Komodo Dragon Chess Engine in 2021

Komodo is an extremely popular UCI chess engine developed by Don Dailey and Mark Lefler. Komodo was derived from Don Dailey's former engine Doch in January 2010.

Lets have a look at how Komodo (playing White) crushes its opponent in the Ruy Lopez.

Komodo is supported by celebrated chess author and evaluation expert GM Larry Kaufman.

Komodo is consistently ranked near the top of most major chess engine rating lists, along with Ethereal, Rybka, Stockfish, Houdini, Fire and Leela Chess Zero.

Compatable GUIs for Komodo Chess and Komodo Dragon are

• Chessbase
• Fritz
• Aquarium
• Chess Assistant
• Hiarcs Chess Explorer
• Shredder (Classic)
• Arena
• Tarrash

The detailed system requirements are as follows:

• Minimum: 64-bit processor, Pentium 4 F-series, 1024 MB RAM
• Recommended: Processor with AVX2 strongly recommended (most computers since 2013 have this). No need for GPU.
• Operating system: Windows, Linux, Mac OSX 10.7 or higher.

• Checkout the International Computer Games Association's webpage here.
• For news & articles on Komodo from their archive click here.
• All available versions (official link) of Komodo can be found here.
• The chess.com's official article on Komodo by Sam Copeland can be found here.
• The debut tournament of Komodo Dragon can be found here.
• Human versus Komodo games & matches can be found here.

Lets have a look at how Komodo (playing Black) draws against Stockfish in the Sicilian.

Komodo has a reputation for being a strong positional chess engine, and Dragon only increases the engine's proclivities, making it possibly the strongest positionally inclined engine available.

Lets have a look at how Komodo (playing White) draws against Stockfish in the English.

The Komodo expert team estimates that Dragon is about 200 Elo points stronger than Komodo 14 on one thread and about 170 Elo points stronger on four threads, based on direct matches at the CCRL blitz time control of two minutes plus a one-second increment. Although Dragon 2 is only slightly stronger than the initial dragon version in standard mode, the MCTS mode when running under Windows is dramatically improved, about a hundred elo.

Komodo 14.1 and Dragon are available for purchase and use on all operating systems.

Komodo heavily relies on evaluation rather than depth, and thus has a distinctive positional style. Its forte is to play when there is nothing to play. Komodo author Don Dailey described it as such: "In positions that most engines would likely struggle or find it impossible to make progress, Komodo quietly prepares a break and ends up with the victory."

The first multiprocessor version of Komodo was released in June 2013 as Komodo 5.1 MP. This version was a major rewrite and a port of Komodo to C++11. A single-processor version of Komodo (which won the CCT15 tournament in February earlier that year) was released as a stand-alone product shortly before the 5.1 MP release. This version, named Komodo CCT, was still based on the older C code, and was approximately 30 Elo stronger than the 5.1 MP version, as the latter was still undergoing massive code-cleanup work. With the release of Komodo 6 on 4 October 2013, Don Dailey announced that he was suffering from an acute form of leukaemia, and would no longer contribute to the future development of Komodo. On October 8, Don made an announcement on the Talkchess forum that Mark Lefler would be joining the Komodo team and would continue its development. On December 17, 2018, Larry Kaufman announced the release of Komodo 12.3 MCTS, a version of the Komodo 12.3 engine that uses Monte Carlo tree search instead of alpha–beta pruning/minimax.

Komodo is a commercial chess engine. Older versions (12 and older, as in 2021) are free for non-commercial use. I believe Komodo 12 is just enough for any expert-level analysis. The latest version, Komodo Dragon, was released on November 9, 2020. It features support for NNUE.

NNUE engines have proven to be a major advancement in recent chess engine technology, allowing traditional tactically powerful "brute force" engines to incorporate the deeper positional understanding evinced by neural network engines such as AlphaZero and Leela Chess Zero. Some of the improvements made possible include:

• dramatic and immediate strength increases
• higher ceilings for potential strength (whereas engines like Leela have plateaued for some time, NNUE engines continue to make progress with no current ceiling in sight)
• ease of use (works on the CPU and does not require an advanced GPU)

The success stories of Komodo; proof that the engine is elite.

• Komodo has played in the ICT 2010 in Leiden, and further in the CCT12 and CCT14.
• Komodo had its first tournament success in 2013, when it won the CCT15 with a score of 6½/7.
• Komodo also fared very well in the TCEC competition, where in Season 4, it lost only eight out of its 53 games and managed to reach Stage 4 (Quarterfinals), against very strong competition which were running on eight cores (Komodo was running on a single processor).
• In TCEC Season 5, it won the superfinal against Stockfish. It managed to reach the Superfinal in TCEC Season 6 again, but this time, it lost to Stockfish. Komodo regained the title in TCEC Season 7, defeating Stockfish in the superfinal. In TCEC Season 8, Komodo defeated Stockfish again in the superfinal.
• Komodo won both the World Computer Chess Championship[18] and World Computer Software Championship in 2016.
• Komodo once again won the World Computer Chess Championship and World Blitz in 2017.
• Komodo came third in TCEC Season 11 losing to Stockfish and Houdini, and came second in Season 12 losing to Stockfish. Final standings can be viewed here. Stockfish's extreme gamplay can be viewed here.

Lets have a look at how Komodo (playing Black) crushes its opponent in the Open Catalan.

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