INTERESTING Engines with Unique Styles (Unlike SF)

[BrendanJNorman]

This is a fresh thread for Thorsten's idea of making a list of all "interesting" engines.

For me, in no particular order, they are:

Teki 2
Thinker 5.1c Passive
Baron 1.8.1
Gandalf 6
WChess 1.06
Vajolet 2.03
ProDeo 1.0-1.6 (assuming no personality used)
ZuriChess Graubuenden
Alfil 8.11
Stash 21.0 (new discovery...nice style to play against)
CM9000 (King 3.23)
Lambchop
Gromit 2.2
Horizon 4.3
Wyldchess 1.5.1
Detrich Kappe's "Distilled" Leela Nets like Bad Gyal etc
Winter
Zarkov
Trace

Tons more. Let's see your opinions.

[mvanthoor]

This is a fresh thread for Thorsten's idea of making a list of all "interesting" engines.

For me, in no particular order, they are:

Teki 2
Thinker 5.1c Passive
Baron 1.8.1
Gandalf 6
WChess 1.06
Vajolet 2.03
ProDeo 1.0-1.6 (assuming no personality used)
ZuriChess Graubuenden
Alfil 8.11
Stash 21.0 (new discovery...nice style to play against)
CM9000 (King 3.23)
Lambchop
Gromit 2.2
Horizon 4.3
Wyldchess 1.5.1
Detrich Kappe's "Distilled" Leela Nets like Bad Gyal etc
Winter
Zarkov
Trace

Tons more. Let's see your opinions.

Most of those are either old, very old, or new engines that are still in development and have not reached the stage where the author starts to automatically tune the eval-function. Maybe I was right when I said that the hand-crafted evaluation function determines the engine's personality I hope that at some point, my engine will be in that list as well. (I actually intend to have a hand-crafted evaluation and a tuned one, at some point, for playing against people, or computers. IIRC, DanaSah does something similar.)

My personal picks would be Hiarcs (I only know the versions 10 and 12), and Fritz 10 and 11. (After 11, Fritz 12 and 13 got tuned to play more like Ryba, and suddenly Frans Morsch went on retirement, if I recall correctly.)

[mclane]

If somebody posts an engine name, it would be nice to write down WHY he likes especially this engine. And it would even better if the author tells us why his engine is special.

[BrendanJNorman]

If somebody posts an engine name, it would be nice to write down WHY he likes especially this engine. And it would even better if the author tells us why his engine is special.

Good point. Probably a sample game as proof would be nice too.

[Madeleine Birchfield]

I would like to add Minic NNUE with the Nascent Nutrient net trained by the Minic author himself using the Minic engine search and eval, it plays a very aggressive style that is very different from Stockfish according to Sylwy.

Test conditions:
-TC=4'+2"
-Hash=256 MB
-GUI: Arena 3.5.1
-Book: Perfect_2010.abk for both engines
-default settings for both engines
-1 thread-CPU=Intel i5-7400-3GHz (Kaby Lake)
-OS: Windows 10 Home
-6-men Syzygy bases for both engines.

Texel 1.07 x64 has .......................3114 Elo points-CCRL Blitz
Minic 2.50 NNUE-Nascent Nutrient...around 3355 Elo points (3114+241)
Minic 2.50 NNUE-SV1520.............around 3458 (3451-Komodo 14 x64 +7)

Nascent Nutrient is about 100 Elo points below the best Segio Vieri nets.
A strong chess entity and an original play ! Congratulations !

Thanks a lot for testing.

Did you really see some "personalty" in this net ? Does it recall Minic playing style (if such thing exists ...) ? It is different from SV net playing style to your eyes ?

It is different from SV net playing style to your eyes ?

Yes, it's definitely something different ! Almost all my NNUE tests used various versions of SV net. In Igel and Minic the difference is obvious. A very aggressive Minic.
I understand the frustration of the masters of handcrafted evaluation. A lot of years. A lot of work. But the finality is chess and here the progress is great......and inevitable. Someday the end of the new NNUE age will come. That's life !

This is interesting. A fear I have is that in time all nets may more or less converge to the same with LR.
This doesn't seem to be the case yet, but Nascent Nutrient hasn't be RL yet.
I'm glad this one shows some aggressiveness.

I think as NNUE authors stop using Stockfish to train their nets and start using their own engines, we would begin to see more diversity in engine playing style.

[mclane]

Ok, I would like to begin with 2 dos engines:

Philidor by David broughton.
It runs in dosbox.
https://www.schachcomputer.info/forum/s ... php?t=6209


This dos engine for 8086 CPU was developed 1983 in assembler.

David Broughton got the championship title for dedicated chess computers with his chess champion MK V by scisys.
I like the human playing style.



The next dos Program is Gandalf 2.1 by steen suurballe.
I think I first met steen at the championship in Munich.
And hold contact in the years later.

http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?t=68797

Gandalf 2.1 is said to have 1 ply plus extensions.

[chysiddh14]

Ethereal , Blackmamba ,Protecter ,Andscacs ,K2
playing style is different in each engine .

[Sylwy]

The force of ART , not the art of force !
I never changed my mind.
========================================================================
ZChess 2.00 (London) by Franck Zibi (Pharaon) ! - a masterpiece of computer chess.
Still available:
http://www.fzibi.com/pharaon/zchess200.zip
========================================================================

Minic 2.50 together with Nascent Nutrient is a new masterpiece of NNUE era.

========================================================================

Dixi !

[OliverBr]

OliThink is certainly the most Unlike-SF engine. There are many others, too.

[Vinvin]

Some older posts on the same topic :
http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 71#p678171
http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 96#p305596
http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 03#p123203