CCRL update (25th January 2008)

[Graham Banks]

The January 25th update of the CCRL Rating Lists and Statistics is now available for viewing at:
http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/

The list gets updated periodically during the week and these updates can be viewed here:
http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040.live/
Please be aware that no game downloads are available from this live link.

The links to the various rating lists can be found just beneath the default Best Versions list.
For example there is a 32-bit Single CPU list.

Our standard testing is at 40 moves in 40 minutes repeating while our current blitz testing is at both 40 moves in 4 minutes repeating and 40 moves in 12 minutes repeating, all adjusted to the AMD64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz).

Currently active testers in our team are:
Graham Banks, Ray Banks, Shaun Brewer, Kirill Kryukov, Dom Leste, Tom Logan, Charles Smith, George Speight, Chris Taylor, Chuck Wilson, Gabor Szots and Martin Thoresen.


40/40 Notes

A milestone week for us this week as the number of games in our 40/40 database went past 100,000!
We are very proud of what we've achieved in 2 years.

Many engines on our list have few games and in many cases their ratings are likely to fluctuate (markedly for some) until a lot more games are played. Therefore no conclusions should be drawn about their strength yet.
To illustrate this point, when an engine has 200 games played, the error margin is still approximately +-40 ELO, after 500 games +-25 ELO, after 1000 games +-17 ELO and even after 2000 games there is a +-13 ELO error margin!
This of course highlights the importance of looking at other rating lists that are also available in order to draw comparisons and get a more accurate overall picture.


4CPU 64-bit Engines

Rybka 2.3.2a is over 50+ ELO stronger than Zappa Mexico.
The update to Zappa Mexico seems to add little, if any strength.

Deep Shredder 11 lies 40+ points further back in third spot.

Naum 2.2 comes in fourth, not too far behind Deep Shredder 11, but ahead of Deep Fritz 10.1 and Hiarcs 11.1.

The remaining well tested engines in order of rating are Loop M1-T, Glaurung 2.0.1, Deep Junior 10, Bright 0.2c, Deep Sjeng 2.7 and Scorpio 2.0.

We are eagerly looking forward to the upcoming Naum 3 which by all accounts should make things interesting at the top of the table!


2CPU Engines

With the emphasis of our multi-cpu testing on 4CPU as opposed to 2CPU, there are gaps in this category and some of the engines also require further games.
However, the order of strength is almost identical to the 4CPU list.


Single CPU Engines

Rybka 2.3.2a has a massive 120+ ELO lead over Fritz 11, Shredder 11 and Zappa Mexico.

The ratings of Toga II 3.1.2SE and Toga II 1.4 beta4 should be ignored due to the small number of games played to date.

20 ELO further back, Naum 2.2, Toga II 1.3.1 and Hiarcs 11.1 have a slight edge over Loop M1-T and Fruit 2.3.1.

The next group of engines - Spike 1.2 Turin, Deep Sjeng 2.7, Glaurung 2.0.1 and Junior 10 are very close in strength.

40 ELO lower are Ktulu 8.0, Chess Tiger 2007.1, SmarThink 1.00 and Bright 0.2c.

Chessmaster 11 is 40+ ELO stronger than CM10th Default and is also a little stronger than the best CM10th settings.
Ray has started putting various CM11 settings through extensive blitz testing (600 games each against a variety of engines). The best setting so far is CM11th Glorfindel which is only 15 ELO above the default settings.

Movei 00.8.438 (10 10 10), Alaric 707 and Scorpio 2.0 are a little further back.
Scorpio 2.0 has had better results recently, but with 500+ games, still lies behind Scorpio 1.91.

The next group of engines includes SlowChess Blitz WV2.1, Delfi 5.2, Ruffian 2.1.0, WildCat 7 and Gandalf 6.

We have only just started testing Frenzee Dec07, Booot 4.14.0, E.T Chess 13.01.08, Alfil 8.1.1 and Learning Lemming 0.24.
Although Learning Lemming is still private, the author has signalled his intention of a future public release, so it will be interesting to see how it fares.


Free Single CPU Engines

Rybka 1.0 64-bit is still the top free engine ahead of Toga II 1.3.1.
As mentioned previously, the current rating of Toga II 3.1.2SE should be ignored on the basis that it's only played a handful of games.

Fruit 2.3.1 comes in third ahead of the evenly matched pair of Spike 1.2 Turin and Glaurung 2.0.1.

Naum 2.0 and Bright 0.2c are 50+ ELO further back, but with a good edge over Movei 00.8.438 (10 10 10), Alaric 707, Scorpio 2.0 and the chasing pack that includes SlowChess Blitz WV2.1, Delfi 5.2, Zappa 1.1 and WildCat 7.

Some other recent releases worthy of mention are:
Colossus 2007d - continues to go from strength to strength. This latest version is on a par with Pharaon 3.5.1.
Hamsters 0.6 - Alessandro seems to have made a 400 ELO improvement as he has progressed from Hamsters 0.0.6 through to the latest version in roughly two years!
BugChess2 1.5.2 - Francois has also made astounding progress and this latest version is 200+ ELO ahead of BugChess2 1.4.1 which is just over one year old.

We are looking forward to seeing the results of Frenzee Dec07, Booot 4.14.0, E.T Chess 13.01.08, Alfil 8.1.1 and Learning Lemming 0.24.

We test a very extensive range of amateur engines through a range of tournaments, all of which can be followed in our public forum.
Our aim is of course to ensure that all engines lower on our lists get 200+ games.


Blitz Notes

There are currently 237,120 games in our 40/4 database.

The 40/4 update is usually done separately to our 40/40 update.
The latest ratings can be found at one of the following links:
http://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/
http://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404.live/

An enormous amount of work goes into the blitz list and it is well worth a visit.


FRC Notes

There are currently 25,200 games in the FRC 40/4 database.

Ray tests only those engines that can play FRC through the Shredder Classic GUI.
If engine authors have a new and stable version of their engine that will run under this GUI, they should contact Ray if they wish to see it tested.

Although Rybka 2.3.2 FRC is in top spot, it is a private engine.
Therefore Shredder 11 is the strongest available FRC engine, an impressive 80 ELO ahead of Hiarcs 11.1 and Naum 2.2.
Ray has just finished running a 40/120 match between Shredder 11 and Hiarcs 11.2 in memory of Bobby Fischer. Shredder won convincingly by 19.5-10.5.

Alfil 8.1.1 is next up to be tested and will be a welcome addition to the list!

For FRC the best list to look at is the pure list.
http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404FRC/


Stats/Presentation Notes

The LOS (likelihood of superiority) stats to the right hand side of each rating list tell you the likelihood in percentage terms of each engine being superior to the engine directly below them.

A list of games played this week per engine can be found in the update thread in the CCRL public forum, accessible through the link given at the top of this post.

All games are available for download through the link given at the top of this post. They can be downloaded by engine or by month.
ELO ratings are now saved in all game databases for those engines that have 200 games or more.

Clicking on an engine name will give details as to opponents played plus homepage links where applicable.

Custom lists of engines can be selected for comparison.

An openings report page (link at bottom of index page) lists the number of games played by ECO codes with draw percentage and White win percentage. Clicking on a column heading will sort the list by that column.
Games can now be downloaded by ECO code.

[Spock]

FRC Notes

Alfil 8.1.1 is next up to be tested and will be a welcome addition to the list!

Actually it doesn't seem to support FRC through the Shredder GUI. I simply got a message that the engine doesn't support chess960 when I tried it.