1/11/2024 – Timing is a key factor in chess. As noted by the inimitable Bobby Fischer: “Chess is a matter of delicate judgement, knowing when to punch and how to duck”. GM Sundararajan Kidambi explores this all-important theme using games by Levon Aronian, Vishy Anand and Stockfish/Leela! | Photo: Amruta Mokal

6/30/2020 – Chess engines are programs with character and each engine has its own way of playing. That is why it makes sense to analyze with different engines and that is how grandmasters get the maximum out of the engines. Houdini is an engine with a marked character and on the occasion of its 10th birthday Stephan-Oliver Platz takes a look at its development. @StockfishLegalNotice

5/28/2020 – The program Komodo 13 was consistently one of the three rating leaders in all computer lists – in fact it was often on place number one. Now we are releasing a new version, Komodo 14, which is even stronger (more than 40 Elo points). But apart from pure strength this program displays superb positional play. And it can be set to different playing styles: aggressive, defensive, active, positional, endgame, beginner and human. This allows you to optimize your analysis: switch the engine over to “aggressive” whenever you suspect that the position offers enough attacking potential for a win!

4/28/2020 – Being the second of Anish Giri, Grandmaster Erwin l'Ami was kind enough to talk about the Candidates Tournament 2020 and how they experienced the whole situation from beginning to end in Yekaterinburg. In spite of wearing a mask in the air plane, to visiting the doctor twice a day, l'Ami and Giri were focusing on the tournament - they did not give in to the fear about the pandemic. | Photos: Alina l'Ami

9/18/2019 – The expression is used to convey the idea that someone’s work and achievements were only possible thanks to the predecessors they build upon, and this is unquestionably true of Fat Fritz. You may think you know when or where the tale starts, but what if we told you that it all really started with a visionary computer scientist 60 years ago in 1959? | Photo: IBM

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.

1/31/2019 – AlphaZero became a worldwide sensation when it defeated the world's strongest chess engine in a long match just hours after being fed the rules of the game. At the time, Garry Kasparov said that it had shaken chess to its roots. In the opinion of Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, the authors of the book 'Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI' this all-new silicon monster developed by DeepMind has helped us discover that there is lots of fresh potential in chess. ADITYA PAI spoke with the authors about their book, the impact AlphaZero has (and will have) on our royal game and whether chess will be solved one day in the light of such technological advancements.

1/30/2019 – Until now, chess programs mostly worked according to the so-called alpha-beta pruning search algorithm. The spectacular Deep Mind project Alpha Zero is based on the Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). The Komodo developers, too, are now increasingly relying on this method — with success. STEPHEN OLIVER PLATZ explains the difference and shows the progress. | Photo: (Komodo Dragon) Ryan Vaarsi, CC BY 2.0

12/20/2018 – To celebrate the festival we are offering you a €10 ChessBase voucher for the ChessBase online shop. It is valid for all product groups. One is of particular topical interest: the London System. We have started a new product series: Powerbase. It gives you high-quality edited games, many annotated — perfect for getting to know an opening system and the ideas behind it thoroughly. Take a look and get yourself the Christmas gift best suited to your needs. You have 48 hours to retrieve the voucher!

12/7/2018 – It was a long time coming, but the wait is over. After nearly a full year, being ping-ponged from one peer reviewer to the next, the final paper on AlphaZero is out, shedding light on a number of hitherto unknown or misunderstood elements in its construction, not to mention some clarifications and corrections. These include sample code to help implement their work and all the games of the match against Stockfish, of which 20 were specially chosen by GM Matthew Sadler. | Graphic: Deep Mind

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!

6/19/2018 – The "Top Chess Engine Championships" (TCEC) is a competition of the world's best computer programs which play in several divisions. The strongest programs start in "Division Premier". TCEC Season 12 just came to an and was won by the new Komodo 12, place two went to Stockfish. On Monday, June 18, Komodo 12 and Stockfish started to play their 100-game superfinal.

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.

4/26/2018 – It might sound like a joke, but it is not: the revolutionary techniques used to create Alpha Zero, the famous AI chess program developed by DeepMind, are now being used to engineer an engine that runs on the PC. This project has now been underway for about two months, and the engine, Leela Chess Zero, is already quite strong, playing at 2700 on good hardware, and is freely available. As will be seen, just about every aspect of this new engine is revolutionary and breaks all the paradigms that had dominated the field until now.

2/14/2018 – The "Top Chess Engine Championship", TCEC for short, is considered a kind of unofficial computer world championship. Currently the 11th season is played, now in the form of a league with promotion and relegation. After the preliminaries, the "Premier League" started on Tuesday with the eight top programs. S.O. Platz gives an overview of the history of this unofficial chess computer world championship.

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!

12/20/2017 – Searching for something to give to a loved one (or perhaps a treat for yourself!) this holiday season? Here are a few ideas from us, ranging from edifying to edible! Whether you're looking for stocking stuffers, or something digital (for the procrastinators among you), we've got you covered.

12/13/2017 – In recent years the TCEC tournament has turned into the unofficial Computer Chess World Championship. This year Houdini and Komomo made it to the final, a 100 game match. But even before all 100 games were played Houdini decided the match in its favour. In an interview during the match the programmers of Komodo and Houdini revealed their views on current developments in computer chess.

11/23/2017 – Over the years the "Thoresen Chess Engines Competition" (TCEC) has become the unofficial Computer World Championship and the very best programs start in this tournament. After two qualifiers, season 10 now finishes with the superfinal in which Komodo faces Houdini. They play 100 games against each other, and the games are shared live on PlayChess. As a bonus, we bring you a brief modern history of computer chess. @StockfishLegalNotice

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...

7/20/2016 – Komodo is a chess program that is different from the rest. Its search makes greater use of extensions than any other top engine, which allows Komodo to often see deeper than the others, even if it is displaying a slightly lower search depth. Still, have you ever wondered about the birth of a top chess engine? Here is its tale and the actors whose passion and genius fueled its creation.

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.

10/29/2012 – In 2009 Robert Houdart, a Belgian structural engineer working on nuclear power plants and astronomy, wiled away his time waiting for a telescope mirror by writing a chess program. To everyone's suprise it turned out to be the strongest engine around. Now version three is out and will be soon available from ChessBase. We asked the author to explain the genesis of this remarkable chess engine.