Thanks to the donor John82 I received ChessBase 17 in a beautiful box with DVD. Thank you very much :) A commercial program developed for over 30 years by the company of the same name: ChessBase. A companion and computer partner for chess players and computer chess enthusiasts across generations. Nowadays, chess databases are essentially crucial tools for working with lots of chess data. In the 21nd century, it is difficult to imagine any chess activity without the use of chess computer software. Once upon a time, back in the 1980s, this was not the case. And it was at that time that the product of the talented creators (Frederic Friedel and Matthias Wüllenweber) was born, with which the then world chess champion Garry Kasparov became enthralled: "ChessBase is the greatest development for chess since the invention of the printing press." ChessBase is one of the first advanced and pioneering program for the storing, organizing, analyzing, sharing, chunking, ..., etc. data - that is, chess games in many different ways. This is a program sold around the world, considered by many to be the best in its class - a benchmark for other competitive products. Source: ChessBase (starter package) In November 2022, ChessBase 17 was released. This version will be reviewed. First, let's take a look at some of the data in the table below. Table of ChessBase 17 specifications. CCRL Rating: December 10, 2022. ChessBase, along with the Fritz series programs, is the company's flagship product. Dear Reader, you may be wondering reading this specification: Why hasn't ChessBase been released for other modern platforms such as Mac or Linux computers ? Is the developer planning to release ChessBase for Linux / Mac or Web ? After all, ChessBase as a company has been producing and selling this program for over 30 years ! This is exactly the questions ChessBase supporters have asked repeatedly and over the years in the forums under articles on their site. Unfortunately, to this day we have not received a response from ChessBase on their website. These are legitimate questions, because in the ChessBase store on the ChessBase 17 program page, you can read (content highlighted in the image below) that everyone uses ChessBase. Source: ChessBase Shop, 2022-12-03 Not everyone uses ChessBase because it is only sold for computers using Windows... On November 22, 2022, I participated in a livestream with the developers of ChessBase 17. Taking the opportunity to contact them, I took the liberty of asking: "do you have plans to release ChessBase for Mac ?" I received a reply from Mr. Lutz Nebe, quote: "we are working on this issue (to get a platform idepentend code) also for other reason, but wether there will be a Mac version at the end is not decided yet" Well, the conclusions are not optimistic; it's sad that chess players using computers and systems other than Windows - are treated this way - by a company with a decades-long tradition in developing and distributing chess software. At this point, I refer those interested in this matter to the introduction to the Fritz 18 review, in which I included my thoughts on the subject. For those interested, here's a link to an article on how to use Windows system and Windows applications comfortably on a Mac. In the meantime, let's revisit the ChessBase 17 and see... Does the Deep Fritz 13 chess engine provide significant competition to today's chess engines ? Are the database functions at such a level that they can be considered a standard - a reference point for the competition ? Will the features related to the analysis and use of chess engines meet the expectations of the advanced user ? At what level are the training functions available ? Is ChessBase 17 the best tool for working with chess openings ? Does ChessBase 17 offer useful web integrations / online apps ? I will try to answer these and other questions in this review. On the blog chessengeria.eu, you will find a lot of content related to the ChessBase program. You will get the most information from the Course consisting of five parts describing the following topics: Efficient work with a chess database Preparing for an opponent Annotating games Using chess engines Search Masterfully In these five parts, in great detail using numerous examples, I have laid out how to use ChessBase 16 to accomplish all the most common tasks. I made it so that the vast majority of the capabilities of this program can be used in previous versions of ChessBase 12 through 15. (ChessBase 12 was released in 2012). In addition, I described ChessBase 16 in the article "Tools in a Chess Player's Workshop - Windows - Part 2". For this reason, this review will not include detailed descriptions of features that have existed in ChessBase software for, say, 10 years. In this review, we will focus on new and most important features and capabilities that have appeared in ChessBase 17. The latest release of ChessBase is another release with few additions, optimizations, looking for new ways (eg. interactivity) and a... "dark mode". Some things have worked out, others still haven't. Is ChessBase 17 almost the same as ChessBase 16 ? Let's check it out. DARK MODE Undoubtedly, Dark Mode is a feature that can strongly and positively enhance the experience of using any program. If it is implemented well, using the program will be more enjoyable, less strain on the eyes and improve readability in areas where less light falls. Many leading software vendors have introduced Dark Mode. Apple was the first to go even further, providing all system applications in its macOS with the ability to enable this mode. In addition, third-party programs, can also use this mode via macOS, as exemplified by the Hiarcs Chess Explorer family chess programs. In ChessBase terms, Dark Mode is a darkened program interface. That is, not a true co dark mode, but a darkened interface. Source: ChessBase Shop In practice, we have two modes of dimmed interface available: Gray Theme and Black Theme. Before enabling the Black Theme, I changed the appearance of the chessboard to a darker one (from the default color scheme to a scheme named: Elegant) Here's how ChessBase 17 looks with Black Theme enabled. Black Theme stings the eyes with bright colors. This is especially evident in modules whose appearance has not changed pd many versions of ChessBase, such as the Summary in Opening Report. The difference in color temperatures is large. This may interfere when using ChessBase. Let's see how the Gray Theme presents itself. Gray Theme definitely works better for my eyes :) Unfortunately, very often the icons representing chess bases do not look correct; two examples: #1 #2 To maintain a consistent look, icons should always look like this - without unnecessary bright highlighting: #1 #2 I'm glad to see that a darkened interface has made its way to ChessBase 17. And while it's obviously not a true Dark Mode, for people who work a lot at a computer monitor, such an option can provide relief for tired eyes. HIGH-RESOLUTION 2D BOARD Let's look at the few chessboards. Chessboard #1, ChessBase 16 Chessboard #1, ChessBase 17 Chessboard #2, ChessBase 16 Chessboard #2, ChessBase 17 Did you notice any differences ? I noticed. To my eye, the chessboards, figures and pawns differ to the benefit of ChessBase 17. It is not a big difference, even a small one - cosmetic, but more pleasant to look at. The differences are visible with a larger chessboard size; with a small chessboard size, they are almost imperceptible. After launching the program, the first thing we pay attention to is its appearance, readability, availability of options. This is important because, having spent some time with ChessBase, it's nice to be able to look at something you like. Before we move on to discuss more new features in ChessBase 17, we will focus on a functionality that is one of the most used - analysis -> using the chess engine. DEEP FRITZ 13 The attentive Reader at this point may be thinking to himself: " Deep Fritz 13 ? Darius, what are you writing about ? After all, this is a chess engine that premiered in 2012.... which is 10 years ago ! " Dear Reader, I am writing these words in December 2022. ChessBase has included a chess engine Deep Fritz 13 from 10 years ago in its flagship product. This engine was released in June 2012. Its ranking is 3028 Elo when it uses four processors, and 2956 Elo when it has one processor at its disposal. Source: CCRL I make no secret of the fact that I am very fond of the Deep Fritz 13 chess engine. At one time, in 2012, I used it frequently. It impressed me with its tactical capabilities and its strategic understanding was often used by me during analysis. It was the last and such an excellent chess engine by Mr. Frans Morsch. Well - it was. Deep Fritz 13 is an engine belonging to a different time. In 10 years there have been several breakthroughs in the world