8/20/2019 – Some people keep a Komodo dragon in their yard, and some keep it in their living room, safely inside their computer! In this interview with Grandmaster Larry Kaufman, one of the creators of Komodo, the World Chess Software Champion, we gain new insight into the latest release of the popular chess program. Komodo has gained strength both in the standard version, but particularly in the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), making the engine a valuable research tool for correspondence games, and openings.

5/20/2019 – This program thinks like no other chess engine in the world. Inspired by the ideas of AlphaZero and Leela, the authors set out to implement a "Monte Carlo Tree Search". The result: Komodo 13 MCTS – an engine which looks for candidate moves in an incredible new way, and finds moves no other engine can. It enhances the traditional brute force engine that has reached well over 3400 points on the Elo scale.

9/5/2018 – The Swedish Grandmaster HARRY SCHÜSSLER was a commentator on the Computer Chess World Championships in Sweden. Schüssler admittedly does not understand much about computer chess, per se, but does knows about chess itself. The grandmaster looks back on the Computer World Championship and describes his impressions of the engine games and what lessons can be learned from them. | Photos: ICGA / Günes

6/26/2018 – Does correspondence chess have any meaning in 2018, when chess engines definitely overcame the best humans already back in about 2005? Is it useful for a chess player to study a database of correspondence chess games? Or to use it as a reference? Discover more in an interview with Wolff Morrow, one of the top ten correspondence chess players in the USA!

5/28/2018 – This is what the chess world has been waiting for: one of the strongest chess engines in the world, but with access to the most important AI enhancement of recent times: Komodo 12 can be switched to a Monte Carlo search, very similar to the one employed by AlphaZero. This engine achieves over 3000 Elo, but more importantly, it plays more aggressively and more human-like. Komodo Monte Carlo is not primarily concerned with material advantage and provides a completely new strategic evaluation of the game.

3/11/2018 – Today, in the time of strong engines, analysing chess games seems to be easy: fire up the engine and let the computer work out the lines. This is useful but does not help your chess as much as analysing actively. ChessBase offers a lot features that help to analyse, from entering games to analysing professionally. | Drawing: ChessBase

3/5/2018 – Nodes, and lots of them! When you analyse with an engine do you understand all the data in the engine window? Fritz calculates with 2317 kN/sec and a cloud engine with 121 MN/sec? Sure, this has to do with the speed and the performance of the engine but what exactly are nodes? | Photo: Nadja Wittmann (ChessBase)

1/16/2018 – This article is dedicated to some brilliant games played by Fritz 16, annotated nearly move-by-move by Davide Nastasio. In fact we can learn a lot from these engine vs engine games, especially when compared to our own mental chess dos and don'ts, and asking ourselves some questions as to why some moves — even apparently good ones — were not played. Often we hear the advice to study master games to improve our chess level, and if you watch these games, you'll gain a lot of insight and ideas for your next tournament!

12/22/2017 – Other chess reviewers have been at best dismissal and at worst harshly critical of The Secret of Chess, by Lyudmil Tsvetkov. However, according to GM David Smerdon, this book is a one of a kind work that legitimately has the potential to revolutionise how we think about chess. | Photo: Smerdon at the Tromsø Chess Olympiad, by Andreas Kontokanis CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

11/30/2017 – Whether a pro or an amateur, after a blitz game online, we want to know where we went wrong. Was our attack right? Was the opponent’s? Did we miss a simple shot or defense? Sure we can stop and turn on an engine to analyze it, but that still takes time. Not anymore thanks to the new automatic analysis in Fritz 16. Read on to find out more!

10/30/2017 – This week GM Jon Speelman takes a break from amateur games to look at a new theme: when your engines let you down. Two famous examples from World Championship history — Kasparov vs. Anand (1995) and Kramnik vs. Leko (2004), plus two recent ones from the Isle of Man and the European Club Cup. Want Jon to take a look at your games? Send them in, and if selected, not only will you get free detailed commentary of your games by one of chess’s great authors and instructors, and former world no. 4 player, but you also win a free three-month ChessBase Premium Account! | Photo: Chess.com / Maria Emelianova

10/18/2017 – Houdini 6 continues where its predecessor left off, and adds solid 60 Elo points to this formidable engine, once again making Houdini the strongest chess program currently available on the market. Read the details. @StockfishLegalNotice

10/8/2017 – This week's games are by John Thornton, a Welshman who was 70 earlier this year. Years ago, he sent me some corrections for my book 'Analysing the Endgame' and he says, very pleasingly that: "I recently went back to that to provide material for a session that I ran at a local club where I used analysis of the famous Spassky vs. Fischer game — the analysis you gave holding up exceedingly well against computer analysis."

