Best Chess Engine (other than rybka & zappa) ?

[Zagalo]

What engine do you think is the best, in term of strength and analysis, other than rybka and zappa?

These are the latest deep/mp engine versions

I didnt include rybka and zappa because i think we had enough of them already!

Sorry if i missed something

[Spock]

Naum - currently it's stronger than Hiarcs on most lists, and it is far cheaper to purchase. Plus, Alex posts here from time to time too, which is nice.

[Zagalo]

From Naum site:

you can purchase Naum 2.2..This version is stronger then Naum 2.1
Price for the new customers is 28 euros. Upgrade for the existing customers is 14 euros

Naum charges 14 euros for minor upgrades, Hiarcs doesnt.
So you might end up paying even more than Hiarcs if there are many upgrades!

I would like to see the authors opinion about that

[Spock]

From Naum site:

you can purchase Naum 2.2..This version is stronger then Naum 2.1
Price for the new customers is 28 euros. Upgrade for the existing customers is 14 euros

Naum charges 14 euros for minor upgrades, Hiarcs doesnt.
So you might end up paying even more than Hiarcs if there are many upgrades!

I would like to see the authors opinion about that

Naum doesn't do minor upgrades like Hiarcs. Hiarcs minor upgrades are usually very minor, and damn well better be free.

The point is Naum does offer an upgrade price. Hiarcs doesn't.
I can't see how you think this makes Hiarcs better.....

EDIT:
Hang on, Hiarcs does offer an upgrade price doesn't it ??

[Zagalo]

If you bought Naum 2.1 it would have cost you 28 euros.
upgrading to 2.2 costs an additional 14 euros.
Total cost: 28 + 14 = 42 euros.

If there are just 3 more upgrades (2.3,2.4,2.5) then you pay an additinal (14 * 3) = 42

So Naum ver 2.1 thru 2.5 (4 upgrades) costs 28 + (14 * 4) = 84 euros.

Hiarcs costs 75 euros with Free upgrades within the same version (11.0, 11.1, 11.2,...11.9)

Hiarcs has fewer upgrades because it is much more mature than Naum.
Naum ver 2.1 is not even compatible with 4 cores, 2.2 is. Thats how young it is, and still not compatible with 8 cores. You will pay for that upgrade too!

So Naum will have more upgrades than Hiarcs and you pay 14 euros for each additional one!

[Spock]

I don't agree with that analysis. Hiarcs 11.1 to 11.2 was not what I would call an upgrade - and the Hiarcs team probably don't call it that either. It was minor bug fixes and 8-way tested, and maybe Vista compatibility fixes. It depends what you call an "upgrade" I guess.

I have no doubt whatsoever that over a period of say 2-3 of years, Naum would be CHEAPER than Hiarcs. I distinctly recall paying an upgrade price for Hiarcs last time though, so I'm certainly grateful that they offer it. Chessbase for example don't.

[Eelco de Groot]

Hi Ray,

I was just wondering, are you willing to pay $125 for Deep shredder in Chessbase version or do you hope the Deep Shredder UCI version will be more affordable?

As far as I know Shredder does not have any upgrade policy yet for loyal customers which, certainly with these kind of prices published at ChessCentral, I think would be something for Stefan Meyer-Kahlen to think about.

Loyal customers are probably also a bit less likely to search for any pirated versions although I don't think that a lower price alone will really help against piracy. Personally I don't have a multi CPU computer yet so I might consider just buying the single version. But if I had already bought a new computer, both the single and Deep versions of Shredder 11 for the prices that we have seen so far, -by the way Schach Niggemann offers a maybe more attractive package with a Chessbase bonus CD but it is not clear what the Deep Shredder version should cost there- would be less attractive options for me.

For pure playing strength at the least cost I don't think it is much use letting people think that there is not yet coming a multiple CPU version of Toga for instance; it may take a couple of months at the most to get the remaining bugs out out of the parallel implementation but err well I think it could get to be pretty strong as well . Maybe not as strong as Shredder but it could still be strong.

That does not mean there is no place for the strong commercials on the market, even apart from those of us who are avid collectors or just people buying because they value the effort and sometimes countless manhours that programmers have to put into their creations, many chessplayers will I think also keep valuing having several strong programs with which to analyze games or openings.

I am just wondering if Stefan has to follow the Chesbase pricing policy here also for his own version, if he might not sell a couple more programs with an upgrade price policy?

My two cents regards, sorry if that sounds a little cheap ,

Eelco

[Uri Blass]

If you bought Naum 2.1 it would have cost you 28 euros.
upgrading to 2.2 costs an additional 14 euros.
Total cost: 28 + 14 = 42 euros.

If there are just 3 more upgrades (2.3,2.4,2.5) then you pay an additinal (14 * 3) = 42

So Naum ver 2.1 thru 2.5 (4 upgrades) costs 28 + (14 * 4) = 84 euros.

