what is the best mate solver to download

[ernest]

What about that German mate program ? (forgot the name...)

Oh yes, I remember : Gustav !!! by Olaf Jenkner

[Dann Corbit]

Gustav is very good. I see that the Chess Wiki page is old, because Gustav is currently written in C++ rather than Dephi
There is Alybadix, but it does not seem to be maintained since 2015.
Also Popeye and Chloe.

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Mate_Search

I think the best mate solver is for shogi, and is open source and SMP. It might be possible to create a version for ordinary chess.
https://gps.tanaka.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/gp ... 1%BC%A5%C9

There might be something better, but I have not looked into shogi programming for a few years.

[Ferdy]

Sample dm 8 test. All engines except ChestUCI are limited to movetime 30s and mate in 8, meaning it will return its bestmove within 30s if it could not resolve to mate in 8.
command:
go mate 8 movetime 30000

ChestUCI runs in 2 SearchMode Normal and Automatic. First it will search in Normal mode if it could not solve it, then it will be run in Automatic. Also MaxMoves is set to opponent's legal move minus 1, in Automatic mode.

All engines are run at 1 thread and 256mb hash, no ending tablebase used on i7 3.4 Ghz processor.

Code: Select all

                            name  correct  total  elapsems  dm             file
0                ShashChess 15.1       77     77     55480   8  arves-mates.epd
1       Crystal 080420 64 POPCNT       77     77     72246   8  arves-mates.epd
2  Eman 6.60 64-bit SSE41 POPCNT       74     77    249331   8  arves-mates.epd
3                   Stockfish 12       71     77    258271   8  arves-mates.epd
4               ChestUCI Ver.5.2       68     77    246622   8  arves-mates.epd

Arves-mates are taken from Dann's post.

[Jouni]

I did more testing with long movers from Chest database starting with mate in 11. There are no significant difference between Crystal, Eman or Bluefish. They solve about 10% more positions than normal SF. Not so good result! Idea: can You modify tablebase code like syzygy to solve EVERY possible position with more pieces also! Maybe RAM problem if You need 16 GB for just 6 pieces?