Komodo 9 Announcement

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Mark,

In younger years I found it on a German junk market. A very big PD-Software dealer for sell it for 5 German DM. I gave it to Gambit-Soft and Gambit-Soft started a selection for such programs.



Very strong and good DOS grafic at this time.
Nice fights vs. first MChess, Psion and RexChess versions.

RexChess 2.3 vs. Now 0.1 ... or Zarkov 2.5 vs. Now 0.1 ... great matches. I have all games I produced ... also ...

ChessChallenger 7 CL1 vs. ChessChallenger 7 CL2, CL3, CL7, CL6 (six minutes) or CL4 (20 minutes). Self Play are possible with a secret not documented Option.

Each chance for such games since the beginning I am using.

Now 0.1 are very positional and at this time not bad in endgames. RexChess too and also Psion. Only Zarkov Comes with a bit more tactical power. But often Zarkov 2.5 have bigger Problems in late middlegame vs. Now 0.1.

With 10 People we played such matches in the UNI in the town I life at this time. With a beer and of course without womens we had a lot of fun.

Thanks for it, was a nice time.

Best
Frank

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Matthias,

yes, installed on my Notebook.
Often I am using ChessGUI.

I am thinking often on it to create my FCP Live Book for Chess GUI too. For the Moment available for Shredder Classic GUI only.

I like your GUI, also Chess Explorer from Mark.
Do nothing with Arena since my break for many years.

Good luck with BigLion ... I read that

Best
Frank

[mjlef]

Great news to see FRC and persistent hash. Are there plans to eventually offer a Komodo that supports large pages?

I understand that for engine tournaments, this might not be very useful since LP can't always be guaranteed, but the extra speedup of about 15% is useful for squeezing every drop out of hardware when doing analysis.

Running Komodo on Linux (which has transparent LP support) should do the trick.

Yes, we actually do most of our testing in linux, since it is faster.

[mjlef]

Slight disappointment in not packaging android with windows purchase.

The issue we started having with Android version is trying to support all the different versions of Android and different hardware in a single file. This coupled with the difficulty for users to transfer and install has made me decide to let the Google Play Store handle things. Plus it is under $5.

I can't get the bundled Android K8 version to even work on my Nexus 7, but the Google Play version works fine.

Yes. The Play Store lets us adjust for operating system and hardware changes. If there was some way a single version would work with all Android and hardware versions, then we would have included it. At least this will prevent a lot of frustration for users. If only google had some kind of "coupon" support to get the App after buying the full package, but alas, they do not. So the simplest solution was just making the Apps inexpensive.

[shrapnel]

We plan to release Komodo 9 on Tuesday, April 28 if nothing goes wrong. It will be the current version, number 1416.00, unless we find a meaningful improvement or make UCI option changes in the next couple days. We are satisfied that it is as large an improvement over Komodo 8 as Komodo 8 was over Komodo 7.
Two new major features have been added. One is Persistent Hash, which is desirable for analysis. The other is that Komodo can now play Chess 960 (a.k.a. Fischerrandom). Maximum hash size has been raised to 64 Gb, and UCI options have been added to control the amount of reduction (lmr) and pruning (lmp). Although we believe the defaults are near-optimum for bullet chess, it is our hope that users will discover that for long time control games some other settings are better.
We will have more accurate estimates of elo gain as release date gets closer, but as of now we think the gain is more than 40 elo in single-core mode and 50 in multi-processor mode. As usual, gains come from all areas, including search, evaluation, and time management. Most noticeable should be the increase in search depth reached in a given amount of time, which is due to better extension, reduction, and pruning rules. We have done quite a bit to improve performance at blitz time controls, but we still anticipate that Komodo will earn its highest ratings against other engines at longer time controls.
We have decided to offer would-be purchasers the choice to simply buy Komodo 9, or to purchase a year's subscription to upgrades. We expect, but cannot promise, that upgrades will be quarterly, but we won't put out an upgrade unless we estimate we have gained at least ten elo and/or added a new feature. If we make a breakthru we might put out an upgrade sooner. The pricing is such that if you would normally buy new versions twice a year (roughly our past frequency of release) the extra upgrades will be free. In either case, those who bought Komodo 8 will get about a $20 discount. Subscription purchasers will also get older versions for free. All prices will be slid down by one version, so Komodo 6 will now be free.
We will no longer include the Android version with the Windows package, but it will be available soon from Google PlayStore for less than $5.