of chess engines, which have resulted in an increase in power by hundreds of Elo points. The strength of Deep Fritz 13 is more than 500 Elo less than that of contemporary chess engines such as Stockfish, Dragon by Komodo Chess or Berserk, for example. In my reviews I did not, with full knowledge, address the question of whether the product was cheap or expensive, I did not juxtapose the program's quality to its price or the program's capabilities to its price. In response to requests from my Readers, I will address this issue, because at this point in the review - it is appropriate. ChessBase is an expensive program. Probably the most expensive commercial chess program available on the market. ChessBase is a program that is positioned and seen by many as number 1 among other such programs. And in such a program - a premium chess product - for no small amount of money we get the Deep Fritz 13 chess engine, which is dedicated to one of the most frequently performed activities - position and game analysis. Deep Fritz 13 in ChessBase 17 is like a outdated engine in the modern car. On the ChessBase 17 website, under the DESCRIPTION tab, the word analysis is used several dozen times. But throughout this lengthy text, there is not even a single mention of what specific chess engine is included in ChessBase 17. I set up a match of Deep Fritz 13 with Dragon 3.1 by Komodo Chess, which is also sold by ChessBase. Each engine had 4 CPU at its service and 1 minute per game + 0.6 seconds after each move. Fritz 18 GUI, 128 MB hash table, Perfect 2021 opening book and Syzygy Bases (6-piece). Here is the result of the match consisting of 100 games: Out of 100 games, Dragon 3.1 by Komodo Chess won 98, with the other 2 games ending in a draw. This is a disastrous result for Deep Fritz 13. Let's see how Deep Fritz 13 handles the 10 positions I usually give chess engines for review purposes. Mostly, I have chosen games from games played by humans. I use a bundle of these positions for program reviews and chess engine tests. My goal is to test the Deep Fritz 13 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, Deep Fritz 13 used 4 CPUs and 1024MB Hash table. DF13 failed to find the correct 1.Qxb5 DF13 failed to find the correct 1.c5 DF13 failed to find the correct 1...Rxb3 DF13 find the correct 1...Qe3, but did not indicate the correct position evaluation (should be 0.00). DF13 found the strongest move 1...Qd3 and correctly judged the position as a win for black. DF13 failed to find the correct 1...Nc7 DF13 failed to find the correct 1.Qf6+ DF13 failed to find the correct 1.Kf2 DF13 found the strongest move 1.Rxe7+ and correctly judged the position as a draw. DF13 failed to find the correct 1.a4 The playing power and analysis quality of the Deep Fritz 13 engine is dramatically low compared to Dragon 3.1 by Komodo Chess and many other modern chess engines including free ones. The time required to get a good analysis with Deep Fritz 13 is several times longer than it could be with a modern chess engine. Unfortunately, such a poor tool - these days which is Deep Fritz 13 - was given over to ChessBase 17 in 2022. THE BUDDY ENGINE This is what the position analysis screen looks like in ChessBase 17 with Buddy Engine disabled. What we see is the same as in ChessBase 16 and several previous versions of this program. Below, this is the same position analysis screen looks like in ChessBase 17 with Buddy Engine enabled (Knight icon turns green when clicked). With the help of text and colored symbols, the program even better conveys to the user relevant information about a specific position and further movements, threats, plans. Let's consider a slightly more complicated position. White's move, Bishop's decisive strike on the black King's position 1. Bxh7+ The more time the engine has to think, the more accurate the analysis and the more useful messages are for the chess player. After three minutes, Deep Fritz 13 finds the best move. After four minutes, the analysis commentary that ChessBase 17 gives is adequate to the output of the chess engine. Now the same position, but let's invite the free open source Berserk 10 chess engine to analyze it. After just 20 seconds, we get a valuable analysis with commentary. Buddy Engine is essentially the same analysis engine, but running "separately" using a single CPU. For example, we run Deep Fritz 13 giving it a 4-CPU. When the Buddy Engine is turned on, Deep Fritz will start using the 3-CPU for analysis, while 1-CPU Deep Fritz will allocate for the Buddy Engine, which will take care of the rest, i.e. comments, color symbols, etc. Buddy Engine is a new way of presenting the results of position analysis. And it is useful ! The use of the Buddy Engine, along with an explanation of what the colored symbols mean, for example, is described in detail in the manual included with ChessBase 17 as a pdf file. 2CBH - NEW CHESS DATABASE FORMAT According to the Creators, the new chess base format is a significant change. The previous one, well-known and widespread - was introduced in 1996 with the release of ChessBase 6.0. The new format, called simply 2CBH, abolishes limits, e.g. there is no limit on the number of players, tournaments, etc. And what is important when working with large bases - there is no need to use so-called search boosters, which sometimes caused problems. It can be expected that all new game bases sold by ChessBase will be in 2CBH format. And this is the case with Mega Database 2023, for example. It is worth mentioning that ChessBase 17 offers the option to convert any supported chess database to 2CBH format. Sound good? Let's check it out :) For testing, we will take Mega DataBase 2022. This database contains 9,472,152 chess games. That is, quite a lot, almost 10 million games. 1. Convert to 2CBH format On an old computer, the conversion time is long, but it ran without any problems, completed successfully. On a modern computer, the conversion time is only 5 minutes, which I think for a very large base is a good result. Once the conversion is complete, the program offers the option to delete the database in the old format. 2. Work speed. We can use the chess database in hundreds of different ways and for different purposes. I will compare the speeds of most common operations on the database in the old format (with Search Booster enabled) versus the database in the new format. To make the results as clear and understandable as possible, I will make a comparison between a 2014 computer and a 2020 computer. The old computer takes noticeably longer to create Search Booster, almost twice as long. 2a. Preparing an opening report for my favorite Latvian gambit. Opening Report, is one of the most widely used features in any chess database. Using the new 2CBH format, you will get the results three times faster. 2b. Deleting comments from a selection of 100 000 games. Also, during this operation, the new 2CBH format performs better. The operation time is shorter compared to the execution time of this operation in the old CBH format. 2c. Pasting previously copied games. Here - we got a surprise. Let's take a closer look at the test results. Pasting games into bases takes noticeably more time with the new 2CBH format. The old CBH format does better in performing this operation. 2d. Search for positions by simple, medium and very complex criteria. Searching for any position regardless of the criteria takes from a few to just a dozen seconds. That is, it is very, very fast ! 2e. Mega Database 2022 backup In the implementation of this operation, the new 2CBH format has no competition. The processing time is much shorter than in the CBH format. 3. Space. Databases in the new format take up more space, although given the capacity of even hard drives that are several years old, this does not matter much. Below is a summary of backup volumes: The difference is about 1 GB. Of course, for smaller bases the difference will be correspondingly smaller. 