After a fiercely fought tournament, Gingko scored 7 points, the same as the second Komodo Dragon engine. Finally, Gingko was the winner, after playing three games in the Armageddon formula, in which he did not lose a single chess game and playing the last game with black. Hearty congratulations to Mr. Frank Schneider - author of the Gingko chess engine and Mr. Wolfgang Zugrav - operator. Undoubtedly, this is the greatest success the Ginkgo engine has achieved so far. I am very happy about it, because the Ginkgo is an engine that has been consistently developed for many years, playing with more and more power. Final standing. Conditions: Double round robin tournament, time control 30 minutes plus 15 seconds per move. Play-off: two games 10 minutes + 10 seconds per move. Armageddon game was played with white (Komodo dragon) having 6 minutes + 10 seconds per move and black (Gingko) 3 minutes + 5 minutes per move. This game resulted in a draw by repetition and therefore the winner of this tournament was Ginkgo. Computers: the same for all participants. Source: ICGA Gingko is in use in ChessBase software as Fritz (versions 17, 18 and 18 Neuronal), which means that users will certainly soon be able to take advantage of this excellent chess engine in the latest and strongest version. Gingko results in this Championship shows that the latest version is much stronger than Fritz 18 Neuronal and probably playing at a level close to Komodo Dragon, which is one of the most successful and powerful chess engines. All tournament games, including Armageddon (original notations). Source: ICGA The games of the World Chess Software Championship are played in Messe Wien, Press Centre, in Vienna, Austria on July 24 and 25, 2022. Some photos this very nice place... Photo by Tedi K. Grójec. Photo by Mihal Visvader And below are shots from the game room. Source: ICGA Source: ICGA Source: ICGA Source: ICGA

In anticipation of the release of the 9th version of the Bereserk chess engine by Jay Honnold, I have prepared developmental Berserk compilations marked 20220525. Feel free to download the latest version of the Berserk chess engine. Below are Berserk 20220525 compilations for: Linux (ARM and Intel) Mac (Apple Silicon and Intel) Source code available from the GitHub page.

Horowitz is a UCI-compatible open source chess engine initially written in Go. Now rewritten in C++. Logo from Darius (I couldn't find the Horowitz engine logo anywhere). Here is what author OliveriQ wrote about the latest version: " This version essentially consists of a simpler evaluation function and a much faster search function. This has produced a reasonable gain in playing strength. Evaluation now uses PSQT's + Material (both now incrementally updated) and mop-up evaluation for converting late endgame positions. Other changes include various bug fixes. Here are the final scores of v2.1.0 vs v2.0.0 in a match consisting of 100 games (TC 40/10s + 0.1): " Source: GiHub Darius note: With well-written code, the Horowitz-2.1.0 chess engine can be easily compiled for popular operating systems. Below are compilations for Linux (arm, intel), Mac (apple silicon, intel) and of course for Windows. We wish the author good luck and joy in developing this cool chess engine :)

Stash is a UCI-compliant chess engine developed from scratch, licensed under the GPL v3. It is one of the most promising and developed chess engines in terms of strength increase. Unfortunately, the author does not officially share the changes he made in the new version. For comparison I present the ranking of previous versions of Stash. Source: CCRL It is worth noting that Stash very easily and without any errors can be compiled for Mac computers running on Intel processors. Feel free to download the Stash 33.0 chess engine.

A new version of a UCI-compliant chess engine written in Go. Author: Amanj Sherwany. Zahak 10.0 is one of the strongest chess engines with a strength of above 3200 Elo points. Here are the changes made by the author in Zahak 10.0: " Search tweaks Reintroduce val phase Faster make/unmake TT replacement changes Add move overhead UCI option New and slightly improved neural network (same architecture) Introduced a new Capture History Much better SMP scaling Introduce IIR again Reset Killer moves in between searches This version is almost 50+ elo over Zahak 9.0 " Previous version of this excellent chess engine - Zahak 9.0 plays in tournaments organized by chessengeria.com and has a lot of victories. Certainly Zahak 10 will be tested. Zahak website: zahak.amanj.me

New version of the most powerful commercial engine. GM Larry Kaufman introduces Dragon 3 by Komodo Chess " [April 26, 2022] We have released Dragon 3 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 3 is a huge strength improvement over Dragon 2, roughly 80 elo at blitz on eight threads and 107 elo on one (using normal openings), about 132 elo in MCTS mode, and 148 elo when playing Fischerandom (chess960). It is a significant improvement over Dragon 2.6.1, about 17 elo on one thread blitz, about 20 elo in MCTS mode. 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 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. 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". 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 more than a few seconds to consider, and is also stronger than standard mode when looking at several lines of play at once (MultiPV). " Website: komodochess.com Download: developer's webpage

New version of chess engine by Mr. Pedro Castro. Source: chessprogramming.org Glad to see progress in development. Source: CCRL Caligula is a winboard compatible chess engine by Pedro Castro, it is freeware and based on TSCP engine. Here are a few sentences about version 1.0b from the author. " Many changes. Little Elo. This version has approximately the strength of DanaSah 8.3, about 2700 CCRL. There are many differences between DanaSah (eval classic) and Caligula. For example Caligula uses things that DanaSah does not have such as piece list or pawn hash table. The search differs in things like pruning, the way of calculating things in the evaluation is different (mobility, king safety, etc). Overall the Caligula source code is about half the size of DanaSah. " Caligula website: pedrox.wixsite.com/caligula

