Engine of the year? (external poll)

[Mike S.]

Which is your choice for 'Engine of 2007'? Not only the playing strength - for which we have the rating lists anyway - but many other criteria are considerable. Big match or tournament win, attractive style, improved update, interesting new engine... just as you like it.

http://poll.pollcode.com/PBtL

You can choose among 11 engines - I have tried to preselect the most likely candidates, or "eine andere" which means, another one.

(I have created an external poll so that also visitors of the CSS Forum and/or people who are not CCC members, can vote too.)

[Ovyron]

I voted for Zappa (Mexico).

Some say that it's the strongest chess entity, on 32 cores.

[ArmyBridge]

I voted for Fritz, grow 100 elos is not a easy task and the Fritz team made a fine job, but other did a really fantastic work.. Stefan Mayer, and Naumilov. Zappa is really good but you need at least 4 cores to see its strengh. As you can see in several test (CEGT) Fritz 11 can hold a match against 4CPU rivals and win!! (Loop M1T, Shredder 10 and Junior 10)

[Ovyron]

Zappa is really good but you need at least 4 cores to see its strengh.

Not everyone has 4 cores because they're pricey, but I don't think the engine's quality should be ditched just because the optimal hardware is hard to get.

[pedrox]

In your list missing:

- Movei, Alaric, Erendal, Hamsters, BugChess2, Alfil...

[Mike S.]

I didn't want to create a poll with a hundred choices - but at least, I offered eleven major engines to choose from. It is extremely unlikely that the winner would not be among these. But I also added "another one" (eine andere) as the 12th choice. I chose it myself, thinking of Alaric which had a great start as a new engine, followed by significant improvements.

Also, I think it would not have been optimal to include engines where only rare votes can be expected for them, which would look somewhat depressing for their programmers and fans. Up to the moment, even Junior and Loop received none yet.

But it may be interesting to read why someone would assign Engine of the Year to another candidate, for specific achievements or whatever. That should be posted. For example, microMax comes to mind. Or Delfi: Italian comp champion 5 years in a row.

(So far, 9 from 175 voted for another one than those listed.)

[Erik Roggenburg]

I was really torn about how to cast my vote.

Do I vote for Rybka for complete dominance in the ratings list, on playchess.com, and many tourneys?

Should I vote for Zappa Mexico for its multi-core prowess, witty author, and upset of Rybka?

How about Alex Naumov's terrific Naum? My own ratings list had Naum 2.0 at 2548 and Naum 2.2 2T at 2708. That's a huge leap!

Deep Shredder 11 jumped more than 60 Elo in my list from its previous version. If only the Fritz GUI would be as rock-solid as the Shredder GUI.

What about Fritz 11? The fellas at Chessbase have created an engine that ranks slightly higher than its "deep" predecessor on my ratings list. That's a pretty big accomplishment, too. Also, the new engine manages to get deeper into a position much faster than even Deep Fritz 10. I hope the "deep" version of F11 will offer great improvement.

In the end, I crossed to the darkside and voted for Fritz, although I'd like to rethink things since I've had "issues" with GUI11. However, we're voting on engines, not GUIs, so I'll stand by my original vote.

[ozziejoe]

I voted for rybka, but now I am wondering. What version was rybka in at the end of 2006.? If it was 1.2f, then I think voting for rybka is voting for the improvement between 1.2f and 2.3.1 a. That is a much closer call, then voting for the rybka improvement from its beta form. I would think that fritz made an amazing leap.

Can anybody remember the chronology of rybka versions? Can we objectively say what top 10, single processor engine had the biggest elo jump?

(not that this is the only critiria..But it is harder to have a big jump at the top than towards the bottom)


best
J

[Kirill Kryukov]

I voted for Fruit, because Fruit legacy (Fruit itself, its clones and all engines that borrowed from Fruit) was still the main factor defining computer chess landscape in year 2007.

[Dann Corbit]

I voted for rybka, but now I am wondering. What version was rybka in at the end of 2006.? If it was 1.2f, then I think voting for rybka is voting for the improvement between 1.2f and 2.3.1 a. That is a much closer call, then voting for the rybka improvement from its beta form. I would think that fritz made an amazing leap.

Can anybody remember the chronology of rybka versions? Can we objectively say what top 10, single processor engine had the biggest elo jump?

(not that this is the only critiria..But it is harder to have a big jump at the top than towards the bottom)


best
J

As far as improvement goes, using this query:
SELECT Genre, max(Elo), min(Elo) , max(Elo)-min(Elo) as distance FROM engines.dbo.Engines group by Genre order by distance desc {nopassthrough}

Against this data:
Engines.no ,
Engines.Genre ,
Engines.Program ,
Engines.Elo ,
Engines.plus ,
Engines.minus ,
Engines.Games ,
Engines.Score ,
Engines.AvOp ,
Engines.Draws

Gathered from here:
http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/40_40%2 ... liste.html

with Genre a simplified version of the engine family name

Gave:

Code: Select all

Genre	max(Elo)	min(Elo)	distance
Zappa	3007	2572	435
Fritz	2937	2533	404
Naum	2932	2531	401
Crafty	2696	2364	332
Rybka	3098	2817	281
Shredder	2977	2699	278
Glaurung	2833	2563	270
List	2901	2633	268
Hiarcs	2933	2673	260
Frenzee	2688	2439	249
Junior	2854	2612	242
Fruit	2842	2613	229
Spike	2821	2613	208
Sjeng	2801	2603	198
Booot	2572	2382	190
Ktulu	2759	2580	179
Movei	2662	2486	176
Scorpio	2729	2560	169
Thinker	2726	2566	160
Colossus	2629	2476	153
Chiron	2631	2492	139
SmarThink	2710	2575	135
Petir	2614	2489	125
Homer	2431	2325	106
Pharaon	2668	2562	106
Eveann	2109	2005	104
Alaric	2699	2599	100
The Baron	2624	2528	96
Toga	2830	2734	96
Arasan	2503	2411	92
Delfi	2658	2566	92
The King	2766	2675	91
Bright	2774	2684	90
Djinn	2410	2321	89
RomiChess	2400	2311	89
Rebel	2654	2566	88
Twisted Logic	2507	2420	87
Ufim	2569	2494	75
Cerebro	2506	2434	72
WildCat	2630	2563	67
E.T.Chess	2555	2489	66
Matacz	2474	2411	63
Queen	2442	2380	62
Chess Tiger	2728	2668	60
Gosu	2393	2334	59
Gaia	2432	2373	59
Slow Chess	2651	2600	51
Anaconda	2590	2545	45
Quark	2514	2472	42
Jonny	2637	2595	42
PostModernist	2450	2409	41
Alfil	2380	2339	41
ChessMaster	2692	2652	40
Ruffian	2651	2617	34
Trace	2522	2492	30
Zarkov	2511	2481	30
Snitch	2465	2436	29
Hermann	2409	2381	28
BugChess2	2271	2250	21
Amyan	2508	2494	14
SpiderChess	2500	2486	14
AnMon	2550	2539	11
Tao	2514	2510	4