Larry and Mark for KomodoChess

I'm glad you have implemented the suggestion to start a subscription service. It was highly annoying for me to watch your official Testers playing around with the latest developmental versions on their mostly inferior machines !....especially frustrating since Komodo responds more positively to increasing strength of hardware than Stockfish !
Waiting impatiently for April 28th....

[Jesse Gersenson]

Komodo 6 will now be free.

Download Komodo 6, now free:
http://komodochess.com/pub/Komodo-6.zip

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

We plan to release Komodo 9 on Tuesday, April 28 if nothing goes wrong. It will be the current version, number 1416.00, unless we find a meaningful improvement or make UCI option changes in the next couple days. We are satisfied that it is as large an improvement over Komodo 8 as Komodo 8 was over Komodo 7.
Two new major features have been added. One is Persistent Hash, which is desirable for analysis. The other is that Komodo can now play Chess 960 (a.k.a. Fischerrandom). Maximum hash size has been raised to 64 Gb, and UCI options have been added to control the amount of reduction (lmr) and pruning (lmp). Although we believe the defaults are near-optimum for bullet chess, it is our hope that users will discover that for long time control games some other settings are better.
We will have more accurate estimates of elo gain as release date gets closer, but as of now we think the gain is more than 40 elo in single-core mode and 50 in multi-processor mode. As usual, gains come from all areas, including search, evaluation, and time management. Most noticeable should be the increase in search depth reached in a given amount of time, which is due to better extension, reduction, and pruning rules. We have done quite a bit to improve performance at blitz time controls, but we still anticipate that Komodo will earn its highest ratings against other engines at longer time controls.
We have decided to offer would-be purchasers the choice to simply buy Komodo 9, or to purchase a year's subscription to upgrades. We expect, but cannot promise, that upgrades will be quarterly, but we won't put out an upgrade unless we estimate we have gained at least ten elo and/or added a new feature. If we make a breakthru we might put out an upgrade sooner. The pricing is such that if you would normally buy new versions twice a year (roughly our past frequency of release) the extra upgrades will be free. In either case, those who bought Komodo 8 will get about a $20 discount. Subscription purchasers will also get older versions for free. All prices will be slid down by one version, so Komodo 6 will now be free.
We will no longer include the Android version with the Windows package, but it will be available soon from Google PlayStore for less than $5.

Larry and Mark for KomodoChess

Will it be sold via Chessbase with the interface too (as version 8) ?

We expect that Chessbase will sell Komodo 9 with their interface just as they did Komodo 8, but it is not yet clear whether they will offer updates and if so at what price.

I always buy the ChessBase version....
Dr.D

[Stonewall]

Congrats to the komodo chess Team ! hoping you success and prosperity through what you are doing ! and thank you for komodo 6 ! It's a great help to my analysis ! have a nice day Larry and friendss

[Henk]

If Komodo 9 joins next Saturday in Muller's monthly only blitz tourney April, they can show us how it plays in fast games. But if they lose against Skipper ...

[M ANSARI]

Large Pages is a PIA to get working. I can see where it can be useful for analysis of certain positions though. The problem is you always have to check if LP are working or if the memory has fragmented so much as to make it non functional. I think I remember there being a windows utility that will fix fragmentation of your memory on the fly, thus making LP under Windows less of a mystery, but can't remember what it is called. LP worked really well with Rybka and certainly added ELO strength to the program, and I remember several people using that setup on Playchess but usually the best way was to use Wine overlay.