Best Chess Engine for Analysis for 1700 - 2000 ELO Players

We know which chess engines are 3000+ elo and would suggest the BEST moves. I want a chess engine that would analyze my games and suggest strong moves but not necessary the best which I cannot understand anyway. Unless it's a forced mate in 4 or 5 or a 3, 5 move combination that gains material advantage. Any suggestion?

Just get any strong engine and set it to show you its top 3 choices. That's what I do.

Then I use my brain to decide which of those 3 makes sense. And that's the move I explore.

If none of the 3 make sense, then I play the move I like, and see how far off it is. Sometimes the engine ends up liking my move best! (Of course I'm not giving it much time to think in these cases.)

And of course if the #1 move is a huge favorite (as in there's a tactic or a mate) I will have to look at that line whether the first move makes sense to me or not.

Just get the free Stockfish, and you're good to go. Although as said, ANY modern chess engine player 2500+ and is good enough. I do prefer STockfish over Fritz - it analyzes significantly faster and gives simpler lines, I find, but in 95% of the cases they're identical when there's a clear win. 

I still laugh at all the folks who say 'skip the computer, just use your brain.' Seriously, unless you have a coach who can show you the best lines of play, or you're a high level player already, you'll most likely just end up doing the same incorrect analysis over and over again and just reinforcing your erroneous ways.   

The computer is far from perfect, but memorizing computer refutations of your errors is orders of magnitude better than restudying your incorrect analysis in hopes of improving. 

Obviously, if you have a chess coach, listening to their analysis will be better than the computer, but in the absence of a coach, computer + you >>> you alone in terms of analysis. It's not even close.

No one says "skip the computer"...

Actually, no less an authority than Jeremy Silman said as much here at chess.com:

http://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-engines-are-not-your-friend

Silman is a great teacher but this is a poor article. According to Silman amateurs should never use chess engines because:

* Some amateurs don't understand the limitations of chess engines.
* Engines might show problems in old grandmaster games.
* Engines did show Jeremy Silman's "Amateur Mind" was "filled with errors."
* Engines can be wrong about complex endgames.

These don't sound like strong arguments to me. However, together they are a good argument that chess players should understand the limitations of chess engines.

Every player who wants to improve uses a computer, but as the last step in their analysis, not the first. A computer will never give you plans of ideas, it will help you see where your calculations went wrong.

Oh, bother. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.

This is as silly as refusing to look at game annotations while reading a chess book.

Sometimes I go the whole nine-yards. I play over a game "Guess the Moves" style without notes, then I go over the mistakes I may have made while guessing the moves, and then finally I go over the game again with a chess engine and the game annotations. It's rewarding but I don't have the time to do that with every game.

Sometimes, especially when I'm studying an opening line, I'll play through dozens of games quickly with an eye on the engine move evaluations. That's not perfect, but it has its benefits as well.

Get a better engine. It's not going to explain the moves in English anyway, so why get anything other than the best move?

They absolutely will.  An engine is a tool like anything else.  You have to know how to use it properly.

Stockfish 6 is plenty darn powerful ... and free to boot.

I have found that playing theoretical won positions against strong engines is a good training exercise.

Excellent!

Totally disagree on the computer memorization time being a waste of time. 

Memorizing tons of computer refutations of your incorrect errors in a game is perhaps one of the single BEST ways to improve your game. You're not only filling gaps in your knowledge - you're filling RELEVANT gaps in your knowledge in positions/openings you specifically play, and thus will likely encounter again. (As opposed to studying positions from games that are not your own.)

Memorizing all those CPU moves will automatically imprint into your brain both good pattern recognition as well as naturally train your computational process. If you can memorize a 7-move refutation of your move and visualize it in your head to the end form the start position, you're training your visualization and calculation.  

I think avoiding memorization was one of the biggest pieces of erroneous advice I've ever heard about chess. Memorization is monstrously important in chess - even the players who say they don't study openings and play at a high level, can bang out their opening lines and play out endgames with a good eye to all the traps and tricks purely from memory despite what they say.

I've actually found that what IS a waste of time, is me sitting at a board Silman style, and spending 20 minutes analyzing a position. I almost always have it wrong after 4-ply, and I am better off spending 5 minutes on it, then seeing the computer bust most of my plans after 4-ply. Then I'll spend the 15 minutes i have left reviewing and memorizing the CORRECT solutions and the sidelines. Wayyy more high yield than banging my head on a brick wall with the incorrect solution over and over again. 

