The Komodo Files – working with a chess engine (2)

The Komodo Files – 2

Danny Gormally decided it was finally time to work properly with a chess engine

The London Chess Classic did not go well for me. If you include the Super Rapidplay before the FIDE Open, I drew and lost a number of games I should have been strolling on paper. Clearly my chess was stuck in a rut. Probably had been for years to tell the truth. Perhaps it was time to jump on the gravy train and do what all the top players seem to be doing these days: work with an engine.

I asked Chess & Bridge if they could send me a copy of Komodo, which was rumoured to be one of the strongest engines around, if not the strongest. I remember this Icelandic GM telling me about it a couple of years ago at the Scottish Championships and had vowed to get my hands on it ever since. The DVD duly arrived through the post a day later. In trembling anticipation I loaded it up on my laptop.

It didn’t take long before I got an insight into Komodo’s fearsome strength. In a number of training games I was brutally savaged. And, as described in the first part of this report, my initial experience of preparing with Komodo ended in near total disaster, although that wasn’t the machine’s fault. Only when I was forced to think for myself did the old human frailties come to the surface. In round six, however, I was paired against a 16-year-old French girl. I noticed with Black she played a slightly dubious line in one variation. It was time to put Komodo back on the case.

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A nice easy win with the white pieces and because of Komodo’s help I had virtually worked out the position after 7.Rb1 to checkmate. If I had found this 7.Rb1 idea myself and had no engine to consult, there’s no way in a million years I would have been able to find all these moves. I might have been able to see some of the ideas and felt that White had a promising attack, but it would have taken weeks of analysis to get close to the point that the engine can in seconds.

The huge advantage of consulting an engine is that it can tell you if the attack is just winning. It’s interesting that in all those lines in the game where the black king was in danger, the assessment just shot up really quickly. Komodo is really big on king safety.

After the game we had a pleasant post mortem and it was only later that the guilt kicked in. Is that what I’ve been reduced to, beating well spoken 16-year-old girls with computer analysis? I mean what happened to the spirit of the game? Surely I could have beaten her without having to prepare some line to checkmate with the help of an engine?

In a way, it’s a form of mental doping. OK, it’s not as bad as using a computer during the game of course, but it is the way that top chess is going now, just engine versus engine with humans reduced to the role of pale imitators of our metal masters. That’s certainly what I thought walking around the London Classic. All these young players like Caruana and Giri who work extensively with computers, their play is quite frankly dull. It’s too safe. It’s like we’re all afraid to make mistakes nowadays, because we’re all too keen to try and replicate the nearly flawless play of a machine. Creative chess is dead.

The other danger of working with computers also rapidly became clear to me during the course of Hastings. It was making me lazy. I wasn’t bothering to do my own analysis, my own work, because the computer was doing it all for me. When I was forced to think for myself, I felt quite uncomfortable. That was shown by my result, which was quite poor.

Clearly computers can be a very powerful tool when applied correctly, but you need to be careful that you control them, not the other way around.

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Komodo Chess 8 – Bringing creativity back to chess

 
Komodo is a chess program that is different from the rest. Its search makes greater use of extensions than any other top engine, which results in a slightly lower average depth, but helps the actual playing strength significantly. It also allows Komodo to see deeper than any other engine, even if it is displaying a lower search depth.

The evaluation of Komodo differs from its main rivals because, unlike the automated tuning generally employed, Komodo's evaluation represents a blend of both automated tuning and the judgment of a grandmaster and computer expert (Larry Kaufman). The programming team have avoided terms and weights that don't make sense to him, even if they happen to test a bit positively. Automated evaluations are subject to rather large sample error, and applying some chess judgment appears to be beneficial, both in results and in the reasonableness of reported evaluations.

Komodo is primarily known for superb positional play. Of course it also one of the top few engines in tactical strength as well, but the programmers have not been willing to sacrifice positional play just to score better on tactical problem sets. It is generally recognized that all good engines are far stronger tactically than any human player, but that when positional judgment is involved, top grandmasters are still superior in many positions to any engine. Therefore it makes sense to emphasize positional play rather than tactical skill: it is better to improve one's weakest point rather than just to further improve the strongest feature.

Larry Kaufman of the USA is a man of many talents. Not only is he a grandmaster and the
2008 World Senior Champion, but he’s also a shogi expert and the brains behind Komodo 8!

Komodo is especially useful for opening analysis, because as an opening specialist Larry Kaufman has always paid close attention to checking whether the program's evaluations in the opening agree in general with accepted theory. Another point in which Komodo excels is the play and evaluation of positions with material imbalance, which it handles more correctly than other top engines. The endgame of Komodo has been improved by the use of Syzygy Tablebases, which are considered the best for actual play and game analysis as they provide only the most essential information to save time and memory.

Another unique feature in Komodo is its superior handling of multiple processors, using a method that is quite different than the usual one. This is most noticeable when using eight or more cores. There is little doubt that Komodo 8 is and will remain the top rated commercial chess engine on most rating lists.

Komodo Chess 8 includes:

• The Komodo 8 engine, which can support up to 64 processor cores and 16 GB of hash memory
• The new Deep Fritz 64-bit program interface (+ 32 bit program interface)
• Online access to the world’s largest analysis database “Let’s Check”, with over 200 million extensively analyzed positions (free access to “Let’s Check” until December 31, 2016)
• Access to ChessBase engine cloud
• Premium membership to Playchess.com for six months
• Database with over 1.5 million games

System requirements

Minimum: Pentium III 1 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Windows Vista, XP (Service Pack 3), 7/8, DirectX9, 256 MB graphics card, DVD-ROM drive, Windows Media Player 9 and Internet access for program activation, access to Playchess.com, Let’s Check and program updates.

Recommended: PC Intel i7 (Quadcore), 4 GB RAM, Windows 8.1, DirectX10, 512 MB graphics card, 100% DirectX10-compatible sound card, Windows Media Player 11, DVD-ROM drive and Internet access for program activation, access to Playchess.com, Let's Check and program updates.

Price: €79.90 (€67.14 without VAT for customers outside the EU; $86.62 without VAT). Languages: English, German. ISBN: 978-3-86681-442-4; EAN: 9783866814424. Delivery: Download, Post

Order Komodo Chess 8 at Chess & Bridge – or in the ChessBase shop