For those of you who use or have used a number of these programs, could you share with all the readers about the differences between them? What do you perceive as the strengths and weaknesses of each program? Which one do you use the most and which one do you like best?
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Fritz is best.
Hi,
Rybka is the strongest PC programm.
Her power it is the evaluation of the position. She is playing most positional chess comparing to the other chess programms.
Regards
Pony.
The response above, posted just 2 minutes after the original post, is surely a ‘flame’, short of objective critical assessment.
FRITZ is probably still the brand leader of chess engines but falls short in ELO-rating terms. The most extensive (SSDF) tests show that FRITZ 9.0 rates (6th) at 2811+-24 on the basis of 943 games with a 70% score-rate.
SHREDDER 10 is 4th at 2837+-28, but RYBKA 1.2 (not even 2.2) is 1st at 2924+-32 and 71 clear of #2 (HIARCS 10).
This engine ELO scale is not to be confused with the FIDE ELO scale for humans: they are two separate pools of players. It was knocked back 100 points some years ago to counter ELO-inflation somehow intrinsic to the ELO measurement system. Only a pool of man-machine games will help realign the two ELO scales.
There are other factors which might be used to compare engines: their ability to explain the pros and cons of a position becomes increasingly important as their ELO increases.
Their ability to exploit increasingly parallel computer platforms is a factor. FRITZ was outreached and outgunned in its match with JUNIOR, and one wonders why Chessbase did not use the same platform as JUNIOR.
I have Rybka, Deep Fritz and Chess Master! I like Rybka because it is the best analyst of them all! It goes perfect with my database Chess Assistant. I like Deep Fritz because it has a different style and it also helps me in getting a slightly different perspective than Rybka when going over games. I usually have them both on (engines). It depends on the types of positions which engine will give you the best results. For example, in closed positions Rybka is much stronger than Deep Fritz while in open tactical position Deep Fritz is powerfult. Chess Master is great as a teaching tool for under 2000 and has many different opponents to practice against with different ways of playing.
I use fritz 10 and Rybka 2.3.2 to help me evaluate my son’s games, and when I am studying games and positions. I also use it sometimes when I am watching games on the Internet.
It is like having a grandmaster at your shoulder helping you understand positions, and help you as you try and tease out ideas.
I use both because they sometimes have fundamentally different views on a position. Often these fundamentally different views are precisely some of the most interesting positions to look at.
The only thing that they don’t help with directly is tableau understanding. But as I go through books or games I often hand annotate with variations to explain why obvious plays aren’t as good, and it helps improve my own understanding.
Outstanding values for the money if you are improving your game. And I think we all are.
There is no doubt about programms strength. See at the following rating lists:
CEGT Rating List,
CCRL Rating List
CSS Rating List
SSDF Rating List
I love the compensation understanding of Junior. It plays exciting chess and opens your mind for unusual tactics.
Fritz and Junior are well known and used by a lot of people because it comes with a nice interface and is published by Chessbase which is very good for marketing.
But clearly Rybka is much stronger. See for example here
SSDF rating list
CCRL rating list
CEGT rating lists
CSS rating list
But a good news is that the next version of Rybka (3.0) will come with a graphical user interface developped by Convekta. This will perhaps help to get Rybka more popular.
Well, as anonymous has said before, it’s quite obvious that today Rybka is the strongest engine, and by a margin. Also is true that she has a strong positional style of playing. Some of the old fighters like Fritz or Shredder still have more chess knowledge, but Rybka is gaining fast. There are some indications that the newest 2.3.2 versions might even leave Shredder behind in terms of endgame strength.
Obviously the recent cooperation of Vas Rajlich with Larry Kaufman bears fruits.
In my experience, Rybka is both a more efficient searcher and a better evaluator than other engines on the market.
Rybka is simply more reliable than other engines, in a large majority of positions. Other engines are often very optimistic about some attacking prospects or some space advantage, but they are too often wrong with this optimism.
No engine is perfect, and every engine will evaluate some position badly or be slow to find some critical continuation. So when I want to make seriuos analysis, I need to know what are the weak points of my engine, so that I can “assist” the engine (or the engine can assist me ;-)).
And here, I find it much easier to work in tandem with Rybka than other engines. I can see by myself if there is a dangerous attack looming, even if Rybka still gives a neutral evaluation. I don’t need an engine for that. What I do need is an engine that can soberly give reliable output once you begin to investigate the attack. Here, I find that, for example, Fritz fails because it gives too large penalties to exposed kings or some other oddity.
