Stockfish DD released

Stockfish DD has been released on the Stockfish web site. It's a little stronger than Stockfish 4, the previous release.

Stockfish DD is a tribute to Don Dailey, who passed away about a week ago due to leukemia. Don was the programmer for the Komodo engine, which is currently battling Stockfish in the TCEC season 2 superfinal.

http://stockfishchess.org/

Thanks for posting. Sad that Mr. Dailey passed away.

Rest In Piece Don Dailey.

wow...I just tried out the new Stockfish DD program in a 50 game match of 5 minute blitz against the old top dawggg Houdini3 PRO. Stockfish totally destroyed the old champ: he won 27 of the games and lost only 5! In other words: Total domination, and here we are talking about Houdini3 PRO! Gotta say tho, it feels good that the top engine is a crowd sourced one. Everything becomes more interesting when lots of different people can add into the openly avaliable strategic pool :)

Stockfish DD IS pretty impressive, but those results seem too good to be true. This testing chart is showing that Houdini 3 still has a slight edge at fast time controls:

http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/rating_list_all.html

Although 50 games between two closely matched engines isn't all that accurate, it should at least be starting to approach the ballpark of accuracy. Your results would indicate that Stockfish has a +164 elo advantage, which isn't really believable.

Well, check out this one. 

http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/cgi/engine_details.cgi?match_length=30&print=Details&each_game=1&eng=Stockfish%20DD%2064-bit%204CPU#Stockfish_DD_64-bit_4CPU

Its beating all top engines (Including Houdini 4!) via 40/40 time control! :D

Yep, it does better at longer time controls, but Shanahanahan was talking about 5 minute games.

Hello!

I have never seen or used a chess engine, but since this Stockfish appears to be free, I thought I might take a look at it.

What I would like to do is play against it once in a while, not analizing games so much. Is it feasible? Couldn't find a FAQ section in the Stockfish website.

Wikipedia states about the chess engines that they tipically do "not interact directly with the user. Most chess engines do not have their own graphical user interface (GUI) but are rather console applications that communicate with a GUI such as XBoard, WinBoard or glChess via a standard protocol".

I don't understand what this GUI is, but sounds complicated. I just wish to play offline (without an Internet connection) on my PC against a computer with an adjustable strength, pretty much like in Chess.com's Live Chess.

Any advise / useful tutorial links?

Thank you.

Jump in, the water is fine.

Download a chess engine and play around with it.  Get your feet wet.  Play around with the menus and settings.  It's not that hard. 

Scid vs. PC, Arena, WinBoard, and several other GUIs are just a few of the many different GUIs to choose from.  After you try one, you'll have more specific questions, I'm sure, but you've got to start somewhere.

This is an old link, but still a good one for beginners to understand the different between a GUI and an engine.

Hi Xavier; Any of the GUIs that Ed mentioned should work. Regarding your question about Stockfish - Yes, it may work for you. Stockfish has an adjustable skill level from 0 to 20. At its weakest setting of 0, it will play at close to your level, so give it a try. If you need an engine that can be set even weaker, a simple choice could be the Ufim 8.02 engine. You can download it here:

http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/Ufim.html

Just install either Stockfish or Ufim (or both!) as a UCI engine in your chosen GUI. Then adjust the engine configuration settings, and you should be fine.

P.S. - Links to the mentioned GUIs:

http://www.playwitharena.com/

http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/index.html

http://www.open-aurec.com/wbforum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=51528

Hi

I've just installed Stockfish DD in SCID vs PC. It works fine but the engine settings apart from the 0 - 20 strength setting are a bit cryptic, do you know of any tutorial for fine tweaks in how the engine performs?

If there is any such tutorial, I'm not aware of it.

Most of the settings can be left on the default setting.

A few important settings are:

Threads - The default is 1. If you have a multi-core PC, you might want to set this number higher. (Just be aware of other apps that are running, and your PC's temperature.)

Hash - This is the size of your hash transposition table in megabytes. The optimum setting depends on your available free RAM and the time controls the engine is using.

Ponder - Check this box if you want the engine to think on your time. (When running engine-engine tournaments, uncheck this setting.)

MultiPV - Stands for "multiple principle variations". The default is 1. If you want the engine to show more than one variation, set this number higher.

Thanks for the advice, I have 16 gig of ram & a 6 core processor so I'll play around with it, if I get any meaningful results I'll post it for others. I'm a bit surprised that the Stockfish ppl haven't done something about a good tweaking tutorial.

Ok, I'll go out & get one tomorrow, any idea on price?

MrEdCollins and EscherehcsE, thank you very much! 

Welcome back ARB genius.

Thanks, I was speaking tongue in cheek, I have a custom built gaming computer that will run Rage at 450 megatexels/sec. Its more than enough to run a Chess engine.

But more to the tune of this thread I'm running Stockfish DD on SCID vs PC & I'm very impressed, I've tweaked a couple of settings although it probably didn't need it. Now I've had it for a few days I can thoroughly reccomend it.

I have both stock 4 and stock DD and when I tried DD vs another engine it got to -1.3 whereas Stock 4 brought it back to win because if it is relevant the apps I use them in are droidfish for DD and analyse this for stockfish 4 found on the android play store but I don‘t know what engine he was using though

The stockfish engine run in houdini 4?