by Dragon in an extremely dynamic and complicated position. Stockfish engine suggests after a few minutes of consideration a different continuation line - probably just as strong 23... Qg6, though probably less interesting. Position evaluation. Great move with the pawn to the h4 field. Dragon is the engine that saw in perspective that 15.h4 leads to a big advantage for white. The game ended with a victory for white, who through the move 15.h4 led to a situation where black could do nothing effectively. Analysis using the Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) algorithm. Another example of a position that is very difficult for chess engines, in which most engines cannot see the line that causes the most problems for the opponent. Dragon rightly points to the black Queen's move 33.... Qd4 after which white would have to play very precisely to save the draw. In the correspondence game, my opponent didn't respond precisely which in this position led to his surrendering the game after only 5 more moves! I would like to point out that in a not easy position Dragon using only 1 CPU and the MCTS algorithm did a great job of simultaneously giving the 3 strongest continuation lines including 33... Qd4 which causes most potential problems for the opponent. Dragon engine parameters. Dragon gives the user many different parameters at his disposal. Compared to other chess engines the number of parameters to change is one of the most numerous. The parameters can affect the style and strength of play and many others including training support for the chess player. For ambitious players, coaches and professionals - the rich possibilities of changing the Dragon engine parameters can be very helpful in learning, training, analysis including heavy analysis of correspondence games, looking for novelties and ideas and checking for errors in chess games. In the applications of a correspondence chess player, customizing the Dragon engine to your needs can be one of the most effective weapons in playing against other opponents. How to use the parameters, what size hash to choose, and more are included in the description file that Komodo Chess provides. Training with Komodo Dragon. 1. Personalities The Dragon engine has various capabilities that are useful during training. One of them, as I mentioned above in the text, are - personalities - different styles that Dragon can play according to. 2. Dragon Elo strength setting. Ability to set Dragon strength from 0 to 3500 Elo. 3. Auto Skill The Auto Skill feature makes Dragon automatically adjust its internal Elo level when you play against it. When you set your Elo ranking, with Auto Skill enabled, it adjusts your level based on your game position rating, giving you a better chance of winning if you fall behind. If you are winning, Auto Skill raises your level. If you are losing, it lowers your level. This is designed to motivate the student and increase the chances of winning. 4. Armageddon. Dragon can play Armageddon, where one side must win. So Dragon will treat a possible draw in the game as its defeat. Enabling Armageddon during training can result in some very interesting chess games from that chess engine. 5. Dragon & chess training software. If you want to use one of the best chess training programs in combination with the Dragon engine, then you should check out the proposal of ChessBase company, which sells the Komodo Dragon engine perfectly integrated with its GUI. Of course, Dragon works very well with other popular chess training GUIs such as Lucas Chess, Fritz, etc., however, you should know that you then have to manually install the Dragon engine using those programs. Dragon and various GUIs (Graphical User Interface). Dragon works properly with all GUIs that allow the chess engine to be used via the UCI protocol. In practice all popular GUIs like Shredder Classic, Hiarcs Chess Explorer, Fritz, Arena, Banksia, Tarrasch and others support the Komodo Dragon engine. Dragon availability for different operating systems. Komodo Dragon is one of the few engines available for all popular operating systems. Linux, Mac and Windows - you can use Dragon on these systems. The wide availability of Dragon is very good news for the growing number of chess players using different operating systems. They can use Dragon on their favorite system such as a Linux or modern Mac with a fast M1 processor. Summary Komodo Dragon is an unusual chess engine. Created by professionals for professionals and ambitious chess players. Dragon "sees" much more than almost all other chess engines although its search depth is usually less. It uses very advanced algorithms and methods for searching moves including NNUE (Efficiently Updatable Neural Networks) and MCTS (Monte-Carlo Tree Search). Analyzes by providing realistic and unbiased evaluation of positions, including the most complex ones arising in correspondence games. It offers useful and rare possibilities to support chess training. With the option to change parameters, Dragon can be an extremely powerful and surprising partner during games and analysis, and exploration of novelties openings and ideas. It has a very well implemented MCTS algorithm that allows you to analyze the position visualized by multiple lines - at the same time without any additional load on computer resources. Komodo Dragon 2.6.1 score