So that’s why I like Rybka’s evaluation. Another thing is that Rybka’s precision in evaluation makes her focus on the critical variations faster than other engines, and this makes her a better SEARCHER than other engines. It can be a passed pawn or a rook intrusion on the 7th rank or something like that. I often see that Rybka finds such concrete resources almost infinitely much faster than other engines.
Note especially that such concrete resources can be very hard for humans to find, because they may be based on some intermediary tactics. So the human’s “superior strategical evaluation” would normally never come into play here, and neither would many other engines because they don’t appreciate the strategical resources after the tactics. In other words, Rybka finds strong moves that no human or other engine would normally find within reasonable time.
A good example of the above is the Rybka-Zappa game from the recent WCCC. Every other engine strongly disagreed with 28.Re8+!? here, but Rybka proved herself right about her evaluation of the resulting unbalanced position. She followed up with the “blunder” 43.b4!, which seems to block the queen-side, but she had already seen the following breakthrough d5-d6! in all relevant lines, causing black’s position to collapse. Despite the missed win in the ending, this game was simply pure art 🙂
Games from the WCCC can be found here:
http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=1373#fp
Thanks,
Alkelele
I have used fritz 5, 7, 8, and now 9. I find it ok. But Rybka is definitely the best. Rybka was newly out when I Purchased Fritz9 and I wish I had purchased Rybka.
On ICC now when people want an evaluation they ask what does rybka say. no one ever asks what does Fritz say anymore. People might even post Fritz and they want rybka.
It gets interesting on ICC sometimes when the two programs have a strongly different opinion. But of course we only get to follow up on the move the player makes.
I enjoy watching the engine analysis as the game progresses and I think it should be included in any TV program. It could be put at the bottom of the screen. I find it adds a lot to the enjoyment of the game.
Im using Ktulu8.0 and its strong enough for me. Its not expensive as other programmes. If you load the opening books (special books) from the feedback site you can strongly exercises the openings. When you try ones you can understand what l mean. I think its mean goal you can download all you need from the net. Its about 2780elo but you know that fast CPU means upper elos 😉
Rybka is by far the best program at the moment. The difference to Fritz and Junior is more than 100 elopoints and increasing at the moment. Just take a look at the several rating lists (CEGT, CCRL) and you’ll see the real difference in playing strength. The faster the computer, the bigger the gap.
What is more: in her last 5 tournaments Rybka won all of them, with the incredible score of 39 points from 43 games. Without a single loss. Just this monday Rybka added another tournament victory, the WCCC in Amsterdam with a 10/11 score.
Rybka is undefeated in official computer tournaments for almost a year now, in a total of 51 games. In the last 5 tournaments no program could challenge or get Rybka into trouble. Her evaluation is superior to that of any other computer program.
Fritz is not playing in computer tournaments anymore. Not ‘because they focus on improving Fritz’s human play’ as they say (there is no way to test this), but because they are afraid they might not end in the top 5 of a super strong computer tournament.
I prefer the Rybka program as it is not all just about tactical lines, but sometimes Rybka will find suttle positional moves that other programs may not be able to find.
Current CCRL Rating list:
1. Rybka 2.2 3105
2. Zap!Chess 3046
3. Hiarcs 11.1 2979
4. Naum 2.1 2956
5. Loop 13.6 2940
6. Deep Shredder 10 2929
7. Deep Fritz 10 2924
8. Deep Junior 10 2923
This list hasn’t the actual Rybka version 2.3.2 yet, but as you can see, at 4 CPU’s the difference between Rybka 2.2 and Fritz/Junior is 181 Elo points.
If we take a look at ratings for 32 bit single cpu engines, we find:
1. Rybka (+80 above the rest),
and from ranks 2…10 9 engines which are more or less in the same league, within a bandwidth of 60 Elo points only.
http://tinyurl.com/yq4jj5
If we include 2 cpus/cores, that number is expanded to 100 Elo, because some use 2 cores and some only 1:
http://tinyurl.com/24ywle
Some of them are available from ChessBase, some from their own distributors or programmers, or both (like Hiarcs and Shredder). I want to point to the information that two of this top-10 category are freeware, Toga and Spike. So, if you already have a strong commercial engine and don’t want to buy another, you can get a 2nd opinion for free, for your analyses. The Rybka 1.0 beta is also free (offered as a test version), still stronger than these 2 but doesn’t feature multi-pv mode.
