Komodo 11.2

Lemmie also add in. The reason I use Komodo is not because its stronger than stockfish. If anything its slightly weaker (Unless the time controls are really long). Komodo has more settings I can change depending on what I need.
All of my opening preparation and the prep I provide for my students is done with both stockfish and Komodo. Using both I have been able to refute one or the others ideas.

Both calculate slightly different but I like the width of Komodo it makes it worth my money. Even if I never get to play my move 15 novelties its nice to know I have them in the bag and my students can be extremely well prepared as well.

Yeh its 100 dollars more or less. Yeh its not technically stronger than stockfish. But it provides different ideas.

If stockfish was more flexible and I could adjust the width of calculation I probably would not need Komodo but since I cant I use both. For 99% of people I would not recommend Komodo to. Depends if you need the extra flexibility and you can burn the money.

If you are just analyzing your own OTB games and occasional master games Stockfish is the way to go. If your doing massive amounts of preparation, very deep puzzles (that require width), and doing more than normal peoples stuff getting both is a good idea.

Oh if anyone needs position analysis done with Komodo let me know ill be happy to run it through Komodo/Stockfish/Fritz.

@21 That's the other thing, though. With cloud engine analysis available today, it makes a commercial engine purchase even *less* necessary. That said, if I was using the engine for the kind of analysis that you're doing, of course I would see the value in being able to have both and of course I would buy K 11.2.

Have you compared it to the asmfish these guys linked me to? (K11.2.2?) I honestly don't see how Komodo can *beat* it with any decent sample size. Not at 5+3, not at 60+30. That's my guess. I've see a ton of K11+ move suggestions and analysis on CB's Let's Check and as said...I think asmfish would run all over it. If it doesn't now, it will by next week or the one after. It's just ridiculously strong.

I tried asmfish against stockfish just a little bit ago while i was on break from doing my opening work.

1 core each 5+0 time control. 4096mb hash
4 Draws
1 win for asmfish (where asmfish had very good positions in most of the games but only managed to convert 1)

overnight if i dont have pressing stuff to do (with my opening prep) ill try asmfish stockfish on longer time controls. Never optimized Komodo for playing against other engines so Id really expect Komodo to do poorly (I remember trying K10.2 against SF 8 with 30+30 time control and stockfish beat up badly something like 4-2) But I had komodo set up for the analysis settings i use (so a typical single position would use all the time it did in the game). But for straight up analysis of some random chess position Komodo is best if it has overnight (a few hours) to analyse.

Maybe something I can try when I go on vacation in a few days would be like trying a very long match. Say asmfish vs komodo 2 cores each and 16gb ram. Make it 12 hours for 40 moves and 12 hours after that with some large increment. And have komodo use the settings for analysis. Possibly still thats not even long enough for K to beat asmfish. But its a good try/matchup.

I would never buy a chess engine when stockfish is free.

Back in the 90's or whatever there was Houdini that was the best. Just wait 10-15 years and there will probably be new names and nobody will remember Stockfish or Komodo. Actually stockfish will probably still be near the top, or there will be an alternative for free/cheap.

There are more positions where Stockfish is better than where Komodo is.

So i understand @Rairden.

Houdini 6 is announced and planned for release next month.

@chessanalyst: The results would be interesting, but you couldn't conclude much about playing strength from such a match.

Too few games played. Flip a coin 4 times, heads "beats" tails 3-1. What to conclude? Not much :)

Also, the beauty of SF being open source is that there are people who have made those sorts of alterations to SF.

McBrain (an SF tweak by Michael Byrne), has options to do things like turn off null move, turn off reductions ,etc.

These result in playing strength decrease on average, of course, but help in some positions.

That's what they all say. When I did some testing with top engines there never was a significant difference. So life is easier for me, I've overcome this issue.

There is no reason to get the latest greatest strongest engine, unless you're top 10 in the world.
Kinda reminds me of beginner joggers who don't know how to run but absolutely need to buy the best running shoes.

#21
I use SF for deep opening preparation. Don't have money to spend on K. K8 is free I sometimes use it.

@ #28: But SF Dev *is* the latest, greatest, strongest engine :D