For the Analysis board they are using Stockfish.js 8. I assume they are using the same for the play vs computer with hard limits on how many ply they allow the engine to go, likely with some other tweaks to hobble it more on the lower levels.
Not sure if they use the same for the bots in Live though.
For the play vs computer and analysis, the code runs on the client, so hardware does play into it. For the Live bots, they are playing on the server hardware.
So I'm guessing the Analysis mode basically runs the computer at max power, with no handicaps (i.e. Level 10) and lets it find the best move it's capable of, up to some sort of time or depth limit?
I don't know if they handicap it based on membership level but it does have a max ply it will go to, at least if seemed that way the last couple of times I tested.
Lichess.org seems to be using Stockfish 14+. Why would a free chess site use a stronger version of the engine than a pay-site?
Chess.com analysis is now using Stockfish 14.1 NNUE.
That's only an option for position analysis and currently Chrome only
Why would it be browser-dependent as to which version of Stockfish chess.com uses?
Why would it be browser-dependent as to which version of Stockfish chess.com uses?
Good question. A friend recently told me he was using Stockfish 14 on Chess.com and it surprised me because SF12 is the highest option I'm given. It turns out he's using Microsoft Edge and I'm using Firefox. Not only did it seem strange that different browsers are served different versions of Stockfish, but I'm a paid member (Gold) and my friend is a free member.
(Related question: does it make that much difference whether I'm looking at 12 or 14?)
(Related question: does it make that much difference whether I'm looking at 12 or 14?)
Virtually no difference at all.
SF 12 is already over 3500 in strength.
SF 14 is perhaps around 50 Elo points stronger. The difference is so small that it doesn't really make much of a difference to humans, when analyzing.
Why would it be browser-dependent as to which version of Stockfish chess.com uses?
Good question. A friend recently told me he was using Stockfish 14 on Chess.com and it surprised me because SF12 is the highest option I'm given. It turns out he's using Microsoft Edge and I'm using Firefox. Not only did it seem strange that different browsers are served different versions of Stockfish, but I'm a paid member (Gold) and my friend is a free member.
(Related question: does it make that much difference whether I'm looking at 12 or 14?)
It's available on Chromium based browsers but the site will be bringing it to others.
It's available on Chromium based browsers but the site will be bringing it to others.
Thanks!
Why would it be browser-dependent as to which version of Stockfish chess.com uses?
Each browser has its own memory limit per tab
I'm curious about which version of Stockfish Chess.com is currently using and a few related things. I noticed that Level 10 computer is rated ELO 2600. Would that be Stockfish 8 or is it more complicated than that? Also, does anyone know how many moves deep the chess engine on Chess.com thinks, or is it not simply brute forcing but also doing some pruning to only certain lines? Given that Stockfish is open source, does Chess.com pretty much always use the latest version? Does the strength of the chess engine vary significantly depending on the device? E.g. laptop vs cell phone? Any thoughts would be much appreciated!