As for strengths and weaknesses etc., I cannot talk about the latest versions because I don’t have them. Also, I must admit that it is difficult for me to clearly spot typical characteristics, because all play on a level much higher than my own. But one impression I had very clearly, when I first saw Rybka games in December 2005: No other engine plays so much human like. I have studied many master games (often old games from the Capablanca era and the like), so I can tell a difference. Other computer chess fans have agreed to that impression. Of course, Rybka combines that with the usual computer calculation power for the combinative speed and precision.
But other engines have their advantages, too. For example, I think that the Shredder engine, in general, is very good if it has to play the opening itself without book support (It’s recent World Championship game against Rybka, where it had opening trouble, was certainly not typical.) I think the fact that it won the Chess960 world championship in 2006, can be seen as related to that quality.
I also like the Hiarcs engine, although I do not have the latest version, but I think Hiarcs has very much endgame knowledge and depends much less than others on tablebase support for the late endgame. It is also among the fastest tactians.
I am happy to see that this topic is being mentioned at this famous chess blog, because computer chess is my hobby. Thanks!
Throughout the years I have used Fritz, Shredder, Hiarcs, Junior and Rybka. I liked Fritz for its tactical strengths, Shredder for its positional play, while Hiarcs and Junior seemed to have a bit of both. However, I use chess engines mostly (or exclusively) for human-human OTB game analysis. In that respect, there is no doubt in my mind that Rybka outperforms its competitors. It gives very stable and mostly accurate analysis results. Most, if not all, of the other engines would occasionally recommend a “better” move where you end up losing the queen…
hi,
rybka is simply the best.
what to do with wrong analysis of other programs? I need correct analysis.
but still in its latest version, rybka also has some minor mistakes.
result : a gm like you plus rybka on good hardware = the best.
“Current CCRL Rating list:
1. Rybka 2.2 3105
2. Zap!Chess 3046
3. Hiarcs 11.1 2979
4. Naum 2.1 2956
5. Loop 13.6 2940
6. Deep Shredder 10 2929
7. Deep Fritz 10 2924
8. Deep Junior 10 2923
This list hasn’t the actual Rybka version 2.3.2 yet, but as you can see, at 4 CPU’s the difference between Rybka 2.2 and Fritz/Junior is 181 Elo points. “
I wish Rybka confronts Hydra.
Running on 8 processors she can defeat that pompose silicon supercomputer from UA.
I’m sure about it.
But just like Fritz and Junior (or even worse) cock-suckers from Arabia hide.Rybka is simply THE BEST.
Agreed, “Permanent Brain”… I am also happy that this topic is being discussed in such and important blog like Susan’s. However, the main reason in my case is not just because I am a computer chess fan like you – which I am, but also because I feel it is a big injustice not to give Rybka all the official credit it deserves as the strongest chess program in the world as much as it is an injustice that number 7 and 8 in the CCRL ranking (Fritz and Junior, respectively) dispute a match with Chessbase trying to make it look at the match for the World Computer Championship.
I encourage you all to help increase the pressure to make the 100K dollar challenge happen!
I’d like to say something others haven’t said already…that the Rybka team as a whole is the most forward-looking and customer-responsive in computer chess. No other program author interacts with the public so often and so constructively. As a result intelligent debates and comments are continually available on Rybka’s website.
Aside from the engine, their opening book theory is at the leading edge, and this added advantage (on top of the best engine) is what makes them nearly invincible in tournaments. This aspect of Rybka’s competitive profile is usually overlooked but was put on spectacular display in Amsterdam.
That Rybka is the best engine is axiomatic at this point. It is the best and it is pulling away steadily from version to version with no end in sight. And the engine doesn’t even scale that well beyond quad-cores! When it does (in Rybka 3.0) we can anticipate another leap in its already-daunting prowess!
Here’s grist for the mill: John Nunn’s assessment taken from “Secrets of Practical Chess (New Enlarged Edition)”:
“The main engines are Fritz, Shredder, Junior and Rybka. …The first three have been around for a long time, and are currently in version 9 or 10. Rybka is a relative newcomer and is only on version 2. For those engines into double-figure versions numbers, the difference between one version and the next is often quite small. All engines have their strengths and weaknesses, but my impression is that with each new version the differences between them become less and less. Junior still tends to be the most aggressive engine, while Fritz and Rybka are more balanced all-rounders. One curiosity of Rybka is that it has the most conservative evaluations. If Rybka gives an advantage of one pawn, then the other engines will probably give you at least 1.5 pawns. In terms of playing strength, on the basis of current versions, I would assess Rybka as strongest, followed by Shredder. however, such evaluations are rather meaningless; by the time the next round of versions has appeared, the order may be entirely different. In the end, it probably doesn’t matter all that much which one you choose since all are extremely strong tactically, while all show deficiencies in quiet positions.