Hiarcs costs 75 euros with Free upgrades within the same version (11.0, 11.1, 11.2,...11.9)

Hiarcs has fewer upgrades because it is much more mature than Naum.
Naum ver 2.1 is not even compatible with 4 cores, 2.2 is. Thats how young it is, and still not compatible with 8 cores. You will pay for that upgrade too!

So Naum will have more upgrades than Hiarcs and you pay 14 euros for each additional one!

This is simply nonsense

Naum ver 2.1 is compatiblle with 4 cores

ccrl list:

http://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040.l ... _length=30

1 Naum 2.2 64-bit 4CPU 3013 +23 −23 56.8% −42.8 48.8% 580
94.7%
Naum 2.2 64-bit 2CPU 2980 +28 −28 60.5% −65.6 50.7% 375
71.4%
Naum 2.1 64-bit 4CPU 2969 +21 −21 53.8% −23.6 44.7% 700
99.3%
Naum 2.1 64-bit 2CPU 2926 +23 −23 49.1% +5.9 43.2% 577
95.3%

You can also see that Naum2.2 is about 44 elo better than naum2.1

You say
Naum2.1 thru 2.5 (4 upgrades) costs 28 + (14 * 4) = 84

Based on the same logic
2.2 is 44 elo better than 2.1 so 2.5(4 upgrades) is 176 elo better than 2.1

Naum 2.1 64-bit 4CPU 2969 +21 −21 53.8% −23.6 44.7% 700

So you are going to have
Naum2.5 4 cpu with rating of 3145

This is better than rybka so I think that the strength that you can imagine clearly justify the price that you can imagine.

I can add that I expect almost nobody to use 8 cpu in the next year.
maybe 1% of the customers are going to use 8 cpu in the next year so almost no customer is going to buy naum because of supporting 8 cpu's.

customers may buy new naum if the engine is improved.

Uri

[Dann Corbit]

If the question is about strength, then we have this:
http://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/
http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/40_120_ ... liste.html
http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/40_40%2 ... liste.html
http://ssdf.bosjo.net/list.htm

It isn't just strength that I like about chess engines. I like them all, from the weakest to the strongest. I like to play them against each other. I like to play against them myself. I like to analyze chess positions. Sometimes an interesting idea comes from an engine that is not in the top 10. I don't think I can really quantify which ones are best in the absolute sense.

[Eelco de Groot]

Hi Ray,

I was just wondering, are you willing to pay $125 for Deep shredder in Chessbase version or do you hope the Deep Shredder UCI version will be more affordable?

As far as I know Shredder does not have any upgrade policy yet for loyal customers which, certainly with these kind of prices published at ChessCentral, I think would be something for Stefan Meyer-Kahlen to think about.

Loyal customers are probably also a bit less likely to search for any pirated versions although I don't think that a lower price alone will really help against piracy. Personally I don't have a multi CPU computer yet so I might consider just buying the single version. But if I had already bought a new computer, both the single and Deep versions of Shredder 11 for the prices that we have seen so far, -by the way Schach Niggemann offers a maybe more attractive package with a Chessbase bonus CD but it is not clear what the Deep Shredder version should cost there- would be less attractive options for me.

For pure playing strength at the least cost I don't think it is much use letting people think that there is not yet coming a multiple CPU version of Toga for instance; it may take a couple of months at the most to get the remaining bugs out out of the parallel implementation but err well I think it could get to be pretty strong as well . Maybe not as strong as Shredder but it could still be strong.

That does not mean there is no place for the strong commercials on the market, even apart from those of us who are avid collectors or just people buying because they value the effort and sometimes countless manhours that programmers have to put into their creations, many chessplayers will I think also keep valuing having several strong programs with which to analyze games or openings.

I am just wondering if Stefan has to follow the Chesbase pricing policy here also for his own version, if he might not sell a couple more programs with an upgrade price policy?

My two cents regards, sorry if that sounds a little cheap ,

Eelco

Sorry if I paint a somewhat gloomy picture here for chess-programming as a profession, in general. But that is just my view about commercial chess-programming, I would like to see it otherwise. Anthony Cozzie mentioned in his very interesting report, https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/acozzie2/www/zappa/mexico/
, I hope that the chessmagazines can find the link to it if they are going to do a report, that, after having given half the prizemoney for the Mexico match to Erdo, he had about enough left to raise his hourly wages for programming Zappa to the salary of a Mexican janitor. Note that he does not mention any sales of Zappa, I think compared to the prizemoney for the match it is almost negligible for computing an hourly rate. Maybe if you discount very basic expenses, furbishing a workplace, some cups of coffee, not to forget the electricity bills for testing your program and you have to offset that to just the sales for instance if you have a contract with Chessbase, it might well still leave you with a negative hourrate. I have no figures but that is just my feeling about it... So from this point of view I could not help but feeling a bit sorry for Vas and his Rybka-team for not winning especially this prize after also coming second or third I believe in the Freestyle, and my hope that there could be something of a rematch one day.

Eelco