2CBH - Summary In almost all types of most common operations, the new 2CBH format is faster than the previously used CBH format. The difference is especially noticeable using a modern and fast computer. However, it is worth noting that on a computer that is 8 years old (as of the date of writing this review), most operations are completed in a reasonable amount of time. The exception is the work involved in copying and pasting games from one base to another. Here the old CBH format has the advantage. The more games a base contains, the more time the 2CBH format takes to copy and paste the games into the selected base. If you are mainly concerned with creating, copying and pasting multiple chess games and high-volume databases, then consider whether working with CBH format databases (with Search Booster enabled) will be a better choice than 2CBH format databases for your applications. And this is one exception where 2CBH format may be a worse choice than CBH format. The developers of ChessBase 17 have focused on improving performance in the most frequently performed operations by users. And it works :) Find spectacular games (instantly?) This is one of the more exposed features by the developer of ChessBase 17 Source: ChessBase Shop This function works only in the base with the new 2CBH format. In short: when you press the Set Beauty button, ChessBase 17 will classify all the games you have marked by giving medals on a scale from 0 (no medal) to 3 medals. The more medals, the "more beautiful" the game. Before checking the Set Beauty feature in action, let's see if ChessBase 17 actually finds the most beautiful games instantly. On the Y axis is the number of games (1, 500, 1 000, 10 000, 35 000). On the X axis is the number of seconds. Number of games from 1 to 1000, the Set Beauty function needs little time, that is, from one to several seconds of operation. That is, if, for example, you want to classify all the games of a tournament using this function, then even on an older, and slow, computer this process will take literally seconds. Classification speed on the old computer: 66 positions / second. Classification speed on a modern computer: 220 positions/second. If you want to use this feature for the thousands of games in your database, you'll have to expect to wait from tens of seconds to several minutes. And if, on the other hand, you intend to use this function on tens or hundreds of thousands of games, then the time required to complete this operation will increase to as much as several tens of minutes. According to ChessBase, it will take several hours to classify games from a large database in this way. How "beautiful" are the games awarded 17 medals by ChessBase ? Here is an example of a game awarded 3 medals, the highest. There are a lot of unusual sacrifices and interesting tactical themes throughout the game. Below is a screen from the game rated at 2 medals. Two extremely powerful chess engines with a desire to defeat their opponent. This game is worth watching for all the storm of brutal and impressive plays from both sides! Can a game awarded 1 medal be "beautiful" ? Yes, and this game proves it. Three medal games along with commentaries - downloadable. Undoubtedly, Set Beauty is a cool and useful feature. And it is surprising that it has only now been introduced and only in bases in 2CBH format... SEARCH MASK Users who used ChessBase 16 or even earlier versions probably remember that when you clicked the Filter List icon... ...the following dialog box opened: And that's the core, whose sumptuous database capabilities are the real strength of ChessBase programs in this and previous versions. With the help of seven tabs and a few / several clicks, the user can search extremely precisely in the flood of millions of games for the exact ones he is looking for. Similar capabilities of this caliber are offered only by the commercial Chess Assistant and open source programs from the Scid family. Getting the best possible performance out of this feature is critically important for effective work with chess game databases (especially those of large size numbering millions of games). In other words, game search is one of the most important functions of a program like ChessBase. And this function, after clicking the Filter List icon, was "reduced to".... something like this: Let this picture serve as a commentary.... Source: space.com Tip for users. After selecting the option marked with a red circle: Always advanced dialog, clicking on the Filter List icon again will take the user to the familiar Filter Games window. The Search Filter window will not be shown. Ok, let's start with the positives :) The largest Advanced button, when clicked, takes you to the right familiar window with seven tabs (Filter Games). We can still use the advanced chess game search engine! So, why is there a new window with Search Mask, will using it improve the work with chess database ? The ChessBase representative states: " (...) the search mask runs interactively for most important search requests: before the actual search starts, it anticipates what you are looking for. The search topics Player, Tournament, ECO, Material and Position are easier to enter. The new search works differently from the old search: If you enter "Caru" under Player, games of "Carucci", "Caruso" and "Caruana" are found with the classic search mask. With the new search mask a selection list appears: Caruana and Nepomniachtchi are found! If you simply click OK, the first player in the list (with the highest number of games) will be selected. Or you can click the one you are looking for. " Source: ChessBase The search results in the new Search Mask are inaccurate. This overlay is something like making an overlay for Microsoft Excel. Why, if it will make it harder to use and longer to work ? ChessBase is not a complicated program to use, so why introduce an apparent convenience in the form of a new Search Mask, when in most cases it will not do its job - accurately find games according to the set criteria ? I consulted impressions of using the new Mask Serach with people using ChessBase 17. Most do not use the new Search Mask. Of the 10 searches, 9 are performed by the familiar dialog box (Filter Games) that in ChessBase 17 appears when the Advanced button is clicked. Perhaps, the ability to search for games using the new Search Mask window may be useful for less experienced / learning users. Like the aforementioned Microsoft Excel, ChessBase may overwhelm with the number of functions and capabilities at the initial stage of interaction. But, if one wants to be able to use this tool effectively, one should just learn it. In my opinion, it is better to learn / use the best tool available than to use the simpler-to-use "overlay" Search Mask, which unfortunately does not provide accurate search results. A simple example: The following criteria: When you click on the Any Event button to select an event from the drop-down list, ChessBase 17 shows a drop-down list with events in which G.Kasparov and A.Karpov DID NOT participate. The content of the drop-down list is not useful and is inaccurate. The user entered the criteria (names of Grandmasters and the result), so the drop-down list with events should contain only events in which the above-mentioned GMs participated. The new Search Mask window and its capabilities - at this point - I'm a no. I hope that the developers in future updates of ChessBase will make appropriate changes. INTELLIGENT POSITION INPUT In ChessBase 16 and earlier, the Position Setup window looked like this after placing the pieces on the chessboard. In ChessBase 17, when inserting pieces on the chessboard, the games in which this position occurs are searched. When you click on a game from the list on the right side of the window, the chessboard will display a position with the same positioning of the pieces as you entered. As you can see, ChessBase is beginning to experiment with the interactivity of its program. This is another module (after the debatable Search Mask) in which this method has been introduced. In this case, the implementation of the idea is good, and the additional feature can be useful. TRAINING FUNCTIONS Here's a ribbon with ChessBase 17's built-in training options. ChessBase 16 has the same built-in training options. As you can see from the ribbon - there is plenty of room ;) ChessBase 17 and earlier versions of this program is not a dedicated chess training program. If you are looking for one from the ChessBase stable, I suggest you look into one of the following programs Power Fritz 18 or Komodo Dragon 3, which offer some of the best training options available in chess software; both of these programs use the Fritz 18 GUI. For a detailed overview of the training options offered see my review of the Fritz 18 program, which also uses, as you may have guessed, the Fritz 18 GUI. What is worth writing about are the training options sewn into the various modules of ChessBase 17, which can be found outside the Training tab. It has few off-the-shelf chess training tools compared to programs designed for this purpose. With ChessBase 17, you can create training tools. One exemplary and useful training option is training using your own/your own chess games. As you know, it's not uncommon for people to learn from their own mistakes, so in the example below I'll show you the training conducted on a game I played at a chess tournament on the PlayChess server. How to do it? Use the Analysys module - Tactical Analysys. In the dialog box, select Training and others according to your preference. Depending on how much time we give the engine, the analysis of the game will take from 1 to a few minutes / several minutes. During the analysis, you can watch its progress and the annotations created by ChessBase 17 in real time. With the analysis complete, we move on to review the game. ChessBase 17, while working with the engine, found important positions that it suggests to train. Training consists of indicating the best move in a given position. I will turn the chessboard, because I played with black :) If we indicate the best move, ChessBase will reveal next part of the analyzed game. If we run out of ideas for a move, we can click the word Solution highlighted in red in the notation; then the solution will be shown. Another move. And another move... During the game, I chose castling and it was not a good move, as demonstrated by ChessBase 17. The best move was to play the Queen to the f2 square, with good chances of victory. My opponent took advantage of my weak move and with beautiful and effective play led to his victory. See how long it took Firci to find the beautiful sacrifice 23.Rxh5! 