Stockfish Engine

[Michael Yip]

Has anyone tried this engine?

[Bindi Cheng]

Re: Stockfish Engine

Just use Houdini, I trust its evaluations a lot more than Stockfish

[Dan Scoones]

Re: Stockfish Engine

Stockfish seems to be stronger in the endgame than other programs. I can't supply any immediate examples, but that's my impression.

[Tony Li]

Re: Stockfish Engine

Has anyone tried this engine?

Great for analysis like all engines.

Evaluation is shaky as even at depth 15 evaluation can improve for the side that just made a move (that side actually improved its position, according to the engine!) by up to 0.2.

I've seen the same thing happen with Houdini but usually not with the move that is recommended as best, probably due to higher depth and better evaluation.

[Kerry Liles]

Re: Stockfish Engine

Has anyone tried this engine?

You may want to look here: http://tcec.chessdom.com/live.php

Seems that Stockfish is the current champion... Isn't stockfish free whereas Houdini is for purchase?

[Ed Seedhouse]

Re: Stockfish Engine

I use it and I find it works better on my fairly low end machine than Houdini, which is prone to lengthy pauses with no lines showing.

[Michael Yip]

Re: Stockfish Engine

Stockfish is free and is updated every 2-3 days. It was suggested to me by an IM friend so I thought I would give it a try.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: Stockfish Engine

2cnts: Fish process deeper but skips many variations. Evaluations differs from Houdini. Lazzy to spend time to mount endgame tablebases. Somehow it is more complicated than for Fritz.

As it is free it is a great engine. Strong enough to show my blunders even on a phone.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Stockfish Engine

Stockfish Engine

I am watching Stockfish working right now because I am following the last round of Biel 2014. Go to

http://www.chessbomb.com

and pick out any tournament and watch a game. At the bottom left hand corner they have the evaluation of the position and four lines.

Click on Stockfish 5 to get download information or just watch it work and see if it suits your needs and that its lines are accurate.

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Stockfish Engine

Stockfish is going to be taking on Nakamura this Saturday who'll have access to an older Rybka programme.

http://www.chess.com/news/gm-nakamur...stockfish-7982

[Mario Moran-Venegas]

Re: Stockfish Engine

Engines are good depending on what they are used for and how. Opening moves :anything less that 40 ply is garbage. Middle game: anything less than 25 ply is garbage. Endgame: If the position is not in a endgame table base, I would not use an engine to find a solution.

[Mario Moran-Venegas]

Re: Stockfish Engine

In order to eschew obfuscation:

Engines today do not differ a lot. Programmers are concentrating in making improvements on speed.
An improvement in analyzing your game with a computer is Chessbase's "Cloud" whereby you can earn "tokens" by letting other people use your computer or use other people's super-computers (paying for it in tokens)to get to a reliable depth into the position.

[Mario Moran-Venegas]

Re: Stockfish Engine

The "pauses" you see are because your front end program (GUI) and you engine are set to update the video display less often than normal. If you like to see lines of evaluation move all the time: give your display a higher priority. Your engine is working hard for you even if you do not see the evaluation lines. But the more updating of the display you are doing the less "time " available to analyse your processor(s) have.

[Gordon Ritchie]

Re: Stockfish Engine

FWIW: I use Stockfish on my iPad and iPhone as it is much better than anything else around including those that charge a fair bit. For home analysis, I often use it to supplement Houdini in endgame situations or if I want a broader range of suggestions. Obviously, none of these engines should completely take over the analysis but as a kibitzer they can be invaluable . Bottom line: Stockfish is incredible value for (NO!) money.

[Mathieu Cloutier]

Re: Stockfish Engine

Engines are good depending on what they are used for and how. Opening moves :anything less that 40 ply is garbage. Middle game: anything less than 25 ply is garbage. Endgame: If the position is not in a endgame table base, I would not use an engine to find a solution.

A little conservative, to say the least.

Examples:

Winning a piece without compensation in a quiet position on move 10? The computer eval will be at +3 for whatever possible depth you could look at. But you wouldn't trust it if the depth is below 40?

A complicated 5 or 6 moves manoeuvre in the endgame that results in a clearly winning position where the computer eval is just going up and up and up with the depth. You wouldn't trust it because it's not in the tablebase?

Look, I'm the first to say that we need to be careful with computer evals. Especially as a lot of chess enthusiasts are sometimes obsessed with playing the +0.25 move over the +0.2 move in the opening. Which is ridiculous, indeed.

But even with the known limitations of chess engines, it's still possible to draw clear conclusions even without going to the extremes that you suggest.