Another update to the Rebel chess engine in very short order, which according to the author should result in a strength increase of about 100 Elo points. Source: Rebel Here is what the author Mr. Ed Schröder wrote an his website about the latest release of the Rebel engine: "1. New and stronger neural network made from 1.87 billion positions. 2. Estimated strength increase over Rebel 14.2 emulating CCRL 40/2 testing in the range of 80-130 elo. 3. See the Rebel 15 development diary for details. 4. NNUE tuner parameter in Engine Settings. Default setting now 70%. 5. For the moment Rebel 15 is only available as AVX2 engine. It has to be seen if we are still able to provide a weaker SSE version for older computers. NNUE evaluation strongly relies on the AVX2 instruction set and there might come a moment older computers become an obstacle to progress." It is a pity that only one version of the Rebel 15 chess engine has been made available to run and only on modern processors and only on Windows. No compilation for older and still popular processors; no compilation for other operating systems like Linux or macOS. No support for Syzygy tablebases. That's a lot of "lack." Maybe it would be better to release this excellent chess engine a bit less frequently, but more refined ? We get the fifteenth version of the chess engine, a large and round number indicating an important update and apart from the claims of increased power, the Rebel 15 chess engine is, to put it mildly, simply unpolished.

A new version of an interesting and quite powerful chess engine that needs a modern web browser to work. Author: Colin Jenkins. Lozza is JavaScript open source chess engine and user interface. Licensed under the GPL v3.0. According to information from the author, Lozza 2.3 is about 25 Elo stronger than version 2.2. It plays at around 2690-2700 Elo, which is good for an engine written in JavaScript. " Score of 2.3 vs 2.2: 599 - 466 - 758 [0.536] 1823 2.3 playing White: 309 - 218 - 384 [0.550] 911 2.3 coalface playing Black: 290 - 248 - 374 [0.523] 912 White vs Black: 557 - 508 - 758 [0.513] 1823 Elo difference: 25.4 +/- 12.2, LOS: 100.0 %, DrawRatio: 41.6 % SPRT: llr 2.97 (100.8%), lbound -2.94, ubound 2.94 - H1 was accepted Finished match "

Another update Rebel chess engine bringing a strength increase of about 50-60 Elo points. Source: Rebel Here is what the author Mr. Ed Schröder wrote an his website about the latest release of the Rebel engine: "(...) 1. New and stronger neural network made from 1.6 billion position analyzed with Rebel 14.1, estimated elo gain 50-60. 2. Search changes, estimated elo gain 15-20. 3. NNUE tuner parameter in Engine Settings. Default setting now 40%. Self playing against 14.1 shows an elo increase of ~80-85. On the Gambit Rating List Rebel 14.2 is rated 3278 at place 15." This engine as of version 14 uses a neural network (NNUE) to evaluate chess positions. Rebel is a once and still today great engine, with a long and rich tradition and success. It is wonderful that Rebel is still being developed. Certainly at chessengeria.com the development and achievements of Rebel will be a pleasure to watch :)

New version of the most powerful commercial engine. GM Larry Kaufman introduces Dragon 2.6.1 " KomodoChess has released Dragon 2.6.1 at KomodoChess.com. It is primarily a bug-fix version, needed because in 2.6 setting Auto-Skill disabled the Elo settings, making Auto-Skill useless. Also, in response to many requests, we changed the UCI options for Elo and LimitStrength to use the underscore, so that they may be used more easily on some GUIs. Additionally, some of the internal settings for the Elo settings have been revised based on new information; below 1650 they were made a bit weaker, above 1650 a bit stronger. There is no change in the net used; some tiny speedups were included and one small internal parameter change; we estimate the net effect is a boost of about two elo. Obviously there is no need for the testers to retest for this. This version is free for anyone who received version 2.6 from us, just download it, and any new purchasers will get this version. " Website: komodochess.com Download: developer's webpage

Fritz 18 - New version of legendary and very good chess program from the ChessBase developer. According to the developer: " Fritz has fascinated the chess world for 30 (!) years: victories over world champions Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, innovative training methods for amateurs and professionals, 20 years of Internet chess on the Fritz server, 10 integrated WebApps for mobile training: Fritz offers you everything you will need as a dedicated chess enthusiast. Evolving Genius – The new path to playing brilliancies Fritz shows you what you are capable of being: an attacking player who can conjure up magnificent brilliancies over the board! The new AI-based training method leads you to brilliant sacrificial combinations via clever variant selection and discreet hints. " Few new features include: Evolving Genius Fritz 18 offers you the chance to discover a new you in terms of chess playing. “Evolving Genius” is a completely innovative training method, with which when playing against Fritz you learn more than just to attack. You will be astonished at what you find in yourself! You will never have won such nice games against Fritz! Intelligent tips: Fritz provides subtle hints in difficult positions Visual evaluation: pawn structure, king safety, piece activity and sharpness of the position New engine analysis Interesting threats, appealing ideas and the game continuation Animated engine variations: Intuitive visual display of the best continuation Stronger Fritz 18 engine by Frank Schneider, optimised for short time controls. New board The present Windows variations have available with Direct2D a powerful interface for rapid on-screen representations. New technique allows other subtleties e.g. highlighting the pieces by having them glow or decent animation of captures. Website: Fritz 18 Download: developer's webpage