0.6 seconds. Less than 1 second. Impressive! Thus, with ChessBase 17 we can train the different phases of the game using... games. That this training option is also available in the previously mentioned Power Fritz 18 and Komodo Dragon 3 programs. It is worth mentioning that in ChessBase 17 there is an interesting functionality available in the button of each displayed chessboard (bottom left corner of the chessboard). When you click this button, a mini-window with several options opens. For example, let's choose Visual Evaluation. The color marking of each piece shows how well it is placed on the chessboard. Green color indicates good placement, red color bad placement. Looking at ChessBase 17 as a whole, there are more such training "flavors". ChessBase is a program versatile enough that anyone with a little willingness can create interesting training tools for themselves or others. OPENINGS Similar to the Training options, to work with Chess Openings, to create, change, expand, etc. ChessBase is not the best tool. For the aforementioned activities, it is best to use Power Fritz 18 or Komodo Dragon 3; both use the Fritz 18 GUI, which has dedicated options for working with Chess Openings. Obviously, Chess Openings play a very important role in ChessBase 17 as a key component used in working with databases. One should mention here, for example, Opening Report and others, which I covered in great detail in a series of 5 courses on ChessBase 16 (see the beginning of this review). It should be noted that the producer has not added or written in the promotional materials about any new or changed features related to Chess Openings in ChessBase 17. CHESSBASE 17 ANALYSIS QUALITY Among the queries of chessengeria.eu Readers to the latest ChessBase, one thing was repeated many times: what is the quality of the analysis of the chess game made by ChessBse 17 vs ChessBase 16 using a powerful chess engine? The answer is a comparison of analyzes performed on ChessBase 16 (left window, light color theme) and ChessBase 17 (right window, gray color theme). Both programs use the same Dragon 3.1 by Komodo Chess engine and the same analysis parameters. The quality of the analysis and annotations are at a very high level, currently (2022) at a level unavailable for other chess programs not created by ChessBase. In my practice, when testing ChessBase 16 and ChessBase 17, I find that the analysis of chess games is the same quality. They differ only in... appearance. ChessBase 17 presents better quality, clearer and sometimes slightly larger chessboards in chess notation. BUGS During writing this review, I had the opportunity to work with ChessBase 17 for about 100 hours. During this time, I encountered the following annoying errors. Why annoying ? Because some of them did not occur every time, only every once in a while. Here's what didn't work: Copying data from the chess engine window to the clipboard. Memorizing the layout. A reference search on the starting position showed nothing, or one had to wait almost a minute for the information to appear. The above bugs have been eliminated with subsequent updates. Here's what's still not working properly (status as of December 14, 2022): Sometimes it does not remember the background color of the chessboard. When you open the chessboard window again, the background is the default color. MyInternetGames database. It does not tactically analyze all the indicated games from the database. When you select, for example, 9 games played in a PlayChess tournament, the program will analyze only a few of them, such as 2 or 3 or 5, etc. No access to Deep Fritz 13 chess engine parameters from Add Kibitzer. Interestingly, you can access the parameters when this engine is started and by clicking on its name in the Kibitzer window: Deep Fritz 13. Then you get access to change all the parameters including, for example, Number of Processors. The strange thing is that the aforementioned bugs occurred in ChessBase 17, although they are not present in previous versions of e.g. ChessBase 16 and earlier. WEB INTEGRATIONS / ONLINE APPS ChessBase 17 offers access to Cloud Databases, where we can keep and use the databases in the same way as we do with databases in storage on our own computer. This is very convenient and a good solution, especially for those who use several computers or access via mobile devices (smartphone / tablet). As the flagship product of the company of the same name, ChessBase 17 offers access to all online applications and integrations. I described them in great detail in my review of the Fritz 18 program, to which you are cordially invited. For the best access to all options, it is best to use a premium account. Each purchaser of ChessBase 17 gets access to a premium account of a length that depends on the type of package*. For example, a buyer of the ChessBase 17 Starter Package gets access to a premium account for 6 months. Source: ChessBase Shop And two more things. The first - access to Open Clouds Engines. It's great functionality! You can use many different engines working on very fast computers, eg equipped with hundreds of CPU's. And it doesn't matter what computer you use, the engines run on a remote computer that sends e.g. analysis results, movements, etc. via the Internet. The second - PlayChess, an online chess server. I have written about PlayChess many times on my blog. In my opinion, it's one of the best and maybe the best and most friendly place to play chess on the internet. This place stands out because it is run by... people and for people. In PlayChess you can simply talk to the Tournament Director, for example. Other more or less known servers do not offer such a possibility - there games and tournaments are managed by computer bots. PlayChess is also famous for its excellent protection against cheaters that use, for example, chess engines when playing with other people. By playing on PlayChess you have a much, much small chance of "competing" against cheater. And I guess my opinion about this server is not isolated, because many people I play and talk to on this server - have been on PlayChess for many years. I REALLY NEED... HELP! ChessBase offers three different support channels. The user has a manual available via the Internet... ChessBase Wiki... ... or Simply send a message. Customer service. I got ChessBase 17 as a gift from John82 - so I can't write my impressions about customer service during the purchase. My previous experiences are positive, I was satisfied with the quality and speed of service. I've received feedback from Readers in various parts of the world and... until confirmed, I won't write anything else. I will update this part of review as needed. SUMMARY Here's what the ChessBase developers wrote on their website. Source: ChessBase (2022-11-22) Does the Deep Fritz 13 chess engine provide significant competition to today's chess engines ? No. Are the database functions at such a level that they can be considered a standard - a reference point for the competition ? Not any more. The same can be achieved using competing programs (e.g. Chess Assistant, programs from the Scid family). Will the features related to the analysis and use of chess engines meet the expectations of the advanced user ? Yes. At what level are the training functions available ? Lower than basic. Is ChessBase 17 the best tool for working with chess openings ? No. Does ChessBase 17 offer useful web integrations / online apps ? Yes. ChessBase 17 is pleasant to use (Gray Theme), chessboards look even better (2D High Resolution), searching for "beautiful" games is a nice feature, Buddy Engine can be useful - but they are absolutely not big and key changes. The Deep Fritz 13 chess engine - from 10 years ago - pre-installed with ChessBase 17 is wrong choice, which instead of making work more efficient, may slow it down. This is very surprising in the context that ChessBase sells chess engines such as the successful