Which commercial chess software is the strongest?
* Fritz
* Junior
* Rybka
* Shredder
* Tiger
* Hiarcs
* Rajlich
* Zappa
* Chessmaster
* Other?
Which commercial chess software is most recognizable?
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Junior is best
Fritz is most popular
Fritz and Fritz!
Fritz? Junior?
Oh c’mon. You must be kidding.
Is there a time say 1 or 2 hours where these 2 engines flooded the engines section of playchess.com?
Look at playchess now. Junior has just won a championship, but what engine is still flooding the room?
Peace!
Does it actually really matter which one is the best if any of them easily beats the vast majority of its owners? Which one is the best for improving the play of a human opponent?
Junior is the strongest! Chessmaster is the most popular software on the market.
Rybka is the strongest.
Can’t wait for the new version (v2) which is due in a couple of days, if everythin goes as planned.
Shredder 10 is also strong, so is Hiarcs 10.
“Does it actually really matter which one is the best if any of them easily beats the vast majority of its owners? Which one is the best for improving the play of a human opponent?”
The question is simply what is the best? No mention of other things. Simply put, the strongest engine is the best. Certainly neither Fritz nor Junior is the strongest as of the moment.
You have to clarify in what context an engine is “best”.
Is it best at defeating other engines? Is it best at defeating GM-level human players? Is it best as a preparation tool? Is it best for “kibbitzing”?
The engine that’s best for one purpose might not be the best for another.
Oh really?
The engine that beats other engines will likely beat everyone else, human grandmasters included.
Would you use a beaten engine for kibitzing, preparation, and kibitzing?
You will use the best engine for whatever chess purpose you have in mind, whether you admit it or not.
Rybka seems to be the engine of choice to analyze games with. Shredder, Zappa (needs 4 processors for full strength), Hiarcs are all presently stronger than Fritz. Join the Yahoo Engine group if you really want to know eveything Chess Engines. As you have noticed, they tweak engines to best results vs engines, or vs. particual GM’s. But in these tournaments where all play all whoever prepared the best opening book and tweaked best will win, not necessarily the strongest for analysis and learning. If your main reason is to learn and analyze games with Rybka is the king at the moment.
“Anonymous” asked for some examples of what I meant about context.
An engine that has great success against other engines may be tuned to exploit the kind of blind-spots that computers are known for. To a GM who’s using an engine to prepare for human opponents, this “feature” is of no importance.
I’ve also heard GMs say that you have to get used to an engine’s weak spots (all engines have them), so that you’ll know when to be skeptical of its output. Some of them, therefore, find it more useful to use one very good engine routinely, than to keep switching to the the latest hot contender, whose weaknesses may not yet have been fully identified.
The last post badly missed the essence of the question, i.e., which among the current crop of engines is the best?
The last post is heavily beating around the bush and has no point at all.
Being the best engine doesnt mean it has no blind spot, but rather, as in humans, it has the least blind spots. Did Kasparov has blind spot? Of course he has! But it is only known to the human player who manages to beat him. Kasparov was beaten by Kramnik on a match. But Kasparov, being the BEST chess player ever, been overtaken on FIDE rating list?
Same with an engine. Of course it loses games, call it blind spot, weak spot, or whatever. But being a STRONG engine, it manages to win MORE than it lose, alas it has lesser blind spot!
Friend, look at playchess statistics. It doesnt speak of 1, 2, 10, 20, 100 games. It speaks of thousands upon thousands of games! Not based on tweaked tournaments or book tournaments or whatever fancy you have.
Have you noticed that before Rybka’s arrival, the highest rated (not popular of course because not everyone has it) engine at playchess is a HARDWARE from UAE? Yes Hydra. Now what engine IS popular and rated FIRST at playchess?
The answer — Rybka.
For the time being only. Why? Of course the programmers of Shredder and Junior will sooner or later figure out what makes Rybka different and will make adjustments to their codes.
As of now they (Shredder & Junior) still need to prove they has already understand what makes Rybka ticks!
By the way I am a Shredder fan. May I add that I hate Fritz because this is an engine whose strength is based only on hypes!
Peace!
Anonymous, all I ever said was that when you ask “Which is the best engine,” you have to identify the context, since people use engines for more than one one purpose, and the best for one thing isn’t always the best for another.
In contrast, when people talk about the best human chess players, they virtually always mean only one thing — results in game conditions against other humans.
i use Chessmaster 10, and it whips my butt almost everytime. I learn a lot from its training programs by IM Josh Waitzkin. This progra is good enough for most club players. Also, Ivan the Conquerer is a good little chess set to play against, for most players.
I’d say Fritz is most popular. All my neighbors know about Fritz when I scream “Fritz beat me AGAIN!”
I just read a published report that Junior is the strongest!
TFK
This kind of reminds me of a hot debate on which version of the Bible is best. And the answer is that it is the one that you read.
In my opinion the best engines available are Ruffian 1.05, Crafty and probably Spike.
The reason? They are strong and FREE. I say that, because unlike grandmasters and a few experienced users, 99% of chess users wouldn’t be able to distinguish an specific machine in the situation that they would run using the same interface (and using the same tablebases for endgames). If Junior show a new version of his chess program in a same interface, how many people is able to identify the difference between an old and a new version in order to buy the newest one (after buying the old one before)?
Then, I conclude that in the matter of judging the strength of the program, there are many hidden aspects. The only aspects we can distinguish are the different capabilities a program has to offer more than the strength. What about the search algorithms these program use? New development from the theoretical point of view, has something new been discovered?
In this confusion, the ideal would be to see a further development of free chess software and eventually, the confusion itself would lead to a decrease in the market (the people willing to pay for “newer versions) and the situation in which former commercial programmers would share their knowledge by free …
Zapple!
Strongest engine as of the moment?
Rybka.
Period.
Peace!
Rybka is best for one main reason…It understands deep positional situations
that no other engines could,like messing up its own pawn structure for the sake of mobility,risky king attacks and so on…When pitted against Fritz or Junior…These two “strong” engines would look like an amateur creation
Rybka is best for one main reason…It understands deep positional situations
that no other engines could,like messing up its own pawn structure for the sake of mobility,risky king attacks and so on…When pitted against Fritz or Junior…These two “strong” engines would look like an amateur creation