How good is your engine?

[thewhip]

What I can't understand is why certain engines are stubborn with a single answer instead of going deeper with other alternatives, since with each increase in depth the score remains the same or decreases. It practically overlooks the other moves.

[Ovyron]

What I can't understand is why certain engines are stubborn with a single answer instead of going deeper with other alternatives

Because it brings more elo.

In general that's the answer you will get to any question regarding engine's behavior, if it brings more elo it'll be in there, and that'll be it.

[Dann Corbit]

The best is Bluefish-XI with a couple small tweaks, which has no rivals so far in my testing.

Would you be willing to share it?

You will want to turn off logging in the UCI options.

Thanks Dann. I wonder if some pseudo-MultiPV 4 setting would outperform everything on the future, one that starts with Tactical=2 but reduces it to 0 as the search gets deeper (and the best move has already been caught.)

It is certainly an interesting idea, and perhaps it could be fully flexible (e.g. mpv count changes to go with search as it progresses)