“It is worth adding a word of warning here. each engine has its own idiosyncrasies and in a very small percentage of positions will produce totally wrong results.”
As for a personal assessment: I notice that Fritz has problems in certain positions, especially where it thinks a repetition of positions may result, where it completely misses a good continuation and judges the position as equal or near-equal. You enter the good move, and Fritz instantaneously sees that it’s crushing. Also, I notice that some of it’s “#x” assessments are off. It’ll announce mate in 12, then you make a move and it says, “no, wait, mate in 8 actually”.
No idea if this is peculiar to Fritz or common to all engines.
I’m a top correspondence player and I prefer Fritz’s analysis to Rybka’s Rybka is good for engine contests but not for the rigours of top level correspondence chess.
All engines are weak positionally so there is not much progress in that regard.
Great post Cato.
Scipio Africanus minor
“Carthage has been destroyed”
Although many people are convinced that Rybka is the strongest program by far at the moment, I still prefer Junior (10.1) because I love that active playing style. And Junior 10.1 is still in the TOP-3 (my personal impression and SSDF).
In endgames I prefer Shredder.
Regards,
Harald Faber
At present there’s absolutely no doubting the superiority of Rybka. To label Fritz as the best engine is, at best, ludicrous. Personally I prefer Junior’s dynamic style and understanding of compensation and Shredder’s general strength and know-how. However, neither of them comes close to Rybka at the moment, Remember, though, that Shredder used to be THE predominant engine for a number of years until Rybka came along. Thus, Rybka’s current superiority might be over sooner than we think possible right now.
I am a correspondence player and use Rybka to help me analysing my games. In the past I used Fritz, but it has become clear to me that the evaluation of Fritz is bad and cannot be trusted. Here are some observations:
1) Fritz overvalues its attacking chances, sometimes giving +1,5 or more for a position that is not clear at all;
2) In normal Sicilian positions where black has castled short and white castled long, Fritz often thinks black is better by more than +0,75. Experience show however that white is better in that position;
3) The Fritz program gives high bonusses for putting heavy pieces next to the opponent king. Then you get weird moves like Qh5? in the 2nd game vs. Kramnik. I have the feeling Fritz has absolutely no idea what is going on, but plays the move as it gets a bonus. IMO that has nothing to do with chess and proper evaluation;
4) Fritz also has a bad evaluation of passed pawns: it simply adds a large bonus for connected passed pawns, without really analysing what is going on. The program hence uses ‘tricks’ instead of a healthy evaluation of the position;
5) Fritz, Junior and Shredder all three use highly speculative evals, that backfire many times. It is simply not possible to trust their main lines and certainly not the evaluation they give. I find that highly uncomfortable: as a human analysing games I want a clear and proper evaluation of the position, not some speculative non-existent advantage.
All in all I can say Rybka is the much better program for analysis. Above a strong GM corr player explains he prefers Fritz, but I doubt it. Without Rybka you cannot get far in correspondence chess. You simply get busted.
When is the USCF going to start selling Rybka???????
Hello,
You can buy Rybka via Internet.;-)
Rgds
Rybka is *much* stronger that all the other softwares (I don’t include Hydra in this).
It’s quite sad that, on Chessbase, they even don’t speak of the match Rybba – Elvest or Rybka – Benjamen.
Probably (?) because they only like their products (Fritz,…). It’s not a good information they give about this.
And also…for what I know, there was no answer from FIDE to the open letter (for a match Rybka – Junior)
FIDE replied, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov mentioned it at a presidential board meeting afaik, there are discussions about the match and I still hope it will happen in Mexico.
== TOP TEN REASONS WHY RYBKA IS INDEED FEMALE. ==
10) Rybka will take logic (HIARCS, Shredder, Fritz, Junior), disgorge its intestines, and smile happily aftwards.
9) Rybka can manage high heels (Rybka vs. Spike).
8) Rybka can take you for a spin (Rybka vs. Loop).
7) Rybka rarely forgives the slightest insult (Rybka vs. Crafty).
6) Rybka never forgives the slightest mistake (Rybka vs. Fruit).
5) Rybka despises those who wear the same dress at the party (Rybka vs. Strelka).
4) Rybka always knows when you are cheating with another woman (Naum, Zappa).
3) Rybka respects no man, regardless of birthright (Rybka vs. “The King” / “The Baron”).
2) Women’s intuition is now known as Rybka’s intuition (Rybka -no book- vs. other engines with book).
1) Rybka is ALWAYS right (Rybka vs. You).
