Least Dumb Chess Engine

[TShackel]

Hi,

I just wanted to ask everyone's opinion as to what they believe is the least dumb chess engine as far as playing style and playing smart positional moves. The problem with compuers is that they don't have any creativity typically, and pick dry moves rather than trying to find a winning plan, sometimes go so far as to move the same piece back and forth rather than improve the position. And it doesn't necessarily have to be one of the top three engines (ie Komodo, Stockfish, and Houdini). The top three could be the tactically best engines, but a lesser engine might have smarter moves in the positional phase of the game. So my point is not to just shout out houdini, komodo, or stockfish, just because they're at the top of the rating lists, but rather any engine you believe to have some good smarts and play good in the positional phase of the game based upon the games they play. I'm very familiar with the top three engines, and am trying to hear if there are good up and coming engines that are good in the positional phase of the game, and may not match tactics with the top three and therefore aren't at the top of the rating list. Any opinions?

Sincerely,

Tim.

[zullil]

Any opinions?

Perhaps you might search for engine performance data on one or more "positional test suites."

Seems hard to know what "are good in the positional phase of the game" really means.

[TShackel]

I admit the question isi subjective and is trusting the judgement of human chess players who watch and play through the engine's games. I suppose if soomeone was led to get engine data, not only for the top 3, but also for up and coming engines, for positional test suites, then that effort would be very much appreciated. I don't really have the time to do all that. But I was assuming that many of you are pretty strong human players as well as computer enthusiasts, so I thought I'd ask you for your human judgement as to which programs are the best, or least dumb might be the best way to describe it, in the positional phase of the game, even though they may notn be at the top of the rating list.

Tim.

[jorose]

Honestly in my opinion the opinion of "Dumb chess engines" is kind of a myth. It was true some 10 years ago when fritz was a top engine, but times have changed. Half the time an engine does a "bad positional move" it will be more that the human player has a dogma that something cannot possibly be good, when in fact it might be very strong.

That being said if you are looking for a "positional engine" Komodo is very good and makes moves which make more sense for a human compared to many engine suggestions.

[Matthias Gemuh]

The deeper an engine searches, the more its early moves automatically become positional.
The first 5 plies of a 30-ply search are definitely positional.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

The least dumb chess engine is the strongest engine, as simple as that.

We are all dumb, but just to different degrees.

[TShackel]

Honestly in my opinion the opinion of "Dumb chess engines" is kind of a myth. It was true some 10 years ago when fritz was a top engine, but times have changed. Half the time an engine does a "bad positional move" it will be more that the human player has a dogma that something cannot possibly be good, when in fact it might be very strong.

That being said if you are looking for a "positional engine" Komodo is very good and makes moves which make more sense for a human compared to many engine suggestions.

Hi. In the tactical phase of the game, or open positions computers play like god. But in closed positions they still play dumb. Look at the game Stockfish against Nakamura. The king's indian defense was played, and stockfish without a book didn't have a clue on what to do. It's true Stockfish won that game, but that was only because he "finally" played f4 which the commentators were screaming he would play the entire time, when instead he chose pointless piece moves that all bite on central pawn granite.

Oh, "dumb chess engines" is still alive and well. It's pretty funny at least at the current state of circumstances, to compare a computer evaluation to a human evaluation when the human has a clearly superior brain to work with. They key with computers is you have to instruct it exactly what it's supposed to do in a given circumstance, whereas humans have the ability to find out what to do on their own.

[TShackel]

The least dumb chess engine is the strongest engine, as simple as that.

We are all dumb, but just to different degrees.

Well, I kind of disagree that there couldn't be smarter engines than komodo lower down on the list on positional motifs, but komodo clearly outsearches it in the tactics and so it wins. Elo is the right way to improve engines, but increase elo with the evaluation function getting tweaked, and onlly after that tweak the search.

Tim.

[Marek Soszynski]

There was the Strategic Test Suite (STS):
https://sites.google.com/site/strategictestsuite/
It could be interesting to see how today's engines would perform.

[supersharp77]

Naum 3.0 4.0 4.1 4.2 or 4.6.........Deep Fritz.......Fritz.......Rybka 2.3.2
Rybka 4.1 or Deep Rybka....... Houdini 1.5a.......Gull 2.2 ......
DamirsPositionalPlayer......Onno 1.0......Crafty.......(any)......