5/29/2017 – The latest and greatest chess engine is here, Komodo 11, helping chess players analyze and understand games and positions with ever greater skill and knowledge. That said, while there is no question the engine is an essential part of the equation, when you buy Komodo 11 at Chessbase, you get a series of other benefits such as a 6-month Premium subscription to ChessBase Account. Learn what’s new in Komodo 11 and why you should not delay in adding it to your stable.

12/30/2016 – About a month ago Houdini 5 appeared. But how strong is the new engine by Robert Houdart? Is it even stronger than Komodo 10? A lot of users want to find out and use the Fritz 15 graphical user interface to let engines play a match against each other. We show you what to keep in mind to give both engines a fair chance in such a match.

12/4/2016 – Robert Houdart, creator of Houdini, has worked for three years to develop a new version of Houdini. Which can boast of a remarkable increase in strength: thanks to a number of new and improved functions the Houdini 5 is 200 Elo points stronger than its predecessor. Which shows. A not yet fully developed version of Houdini 5 came second at the "Top Chess Engine Championship" (TCEC, Season 9) with 56.0/62 - 50 wins, 12 draws. Impressive...

7/5/2016 – Its stiffest competition came from the German program Jonny, running on a giant 2400-core machine. With only 48 cores the US program Komodo finished the computer tournament in Leiden, Netherlands, equal first with Jonny, then went on to win a hard-fought tiebreak, making it the 22nd World Computer Chess Champion. It may interest you to know that the latest version of our flagship chess engine, Komodo 10, was released just a month ago.

6/9/2015 – Currently there are two programs vying for the title of strongest chess engine in the world, and both have seen new releases in recent months. Komodo and Stockfish currently top all computer lists, in that order. But they have different personalities, as John Hartmann shows in his engine review. "Shows" includes both engines simultaneously analyzing in an interesting realtime video.

5/20/2015 – Those three words summarize Komodo‘s evolution, as it uses multiple cores – eight and more – to run even faster than previous version. It uses the software speeds gained to add more knowledge into ist calculation, and as a result defeats previous number one engines by unheard of scores. Delivery will start on May 29, but you can pre-order the program now.

3/16/2015 – His initial foray into working with a chess engine ended in near total disaster, when he was forced to think for himself the old human frailties come to the surface. In round six GM Danny Gormally had worked out the position after move seven virtually to checkmate. "There’s no way in a million years I would have been able to find all the moves," he writes. The engine found them in seconds.

9/28/2014 – Three chess programs today dominate the scene, with new versions supplanting each other in the computer rating lists. Currently Komodo is leading, and conveniently is released as a brand-new ChessBase engine. But is it really the one that ambitious chess players should use (or switch to)? Chess book reviewer John Hartmann offers some very useful advice.

9/19/2014 – It is, as we told you, a different kind of chess engine, with sounder positional play and deeper ideas than other chess engines. But it remains tactically sound. Over the years it has been consistently rated in the top three on most major chess engine rating lists – currently it is number one. Here is some information about this remarkable chess playing program, and the men who created it.

9/17/2014 – Komodo 8 is different than other chess programs - and Komodo 8 is stronger. If you want to check this claim and the program you will soon have a good opportunity to do so. Thanks to the Playchess All Engine Rapid Masters Fall 2014 tournament organized by Clemens Keck. Here engines can be tested and money can be won. First prize: 350 Euros.

9/10/2014 – It is a different kind of chess engine. It makes extensive use of extensions, which leads to sounder positional play and the discovery of ideas that are much deeper and more subtle than other leading engines. In the process Komodo remains tactically sound and has achieved the top ranking in the computer rating lists. The latest version has now been released by ChessBase.