Again, practicing wrong moves and wrong thought processes = ingraining bad habits. If you're an IM/GM, ok, trust your judgment - it's probably pretty accurate. If you're a class-level player like most of us, in complex or balanced positions without a clear easy win, you're probably getting it wrong after 3-4 ply and just deluding yourself into thinking you've got it right.

Actually, I for the most part agree with the 'planless' computer.

Computer-plans are pretty good when there's a clear win that just needs to be technically executed. (Like 1.5+ pawn advantage.) The only caveat there is that the CPU 'best' plan doesn't take into account risk of human error - so it takes wayyy too many risks in a won position, instead of doing the human correct plan, and minimize risk - trade off pieces, avoid crazy tactics even if they look winning, and make the game as boring and safe as possible. Computers never play like that in won positions. 

Computers are pretty terrible in giving plans of play in equal positions, which is what most opening books dump you into after giving you a line. The best resource (only resource, actually) I've come across that is good for plans is well annotated games in the opening you want to play. Computers are near-useless here - playing their 'best' line in these equal positions often dumps you into nearly-lost positions that it evals as 0.0 because it can't see a win, but your pieces are beaten back so far that you're literally on the verge of collapse. 

I agree that memorization is useful, but think that you are better off memorizing the games of Morphy. You need understanding to come with memorization. Computer lines in some positions are terribly difficult to understand, but a slightly less efficient human solution is straightforward.

True - but the beauty of the computer is that you can not only memorize the 'main' line that the author/analyst recommends, but you can (and should) memorize all the incorrect lines that you WOULD haved played in that situation and how the computer refutes them. 

That's the best part about computers that books can never match -  reading the book lines gives you the lines the author thinks are important or easily overlooked, but with the computer you can look fairly accurately at ALL the lines that are bothering you about the position for a much, much better understanding of it. Even if it's the engine doing all the heavy lifting and you just rote memorizing the lines it spits out. 

I'm finding there's no substitute for the concrete by-the-move analysis. You can talk all you want about theretical pawn majorities, minor piece imbalances, etc., but without a concrete line forward, it's all for squat. (Boris Gulko brings up this point to his student in his "lessons with a grandmaster book".)

Computer analysis + annotated games are an incredibly powerful resource for study. Same with computer analysis + your own game (regardless of time control.) 

Thanks guys. I still hope there is an engine or a SETTING that would be near what I want.

Until the software guys manage some human-like AI in chess engines, you're out of luck. There are encouraging signs, but it's a ways off.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/541276/deep-learning-machine-teaches-itself-chess-in-72-hours-plays-at-international-master/

Your request is somewhat like asking a GPS to come up with the best route to a destination you personally would want to drive. It can give you the shortest route or a standard route using the main roads, but it can't know your preferences about stop lights or left turns or roads that go through sketchy parts of town.

That said, this article claims the current Komodo plays "flawless positional chess" in addition to being the strongest public chess engine available. So its strength goes beyond the usual engine ability to thread a tactical needle beyond human skill.

http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-best-computer-chess-engines

It's not true, as some commenters have said, that engines are merely tactical savants. There are positional components to engine move evaluations.

While you're at it, stop reading chess books and chess articles and watching chess videos. Those just weaken your ability to analyze chess games on your own.

Not.

Yes, if you rely exclusively on chess engines, you won't develop as a chess player. But it's the 21st century and chess engines are an astonishing tool for chess study.

Anyone serious about chess today uses an engine and finds what works for him or her.

I can't prove it, but I've got to believe the widespread availability of chess engines which play at super-GM levels has been an important component in all the teen masters and grandmasters we see these days.

A chess engine is like having a mute super-GM at your side 24/7. The engine can't explain anything to you. But the engine can tell you this line or that line and give it a numeric value. It's up to you to play Twenty Questions with the engine to figure out why it gives the numbers it does.

In the meantime you can rely on the engine to tell you the immediate tactical truth.

Of course there are still times when the engine gets it wrong. But it's not often and it's up to you to understand the limitations of the engine. That's interesting too.

If you want to walk your chess journey without an engine, bully for you. There's a case for that approach, but I suspect the rest of us who do use engines are going to be fine.