Dorky is lot better than I thought.

[fern]

Although there are scarceley really bad programs these days because those even in the botton of the list play at least at 1800 Elo or so, still its is common not to give much credit to engines that are not on the very top and have names known by everybody.
Dorky has been a surprise for me due to all that. A program recently arrived here from the hands of a guy that I did not know, I supposed at once that I was going to play a at most an average engine, which today is more than enough to beat me, but average the same, with many poor quality moves, too much of his force based just in tactical skills and so on. You know the drill: you are defeated by such engines, but even so you feel they are not worth the effort to try to win them.
Dorky has been a surprise because, to date, after losing 5 games in a row, I have seen lot of things that goes beyond just the average tactical powers you expect of any engine today.
Which is that extra thing?
Cannot say yet, perhaps pawns deployment, but it is there. I hope some smarter and better player than me could grasp the thing.
I just give you the advice tpo play dorky.

Fern

[Mithu]

Sounds interesting
Will give it a try Fern.

[mmcknight]

Fern,

What time control are you playing? Did you build your own book?

Matt

[Mike S.]

Another lesser known, interesting engine is CuckooChess 1.10 which is a Java program:

http://web.comhem.se/petero2home/javachess/

I have seen this engine at TCEC where I was surprised about it's performance. There is a UCI version available from Jim Ablett's page at http://jimablett.hostwebs.com/

I did run a test experiment with depth limit = 7 plies, and Cuckoo found a #8 which requires effective 15 plies, at that setting:

[D]8/1R4pk/2p4p/2b5/p4KP1/5N1P/5q2/8 b - - 0 45

[Event "Suchtiefe 7 Halbzüge"]
[Site "7plies-Exp, THINKCENTRE-P4"]
[Date "2011.05.11"]
[Round "5.2"]
[White "Naraku 1.4"]
[Black "CuckooChess 1.10"]
[Result "0-1"]
[SetUp "1"]
[FEN "8/1R4pk/2p4p/2b5/p4KP1/5N1P/5q2/8 b - - 0 45"]
[PlyCount "13"]

45... Qe3+ {-#8/7 2 (Ld6+)} 46. Kf5 {-16.71/7 0} Qxf3+ {-#6/7 2} 47. Ke5 {-17.
45/7 0} Qe3+ {-#5/7 2 (a3)} 48. Kf5 {-22.47/7 0} Bd6 {-#4/7 1 (Df3+)} 49. Rxg7+
{-#5/7 0} Kxg7 {-#3/6 0} 50. g5 {-#2/7 0} h5 {-#2/4 0} 51. g6 {-#1/7 0 (h4)}
Qe5# {-#1/2 0} 0-1

[fern]

Hi Pal:
As I do always with every program, I played Dorky at 40 moves in one hour using an Arena book, 3.0\Books\Perfect_2010.

I have seen that dorky is rated as a 2300 machine , but I think is stronger.
I will try to send you my last defeat at that rythm. I was completely poutmanouvred.

fern

[Arturo Ochoa]

Hi Pal:
As I do always with every program, I played Dorky at 40 moves in one hour using an Arena book, 3.0\Books\Perfect_2010.

I have seen that dorky is rated as a 2300 machine , but I think is stronger.
I will try to send you my last defeat at that rythm. I was completely poutmanouvred.

fern

Just, after your message, I began to play some games with Dorky. Surprisingly, it has a very aggressive style, boarding the craziness. With a lot of “top engines”, Dorky makes me happy to watch it.

I played a couple of games against an Iphone chess program and other petty engines. What a crazy creature is Dorky! I also created a bigger opening book based on correspondence games and I used a small polyglot book to fix the initial openings. The result is a very enjoyable chess. Nothing to compete with the geek testers.

Thank you, Matt McKnight.

[mmcknight]

Thank you guys! I am glad you guys enjoy it.