Power Fritz 18 and the powerful Komodo Dragon 3. The new 2CBH base format surpasses the previous CBH in most cases. Search Mask, is an underdeveloped feature yet. "Intelligent" Position Setup, is a "cosmetic change", but it is a step in the right direction. The rest (not to mention less significant changes) is the same as in ChessBase 16. If you are using ChessBase 14 or older, then "switching" to ChessBase 17 may make sense and should be noticeable. If you have ChessBase 15 or 16, then the benefits of switching to ChessBsae 17 may be minimal / unnoticeable. I would add that if you are using ChessBase mainly to work with very large bases, e.g. copying / moving a large number of games between them, the new 2CBH format may slow down your work. From its release on November 22, 2022, to December 14, 2022, not yet one month has passed, and ChessBase 17 has already received 8 (!) updates. Developer takes care of their product, improving and... fixing bugs. Probably, numerous bugs are "childhood diseases" of this program; and as you can see from the updates - they are fixed by the Developer. Shouldn't they be eliminated before the release of the 17th version of that program? I shall leave the answer to this question to you dear Reader. Currently, the ChessBase publishing cycle is 2 years. Every 2 years, new editions are released. How about extending the release cycle to 4 years as it used to be ? And refine new features, improve the performance of existing ones, work on the overall speed and responsiveness of the program, change the outdated interface (modeled on Microsoft Office 2007) to a more modern, occupying less screen space and ergonomic one ? Or maybe finally use these 2 extra years to do what one of ChessBase developers Mr. Lutz Nebe said during the livestream: get a platform-independent code, which, when implemented, (as I guessed) would allow to release ChessBase not only for Windows but also for e.g. Linux, Mac or Web. This opportunity and this time will not last indefinitely. Chess software competition is growing stronger with a particular emphasis on web-based solutions, which are getting better and better. ChessBase 17 understood as a whole with an ecosystem of programs and web services is a magnificent tool; a gateway to computer-assisted chess that chess players until recently could only dream of. ChessBase 17 as a program is neither better nor worse than e.g. commercial Chess Assistant or free Scid vs. Mac. The strength of ChessBase lies in the ecosystem of connected programs and services. With the purchase, ChessBase gives you a premium account* that opens up a range of new capabilities, applications and web integrations that greatly expand the range of chess features. Most of the competitors do not yet have their solutions and capabilities at such a high level. And that's what makes this ecosystem unique and useful. I would like to write that ChessBase 17 is such a "Ferrari" among other competitive chess programs: fast, impressive, effective, and.... beautiful. But that, unfortunately, is not the case. A Ferrari with a weak engine, underdeveloped solutions and bugs is not (yet) a Ferrari. That's exactly what the ChessBase 17 is. CHESSBASE 17 SCORE * Applies to ChessBase 17 packages: Premium, Mega, Starter, Program only. Details on the ChessBase Shop page.

Less than 4KB and a strength over 2700 Elo - this is chess engine 4ku. This remarkable feat was accomplished by kz04px, who is the author of the 4ku engine that plays at the level of a top grandmaster. 4ku is an open source free chess engine under the MIT license. Those who are at least somewhat familiar with computer chess know, that there are engines that are stronger than 4ku, but much larger. Stockfish 15.1, for example, takes up 613 times more volume than 4ku 2.0. 4ku, it's actually one chess engine, but it can come in two versions. The first is the standard version, which takes up tens of kilobytes (which is very little), And the second version is the so-called mini, which takes up less than 4KB. The 4ku-2.0 mini version is only available for Linux. I hope this will change in the future and there will be a mini version that runs on Mac and Windows. It is worth mentioning that 4ku-mini played in the TCEC's S24 Swiss 4 tournament. And it also played in MCERL where after 506 games, chess engine 4ku 2.0 standard version reached a rating of 2789 Elo. Source: MCERL (ongoing) At such a small size of a few tens of kilobytes, impressive! This means that 4ku can run on any computer as long as it is properly prepared for it and... will play with quite a bit of strength! I really like the idea of creating strong chess engines with the smallest possible size. Perhaps there will be content related to this topic on the blog in the future. Feel free to visit the download area. Android – Compiled by Archimedes Linux arm64 & x64 – Compiled by Darius Mac Apple Silicon & Intel – Compiled by Darius Windows x64 – Compiled by Darius In the Files area you will find free chess engines for download.

A crazy attacker, an old-fashioned positional player, a balanced player with a modern style, customizable playing strength, excellent computer sparring partner for learning players and beginners, also for advanced. Is this the way to describe just one chess engine ? It turns out that yes! If I had to list some of the most important chess engines for me, I would certainly say a lot about Final Rodent. Rodent based on Sungorus 1.4 by Pablo Vazquez is an open source chess engine by Pawel Koziol, licensed under GPL 3.0. Rodent-IV is a free chess engine. Table of Final Rodent chess engine specifications. When I started writing this... entry, I wanted to create an article in which I make available the Final Rodent chess engine I compiled for Mac. This was because until recently it was impossible to obtain a Rodent-IV version with properly working Personalities for modern Macs. However, while writing the content came and came until I found that I had created a review :) And so please consider this text: as a review with downloadable Final Rodent for Mac and for other platforms. Final Rodent is otherwise the official Rodent version IV. In the rest of this review, I will use the name Rodent-IV. The raw power of the Rodent-IV on one CPU is about 3000 Elo, which is probably no surprise - it is beyond the reach of any human player. What is a remarkable feature of the Rodent chess engine is its rich tuning capabilities. Rodent was created for just this purpose. It is worth mentioning that all versions Rodent (I - IV), do not use a neural network (uses handcrafted eval). In December 2021, Rodent NN was made public; it is an unofficial release with NNUE capabilities. Unlike its previous versions, Rodent NN uses a neural network and is stronger by about 300 Elo. Since the NNUE implementation in the unofficial version of Rodent is not optimal and possible improvements are unlikely, this review will describe Rodent-IV, the latest official version, final and fully ready for use. On GitHhub, the author provides source codes for all versions of the Rodent. At the bottom of this review, I've placed the Rodent chess engine download for popular operating systems. In this review, I will provide a fully working Rodent-IV for the latest Macs with Apple Silicon processors (e.g. M1, M2, etc.) and modern Macs using Intel processors. Before we move on, let's see what style Rodent-IV plays with Tal's personality. For the sake of completeness, I will add that the Tal personality takes its name from the outstanding chess player, the eighth World Chess Champion Mikhail Tal. Source: ruchess.ru Mikhail Tal often referred to as the "Wizard of Riga" he was known for his brilliant play and proficiency in tactical strikes. Tal successfully contrasted his intuitive yet impressive style of play with a positional style based on sound theoretical preparation, represented by many of his grandmaster contemporaries. Tal was winning against the best. With his unexpected sacrifices, he led his opponents to incredibly complicated positions, creating unsolvable problems during the game. Even if in later deep analysis it turned out that the sacrifice wasn't quite correct, his astonishing concepts drew praise, and his bravado was regularly rewarded with applause from fans. He was an audience favorite. Below is a chess game between Rodent with Tal's personality (white) vs Gaviota's chess engine (black). According to ongoing MCERL, Rodent (Tal) has a strength about 2735 Elo (the strength of a human super grandmaster), while Gaviota plays with 2870 Elo (the level of World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen). Let's see how easily Rodent defeats a strong opponent like Gaviota in Mikhail Tal style. Spanish opening. Gaviota decided to launch an assault on the queen-side wing (14...b4). Rodent without delay opens positions in the center to increase