—
Xmike
http://starbase.globalpc.net/~xmx/starwreck.php
A great a shame occurs when a company, such as ChessBase is seen eclipsing a far more talented chess program, such as Rybka, in favor of promoting their own, lesser programs, by holding a self-serving “World Chess Match” that is nothing less than a charade and a promotional gimmick- reflects the sad image of small time racketeering.
Hi Susan,
Its a nice discussion. Let me tell each software I have used one by one:
1. Rybka 2.3.2: The best evaluator of a chess position, Rybka is surely the strongest chess engine as on today (though another unknown engine “cryptic” is playing well against it on playchess server but details are not available). Rybka 2.3.2 is so strong that I am sure no GM can beat it in one hour or long match. But GM can reach up to draw by reducing time as yesterday, I (nowhere near a GM) after loosing some 15 matches could draw 2 matches against Rybka 2.3.2 which surprised me by offering “Do you want a draw” in two 3 0 matches (three minutes no increments) in shredder interface with Shredder 10 opening book on (though later I noticed that anti-virus “avast” was also running in the background on my lap-top). I have defeated one GM (Grigory Gabriel) in Freestyle with Rybka earlier version on my side and drawn with GM Peter Haba. So, I am sure that I can defeat you as well with Rybka as my companion and if you join me and my Rybka then we can win against the whole world .. ha ha ha…
On the weakness side, yes Rybka sometimes behaves odd and sacs one or two pawns and looses the match. Also, it is very difficult to learn from Rybka as it is a very positional engine and improves its position very slowly (too slow to get noticed by mortal humans like me). Also, never interrupt Rybka by pressing go button unnecessarily if you want it to play at its max strength.
2. Deep Junior 10: A sharp attacker. It has a huge opening book. It sacs right from the opening and is very tactical as well as positional. People love Junior as it has got the most entertaining style.
On the other side, Junior seems to be weaker than Rybka in engine-engine matches. Though something concrete can be said only after Rybka-Junior official match if it ever happens.
3. Fritz 10: A nice practice tool. This one is master of king side attacks. Thats why, players prefer it for practice as it gets them mastery over attacks (specially king side attacks).
On the weaker side, Fritz 10 looses against Rybka 2.3.2 and attains maximum a draw.
4. Chess Master 10: A very nice learning tool for beginners and mediocre players like me. Lectures by IM Josh Waitkinz are excellent and so by Larry Christiantin. CM’s own “match the masters” and “Nunn’s puzzles” are excellent. Also the nice interface and personalities are good fun and practice. The best part I like about CM 10 is its middle to end game transitions.
But CM 10 is far too weaker than Rybka 2.3.2. The difference is just like I am CM 10 and you are Rybka.
5. Fruit 2.3.1 & Fruit 2.2.1: I enjoyed Fruit 2.2.1 a lot. Highly positional engine. Drags the game and finally wins it. Fruit 2.3.1 seems not that strong though I am still testing it.
6. Toga II 1.3X4: Toga II is also a very aggressive nice engine. it is free and they are generous enough to provide you the source codes also.
Toga II though compares with Rybka but is not that strong.
7. Deep Shredder 10: A highly positional engine. This one seems to have learnt “My System” by Nimzowitsch by heart. Shredder game is a practical demonstration of that book. Play against it if you want a positional chess dose for you. Deep shredder 10 seems to me more reliable and solid than any other engine.
But the evaluation of Deep Shredder is quite often either too optimistic or too pessimistic. Further, it plays too drawish.
8. Chess & Gambit Tiger 15: A very descent engine. It wouldn’t defeat me too early but plays coolly and wins after some time.
This one is also weaker than Rybka.
9. Spike 1.2: Master of draw. It can draw against any engine even rybka. But I doubt it ever tries to win.
10. Zapchess: This is the only engine which dares to challenge Rybka though looses at the end.
11. Rocket: This one claims to be a hybrid of two engines (Fruit and Loop I think). But so many versions of Rocket are available that many of them seem to be clones of Rybka.
I hope this much is enough as i am still trying other engines.
JP Singh
But, of course, I understand the need to turn to less potent subjects – its easy to grapple with issues that are abstracted and have no real immediate bearing on your imminent future.
The question should never stop being asking-How was a character like -Kirsan Ilyumzhinov- ever allow to continue to keep his hold on FIDE? Kasparov wrote about- there have been failed attempts to vote him out-but some say dirty tricks keep him in.
I am surprised that there isn’t a broader outcry from a larger base to have him removed. Now is a critical time since he is starting to get his hands into computer chess tournaments.