Most Positional/Strategic Chess Engines

[BrendanJNorman]

Hey guys,

Now that I am up to my neck in aggressive, tactical chess engines, I'm looking in the direction of more positional and strategic oriented engines.

I'd like your thoughts on which play the most human-like, seemingly strategic chess with a focus on static themes and very little king attacks or tactical play.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

EDIT: These can be ANY strength, just need to be playing in a POSITIONAL style.

[Ovyron]

My vote goes for Zappa Mexico II. Other such engines include Naum 3.0 and Fruit 2.3.1. ProDeo 1.2 had a personality that made it play strategically, though I don't remember if it was Thorsten CZUB's Macheide or Christian BONNIN's Macheid (...I blame them for naming them so similarly, this was 13 years ago so memory fails me.) Rybka 3 Human was a specially designed engine for this, and it was good at it, though, back then competition was much weaker than R3, so who knows if it stands today. Critter 1.6a was the most like this from its kind, and it helps that the engine has learning.

Boringly, Komodo is the best at this from the top engines, and it surpasses these in strengths, human-like play, and in "moving the pieces with a plan and not shuffling them." At least, some version in the past did, but the jump in strength is so abrupt it's hard to tell when it sacrificed it for strength, if ever. You'd probaby want to search for personalities for Komodo 1.0 as something like what you want was surely tried (Trebuchet.per rings a bell...)

Finally, I reckon Crafty 20.14 and The King 3.23 (CM9000) had personalities made for them with positional principles (and ironically, The King with that one played stronger than default), I wonder how hard would be to investigate them...

[BrendanJNorman]

My vote goes for Zappa Mexico II. Other such engines include Naum 3.0 and Fruit 2.3.1. ProDeo 1.2 had a personality that made it play strategically, though I don't remember if it was Thorsten CZUB's Macheide or Christian BONNIN's Macheid (...I blame them for naming them so similarly, this was 13 years ago so memory fails me.) Rybka 3 Human was a specially designed engine for this, and it was good at it, though, back then competition was much weaker than R3, so who knows if it stands today. Critter 1.6a was the most like this from its kind, and it helps that the engine has learning.

Boringly, Komodo is the best at this from the top engines, and it surpasses these in strengths, human-like play, and in "moving the pieces with a plan and not shuffling them." At least, some version in the past did, but the jump in strength is so abrupt it's hard to tell when it sacrificed it for strength, if ever. You'd probaby want to search for personalities for Komodo 1.0 as something like what you want was surely tried (Trebuchet.per rings a bell...)

Finally, I reckon Crafty 20.14 and The King 3.23 (CM9000) had personalities made for them with positional principles (and ironically, The King with that one played stronger than default), I wonder how hard would be to investigate them...

Thanks, I'll have a look into some of these.

I remember Rybka 3 Human from back in 2008 or so....can't believe it's been ten years, but it never really seemed human-like to me.

Naum and ProDeo 1.2 certainly do, but Critter 1.6a seems very tactical actually to me, as does the MACHEID personality of ProDeo.

Can anybody give opinions of any of the following engines, which Ive either heard or noticed to be quite strategic in their playing styles.

RomiChess (version?)
Hamsters (version?)
Amyan (version?)
Zarkov (version?)
Ktulu (version?)
Hiarcs (version?)
Frenzee (version?)
Gaviota (version?)
Hagrid (version?)
Gromit
The Baron (version?)

[Ovyron]

Naum and ProDeo 1.2 certainly do, but Critter 1.6a seems very tactical actually to me, as does the MACHEID personality of ProDeo.

What about MACHEIDE? The one that starts "[Pawn Value = 102], [Knight Value = 99], [Bishop Value = 101]"...

[mclane]

Don’t blame on me

I was reading Emanuel laskers the philosophy of the unattainable.
and changed the parameters, and macheide was the name world chess champion and mathematician Emanuel Lasker used in his philosophical book.

[fern]

ONE very important:
let the engine to become so embroiled in metaphysic chess that we could win it.

Mauled as hell by Tal regards
Fern

[Ovyron]

Don’t blame on me

I was reading Emanuel laskers the philosophy of the unattainable.
and changed the parameters, and macheide was the name world chess champion and mathematician Emanuel Lasker used in his philosophical book.

Then I'll blame Christian Bonnin for naming his Macheid personality so close to yours

[Ovyron]

ONE very important:
let the engine to become so embroiled in metaphysic chess that we could win it.

Mauled as hell by Tal regards
Fern

Hey fernando, did you ever play against my Drunker Master personality for ProDeo 1.6? I think it's the very first of its kind in that it will give away material and only try its best to win once it's losing:

http://rybkaforum.net/mwf/rybkaattach/8 ... eo16DM.zip

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Brendan,

we have a lot good engines in this field here.

Undo end of December 2016 I used the TOP-50 each one vs. against each other. Often I saw in all the stats I made that Nirvanachess is interesting.

Lost (for the Elo strength engine have) not many games fast but won also not many games fast. An evidence for positional / strategic understandings. I have a lot of written chess books and checked different positions with Nirvanachess. Results are allways great!

The reason that Nirvanachess will be now the last engines for FEOBOS analysis. I must see the FEOBOS opening stats to that interesting engine! Such a style have no other engines we used for FEOBOS.

Best
Frank

[matejst]

Dear Brendan,

I`ve seen you already tested Zarkov 6.55: with a king safety of 120 it has the best positional eval I've seen in the openings. Extremely human-like, especially since it doesn't reach extreme depths (in OTP games, ideal for a challenge). Doesn't have a "sense of danger" and can miss tactics.

Deep Gandalf 7: excellent both at tactics and strategy. More balanced than Zarkov, although a bit weaker in strategic positions. I use them together for analysis, and they find easily book moves. My version of Gandalf has been tweaked a bit, with more emphasis on safety, pawn structures and bishops.

Wasp 1.25 has the best positional evaluation among the Wasp engines. Testing the new Wasp 2.6. What Wasp lacks are params, learning, features Zarkov had.

Zappa Mexico 2 XII with dr Wael Deeb settings. Very positional, very human-like, IMHO plays better than the vanilla version.

The Baron 3.29 is similar; excellent in endings without TBs, very good positional assessment of middlegame positions, good transition; no "machine" style. Tweakable, with enough settings to make him play different. The latest version should be similar, although I still wait for a 32-bit version.

SmarThink was also a good engine. I don't know about the latest versions, but older were positional enough, although, at times, I didn't have a clue about what it was doing on the board.