the operability of the bishops (15.e5). Gaviota continues to execute his plan by moving knight to the center with the intention of playing a pawn to the c3 square. Rodent brings his knight closer to the position of black king. Gaviota, wanting to ward off the intruder, plays 18...h6 being sure that the black king's position is not threatened by anything - it is fortified with three pawns and protected by the nearness of several black figures. Rodent with Tal's personality begins his magic by sacrificing a white knight for a black pawn, one of the king's defenders. Another move and another sacrifice shattering the protection of the black king. Rodent doesn't let Gaviot "catch his breath" for a moment - another third figure sacrifice leading to a complete breakdown of the black king's protection. Sacrificing three figures, Rodent uses his rooks to reduce the amount of material on the chessboard in order to trigger play with his queen and his knight. The black king is alone. His figures clustered at the opposite end of the chessboard can only watch further developments. At this point, a man playing black would probably resign the game. Gaviota continues to lead an already hopeless resistance. The rest is a matter of chess technique, and one that Rodent has mastered to a high level. The game ends with the black king's mate. Like Mikhail Tal, whose moves were not always perfectly precise, Rodent, with Tal's personality, does not always play accurately (15.e5). But that is the spirit of this personality's playing style! Mikhail Tal loved open positions, sacrifices and complications on the chessboard. Almost no chess player was able to refute his concepts directly at the chessboard. Rodent plays with Tal's personality, beautifully, impressively and effectively. Tal is just one of the many available personalities that the Rodent chess engine offers. There is Morphy, and there is also Petrosian, Fisher, Rubinstein and many, many others with what distinct chess playing styles. The great thing is that you can customize the strength Rodent engine to suit your needs. This means that Rodent using any personality can play from 800 Elo (learning chess player) to 2800 Elo (top grandmaster). Let's see how to do it using Rodent-IV for Mac as an example. Download Rodent-IV for Mac's If your computer uses an Apple Silicon family processor (e.g. M1, M2, etc.) download the file Rodent-IV_Mac_Apple Silicon.zip If your computer uses an Intel family processor (e.g. Haswell, Skylake, etc.) download the Rodent-IV_Mac_Intel.zip file Installing Rodent on Mac To make the Rodent chess engine work properly with Personalities on your Mac, place the Rodent-IV directory in the Applications location. Path: /Applications/Rodent-IV Rodent-IV and Banksia GUI / configuration. Rodent-IV can be used in any GUI that supports the UCI protocol (e.g. Banksia, ChessX, Hiarcs Chess Explorer & Pro, Scid). First example: default settings with maximum strength. In Settings-Engines tab when you click on the engine name, you see a window called Engine options. Second example. Configuration with Tal's selected personality and playing strength at the 1600 Elo level. Personality: Tal Unchecked PrintPV (Rodent will not show what moves it is "thinking" about) Taunting checked (Rodent will give messages during the game that are appropriate to the situation on the chessboard) UCI_LimitStrenght checked UCI_Elo set to 1600 (1600 Elo = intermediate club player) The Rodent-IV configuration made in the Banksia GUI settings is valid for any game of this engine: against a human player and also against other chess engines. It is worth mentioning that you can also make a Rodent-IV configuration just before playing against this engine. After clicking on the New Game icon, the Game setup window will open. When you click on the engine configuration icon - marked with a red border - the options will expand. Before making the first move, we can check that we have entered the correct configuration of the Rodent-IV engine. In the Strings, stats window, you will find basic information about the chess engine. The Engine log window will show the set parameters that we entered during the configuration of the chess engine. Excellent! We can make the first move. During the game Rodent-IV continuously comments on the events on the chessboard (Strings, stats window). Undoubtedly, this can make the gameplay itself more attractive, especially when playing against an interesting personality "Somebody made a mistake, and it was not me" ;-) Let me remind you that regardless of the chosen personality, you can set the strength of Rodent-IV's game according to your needs in the range of 800 - 2800 Elo. I played against Rodent-IV dozens of games with different personalities. I am happy to say that the different personalities play in different styles appropriate to their name, i.e. Tal plays Tal style sharply and dynamically, Petrosian plays Petrosian style calmly in a balanced way :) And extremely importantly, you can clearly feel the differences in the level of play between for example a 1000 Elo setting and a 1600 Elo or 2000 Elo setting. It's great to have such a versatile computer chess partner! But that's not the end of the configuration possibilities of the Rodent-IV chess engine Fans of deep digging inside chess engines will be fulfilled, as Rodent-IV offers access to additional parameters with which you can dramatically change the playing style of this engine. To access these options, open the basic.ini file in your favorite text editor. For Mac's Path: /Applications/Rodent-IV/personalities/basic.ini Before making changes to the basic.ini file, I suggest closing the program with which you are using the Rodent-IV engine. After opening the basic.ini file, we see that the options are hidden: HIDE_OPTIONS. Let's make the change to: SHOW_OPTIONS Save and close this file. Now, when you reopen the program with which you use the Rodent-IV engine, you should see many additional configuration options for this engine. There are so many configuration options that they do not fit on one screen :) If you don't see the additional (above shown) options in the Banksia GUI, then click on the all button marked with a red border (Update all engines). With the help of these options, you can completely personalize the Rodent-IV and create a completely different - new personality. Hiarcs Chess Explorer and Hiarcs Chess Explorer Pro An attentive reader with access to the Hiarcs family programs will surely notice that there is no UCI_Elo - there is no option to change the strength in the Rodent-IV engine configuration window. The place where you can set the Rodent-IV strength is available by selecting Play-New game or by clicking on the icon Start new game against an engine (the icon marked with a red border). In the Opponent field, after selecting the Rodent engine, we have the option to set the ranking of our computer opponent. This works in the same way as the UCI_Elo parameter. Summary Rodent, is just that - one of the few unusual - chess engines, whose rich capabilities can be an incentive to delve into the world of computer chess. Final Rodent, as the name implies and according to what the author claims, is a completed project. I have not inserted a table with the strengths and weaknesses of this engine, because everything works as it should work. In my opinion, Final Rodent has written beautifully and permanently in the history of chess engines. Its releases over the years have won it loyal fans. I am sure that this chess engine will also, thanks to the community, be used by computer chess enthusiasts for many years to come. Concluding this review, I sincerely thank the author of the Rodent engine Pawel Koziol for his work and commitment to creating such a successful chess engine. For your convenience, you can download the Rodent chess engine for all popular systems. Android – Compiled by Archimedes Linux ARM & Intel – Compiled by Darius Mac Apple Silicon – Compiled by Darius Mac Intel – Compiled by Darius Windows – Compiled by Pawel Koziol

We get the newest developer version, which was released by Jay Honnold almost 2 months after the last official one. Do you like this berserk ? This is not the official logo of the Berserk chess engine. What kind of engine is Berserk, you can check on a special page dedicated to this chess engine. After playing 560 games in the MCERL cycle, the strength of Berserk-20221129 has increased by about 9 Elo compared to Berserk 10. This is a small, but nice gift for fans. Source: MCERL (ongoing) Looking at the latest MCERL, Berserk is aiming of the level Dragon 2.6.1 by Komodo Chess. * As always, you'll find the download area below. Linux ARM & Intel – Compiled by Darius Mac Apple Silicon & Intel – Compiled by Darius Windows – Compiled by Darius * After creating compilations for Android, it will be added here for download.

3592 Elo - It joins the top of the strongest chess engines ! RubiChess is open source chess engine by Andreas Matthies, written in C++, licensed under the GPL v3.0. Without a long introduction, I invite you to see the achieved result of this dynamically developed engine. Source: MCERL (ongoing) 208 Elo, is the difference between the 2021 and 2022 versions on Macs. At this level, at the level of TOP engines, anyone could dream. The author of RubiChess has succeeded. Hearty congratulations to Mr. Andreas Matthies ! Impressive development of RubiChess strength over the past year! I love engines that can be used on different hardware and software platforms. RubiChess is one such engine. It is engines like this that have the power to connect computer chess enthusiasts. RubiChess can be used on a fancy Mac, a Linux notebook from 10 years ago or on a Raspberry Pi with Windows ARM on board :) And I would be forgetting, on an Android smartphone - it will also work ! Heartfelt thanks to the author Mr. Andreas Matthies for being so open to the Chess Community. I invite you to download RubiChess and check out this powerful engine. Android – Compiled by Andreas Matthies Linux ARM & Intel – Compiled by Darius Mac Apple Silicon & Intel – Compiled by Darius Windows – Compiled by Andreas Matthies

After two years, the 17th version of the popular chess database program has been published. Source: ChessBase (starter package). According to the developer, their latest creation offers a lot of new features: New data format: fewer files, more functions, more comfort, more speed. Engine analysis renovated: Variants are automatically verbally annotated, forced continuations are recognized, “buddy heuristics” for greater search depth! Pearl search: Find spectacular games instantly! Beautiful games are marked in the database list. Optimized program interface: high-resolution 2D board, faster graphics. New clearer search mask: material & positional searches simplified, immediate feedback on expected results. Intelligent position input: when setting up pieces, you are shown the games where those positions occur. Dozens of detail improvements for improved usability, e.g. automatic loading of the last edited game. Control via One-Drive: all database paths can be set in the options dialogue. Newly structured game notation: with intelligent folding and symbols. Modern integrated browser for all database texts. More insight: Visualization of attack correlations (optional). Dark Mode: darkened program interface. Is ChessBase 17 an evolution or a revolution ? Having the previous version, is it worth giving the latest version a chance ? Coming soon - these and many other questions will be answered in a review of this product on chessengeria.eu. Some screenshots from ChessBase 17 * Training tips. * The new elements in the engine window * Filter games * Search filter * Source: ChessBase

This is World Cup 2022 version from November 22. Written by Nguyen Pham, first published in 2019. Banksia GUI logo Banksia GUI is one of the latest and most interesting programs created to use chess engines. Although it is still in beta, it offers a lot of useful features for chess engine enthusiasts. Banksia GUI is a program available for Linux, Mac and Windows. This is a great nod to chess enthusiasts who use different operating systems. Author's words about the latest version: " Besides some minor bug fixes, many small improvements and changes, there are some new things, including: Support Apple Silicone with a binary for native Apple silicone Opening books in the default engine folder (it is a sub-folder “engines” in the program folder): auto-detect and install those books (for Polyglot and OBS only) Analyze anywhere: in previous versions, users can analyze a position only when it is being shown on the main board. Now users can analyze almost anywhere they see a board. In Fig. 1 when watching a game in a database, users could click on the analyze button under the preview board to start analyzing (analyze on the fly) Show engines scores with thinking arrows for better watching (Fig. 1 & 2) Coach: check blunder and display some information (Fig. 2) New design for Settings dialog box (Fig. 3) Support accessibility (Fig. 3): make moves by using the keyboard with announcements of the current square and piece; much more information could be read by screen reader/voice-over programs; White pieces could be changed colors to support visually impaired people Support variations (Fig. 4): BSG now can view variations (but it cannot add or edit them directly in this release) Lichess bot: Lichess bots: improve the interface, and functions of logging and reporting; query Lichess servers to get the list of online bots. Now users don’t need to enter that list manually. With just a few clicks they can have a long list of bots to challenge them. Very convenient (Fig. 5) Lichess bot: new features: auto adjudication and offering draws and resigning Databases: Databases could be shown as a popup (“old” way, Fig. 1) or a panel (Fig. 6) The database’s opening trees show WDL bars (Fig. 6) Could encrypt any databases with 256-bit AES in CBC mode (Fig. 7) Games in a database could be shown automatically one by one, move by move (Demo Database) " Source: Banksia GUI Here's what the Banksia GUI looks like. For more, I encourage you to visit this developer's page. This is a link to download the Banksia GUI from the developer's website.

The long-awaited ninth version of one of the most powerful chess engines just had a premiere. Koivisto is a free open source engine. Source: GitHub January 15, 20202. Here's what Koivisto Chess Engine Developers wrote: " Today, we are excited to announce the release of Koivisto 9. After a six-month break, we are back and eager to continue development. The majority of the strength increase since Koivisto 8 comes from improvements in training data, but we also made some small search adjustments. ELO | 89.70 +- 3.53 (95%) CONF | 8.0+0.08s Threads=1 Hash=8MB GAMES | N: 20000 W: 7876 L: 2824 D: 9300 We had the pleasure of working with Jay (author of Berserk) which resulted in both of our engines merging and sharing a neural network training framework as well as training data. This collaboration led to a significant increase in strength: ELO | 19.41 +- 6.65 (95%) SPRT | 40.0+0.40s Threads=1 Hash=64MB LLR | 2.95 (-2.94, 2.94) [0.00, 2.50] GAMES | N: 5072 W: 1369 L: 1086 D: 2617 ELO | 20.02 +- 6.80 (95%) SPRT | 8.0+0.08s Threads=1 Hash=8MB LLR | 2.96 (-2.94, 2.94) [0.00, 2.50] GAMES | N: 4968 W: 1373 L: 1087 D: 2508 The addition of more training data also contributed to nice gains: ELO | 29.79 +- 2.91 (95%) CONF | 8.0+0.08s Threads=1 Hash=8MB GAMES | N: 16848 W: 3334 L: 1893 D: 11621 Although we don't have regression tests to show for the search improvements and speed-ups, they are where the rest of the gains come from. Attached you can find executables for AVX2 and SSE systems. Executables for PEXT and/or AVX512 systems are available via Ipman. With love and appreciation, Finny and Kimmy. " Source: GitHub I am very happy to see the cooperation of Koivisto Creators together with Jay Honnold Creator of Berserk. Koivisto and Berserk are some of the most powerful open source chess engines on planet earth! I'm very curious to see how the latest Koivisto will do in MCERL; results coming in the next few days :) Download Koivisto 9.0 As of the publication date of this post, you can download the Koivisto 9.0 chess engine in x64 versions for Linux and Windows from the project's website. Or Feel free to directly download Koivisto 9.0 from here: Android – Compiled by Archimedes Linux arm64 & x64 – Compiled by Darius Mac Apple Silicon & Intel – Compiled by Darius Windows x86_64 – Compiled by Darius For your convenience, in the Files area you will find all chess engines for download, which I post in the News section.

Princhess is an interesting chess engine by a programmer with the nice nickname princesslana. It is a free open source chess engine using the UCI protocol. It is written in the Rust language and is released under two licenses: MIT and GNU GPL3.0. The initial code base was Sashimi. What makes the Princhess engine different is its use of the MCTS (Monte-Carlo Tree Search) algorithm. 99% of chess engines use the Alpha-Beta algorithm, but there are exceptions. The most recognized is Lc0, which can play beautiful and extremely powerful chess. Another well-known one is Dragon by Komodo Chess, which is able to beat most Alpha-Beta opponents using MCTS. Princhess is not (yet) such a strong chess engine, which makes it an interesting alternative to competing with human chess players :) I would add that engines using MCTS usually play chess... naturally from my - human - point of view. I encourage you to check it out ! Here's how Princhess dealt with me when I wasn't very focused on the game.... In contrast, in the game below, with a literal real Chesstiger9 against me, despite my concentration I failed to find a beautiful tactical strike. This is a game played in mid-January 2023 on the PlayChess server. In the position shown, the forcing mate is led by Qe6+ and the sacrifice of Rook on h6 in the next move. Me not being a grandmaster and having seconds to make a move, I did not find the best continuation. Princhess didn't manage it either. According to my tests on a MacBook Pro M1 with a short time to think, after playing 300 games Princhess plays with a strength of around 2350 Elo; equivalent to the playing strength of a human Chess Master. Source: MCERL (ongoing) Undoubtedly, at the current level, Princhess is not the best engine for chess analysis. On the other hand, the style of play is a factor in favor of giving Princhess a chance as a sparring partner or when struggling against engines at a similar level. An impressive tactical strike! Princhess can also be played via a web browser on the lichess server, where it has reached a ranking of 2093 Elo. Information: Although the source code and compilations are as of 2023-01-22, the Princhess engine reports itself as: Princhess 0.0.0-dev. This is a development version of Princhess, so it may affect the stability of this chess engine on your computer. Darius, the author of this post, during testing, did not encounter any problems. Feel free to download Princhess. Linux, Mac and Windows – Compiled by Darius Source code – by princesslana

The thriving chess engine, in its latest 34th edition, stronger by about 50 Elo ! Stash is UCI compliant open source chess engine by Morgan Houppin, written in C, licensed under the GPL v3. The five months that have passed since the last release have been put to excellent use by the author of the Stash chess engine Mr. Morgan Houppin. The result of his work is Stash 34, a chess engine that has consistently increased its strength, already able to successfully compete with modern and powerful chess engines. Within the MCERL competition, after playing 358 games, Stash 34 reached 3289 Elo, 55 Elo more than its predecessor. An excellent result...! Sincere congratulations to the author. Stash 34 will be included in the latest MCERL list, which will be updated and published soon. I would like to invite you to download this chess engine for the most popular platforms :) Android – Compiled by Archimedes Linux ARM – Compiled by Darius Linux x86 – Compiled by Morgan Houppin Mac Intel – Compiled by Darius Mac Apple Silicon – Compiled by Darius Windows – Compiled by Morgan Houppin I always feel happy when I can share a chess engine for multiple platforms :) It's all thanks to the author of the chess engine, who gives the chess community a source code so well written that it allows easy compilation so for Android, Linux, Mac and Windows. Thank you!!

The most powerful commercial chess engine released with the latest Fritz interface and neural network chess evaluation. Source: ChessBase Dragon 3 is not inferior in strength to Stockfish 15, has many more configuration options and an awesome and powerful MCTS (Monte-Carlo Tree Search) algorithm. Some details about this release: " Greatly improved Komodo Dragon 3 Engine The new Komodo Dragon 3 engine has gained 100 Elo points in playing strength over its predecessor when using one processor core in blitz. That's a huge improvement for a program that already reached at an Elo level of over 3500! The gain is even greater (120 to 130 Elo points) for unbalanced openings, e.g. rare variations or gambits. On multiple cores or longer time controls, the Elo gain can be somewhat smaller, due to the higher draw range. Better playing strength = faster analysis The absolute gain in playing strength also offers real practical advantages: Komodo Dragon 3 takes only about a quarter of the time to play or analyze at the same level as Dragon 2! Or it plays better chess in the same time on a single core than its predecessor did on four cores. The large Elo increase is due to a new net structure for NNUE with a corresponding new net, as well as various optimizations and improvements in the search. One for all: Playing strength freely selectable between Elo 1 and 3500 The previous playing level scheme model has been replaced in Komodo Dragon 3 with arbitrarily adjustable Elo strength settings from 1 to a maximum of 3500. The Elo values refer to human play in rapid chess and are can be used to ensure balanced games. With reduced playing strength the engine makes the kind of mistakes that are to be expected from humans with rating level that is set. The Elo settings of Komodo Dragon 3 have been tested and tuned against many human players, of various playing strengths. It was optimized in the GM level in many rapid chess games against GM Alex Lenderman, who is part of the Komodo development team. " Komodo Dragon 3 is doing very well in competitions organized by chessengeria.eu, achieving a very high percentage of victories against opponents. If you haven't read it, I cordially invite you to read the review of the previous version of the Komodo Dragon 2.6.1 engine itself. And soon a review of Komodo Dragon 3 integrated with the latest Fritz interface! Update: 2022-05-18 It looks like Dragon 3 by Komodo as released by ChessBase is indeed a worthy rival to the Stockfish 15 chess engine that tops most ranking lists. In the attached video I present a sample of Dragon 3 by Komodo's capabilities in a match consisting of 50 games against Stockfish 15. Results: # name score wins draw 1. Dragon 3 by Komodo 27 5 44 2. Stockfish 15 23 1 44

How about +18% in speed compared to Stockfish 15.1 ? To show exactly what this increase in speed is, I'll put in a number: + 345 099 nodes/second ! Who exactly will benefit from this? Users of Macs with Apple Silicon processor - that is, the latest fastest Macs with M1, M1 Pro, M2, etc. processors. Here is what Mr. Sebastian Buchwald wrote for the 2023-02-23 issue of Stockfish: " Add support for ARM dot product instructions The sdot instruction computes (and accumulates) a signed dot product, which is quite handy for Stockfish's NNUE code. The instruction is optional for Armv8.2 and Armv8.3, and mandatory for Armv8.4 and above. The commit adds a new 'arm-dotprod' architecture with enabled dot product support. It also enables dot product support for the existing 'apple-silicon' architecture, which is at least Armv8.5. The following local speed test was performed on an Apple M1 with ARCH=apple-silicon. I had to remove CPU pinning from the benchmark script. However, the results were still consistent: Checking both binaries against themselves reported a speedup of +0.0000 and +0.0005, respectively. ``` Result of 100 runs ================== base (...ish.037ef3e1) = 1917997 +/- 7152 test (...fish.dotprod) = 2159682 +/- 9066 diff = +241684 +/- 2923 speedup = +0.1260 P(speedup > 0) = 1.0000 CPU: 10 x arm Hyperthreading: off " Source: Abrok I did a few tests (Stockfish bench) and tabulated the resulting data: The result leaves no doubt. The development version of Stockfish 20220223 is 18% faster than the official Stockfish 15.1 version. It has not yet been a year since the release of the 15 st version of this chess engine, and thanks to the work of the developers, Stockfish 20230223 is stronger by 57 Elo. At this - the highest - level, such an increase in strength should be considered a significant achievement. Thank you very much to the Stockfish Team for the fruitful work and ever-improving support of the latest computers with Apple Silicon family processors. Feel free to visit the download area Source code – by Stockfish Devs Android – Compiled by Archimedes Linux arm64 & x64 – Compiled by Darius Mac Apple Silicon & Intel – Compiled by Darius Windows x32 & x64 – Compiled by Darius In the Files area you will find free chess engines for download.