University ItmoDepartment of “Programming Technologies. The best chess programs: engines and shells The most powerful chess program in the world
Footnotes
1 - estimated value of the Elo rating. The SSDF rating list was taken as a basis with an attempt, if possible, to bring it closer to the FIDE rating scale. See the calculation method below.
2 - as a rule, with an error of ± 50%. The speed of the search may vary depending on the version of the program, the stage of the game, the type of position, the depth of the search, etc. See sources of information below.Legend
1976 MicroChess was developed over six months in 1976 for the KIM-1 personal computer. The buyer was sent only the text of the program, which he had to type on the keyboard himself. The first copy was mailed on December 18, 1976. It appears to have been the first personal computer program to be sold freely. Later versions 1.5, 2.0 were released. The program has received wide acclaim. Ported to many platforms, including pre-installed in some chess calculators.
1977. Chess Challenger - the first personal chess microcomputer made in the form of a chessboard. Announced in January 1977. It went on sale in March of the same year. The model being sold had the vertical and horizontal notation mixed up, partly due to the rush to market, and partly because descriptive notation rather than algebraic was used in the United States in those years. The program was originally written by Ron Nelson for the Altair 8800 PC. A working whiteboard layout of the program was created during 1976.
1978. Sargon has been in development since September 1977. Won the first tournament for microcomputers held within the framework of the conference The second West Coast Computer Faire in March 1978. Scored 5 out of 5 possible points, 2 points ahead of Chess Challenger and MicroChess 1.5, who shared the second place. Sargon was later ported to the Apple II for the 6502 microprocessor.
1979. As early as 1978, the Sargon II competed in the 1978 ACM North American Championship on a Jupiter III personal computer, supposedly overclocked to 4.3 MHz. Took 5th place, ahead of many supercomputers. In 1979, the TRS-80 personal computer version was released. It has also been ported to many other PCs. In the same 1979, the Sargon 2.5 version was released, which was preinstalled in Applied Concepts electronic chessboards. In 1979-80. Sargon 2.5 showed performances of 1641 and 1736 points on the USCF scale in two tournaments.
1980. Fidelity Chess Challenger X - experimental tournament model. Won the first World Microcomputer Championship WMCCC 1980. It was released to the market the following year under the brand name Fidelity Champion Sensory Chess Challenger (at 2 MHz). She took 3rd place in the North American championship for "big machines" ACM 1980. Moreover, in the last round, around the 26th move, in the game against the future champion, she had an absolutely won position, but still lost. For the ACM 1980 championship, the processor was overclocked to 4 MHz.
We have to enter an experimental model in the table, but there were simply no other worthy candidates that year.
1981. The 1981 WMCCC Championship was won by Fidelity X, another experimental model. For the championship, the processor was overclocked to 5 MHz. It was released to the market at the end of the same year (inaccurate - the data varies) under the brand Fidelity Elite Champion Sensory Chess Challenger. Apparently it was the prototype of the future Elite A / S series, Prestige, and the Sargon III personal computer program released in 1983.
1982. Prestige models differed from Elite A/S in appearance. Programs were often interchangeable. For example, the program from the Prestige model was used in early versions of the Elite A/S in 1983, until the Elite A/S program itself was prepared. In turn, starting from WMCCC 1983, the program from Elite A / S was already installed in the new Prestige-B models.
1983 Elite A/S is the champion of the 1983 WMCCC held in Budapest. The "slowest" version of the Elite A/S series. Later, 3.6 and 4 MHz versions were released to the market. The following year, one of them, overclocked to 6 MHz, shared 1-4 places at the World Championship in Glasgow.
1984 Super Constellation is the first microcomputer to officially receive the 2018 USCF rating and the American Chess Federation "Expert" title. He was called "Super Connie" and "Blitz Monster". He beat the masters many times, including WIM Diane Savereide (2240 FIDE) in a friendly match and NM Jerry Simon (2207 USCF) in the US Championship. But still it was not a clear leader among microcomputers. The program stood out for its peculiar, aggressive, somewhat speculative and almost human-like style of play.
1985 Mephisto Amsterdam wreaked havoc at the 1985 WMCCC World Microcomputer Championship in Amsterdam. Three versions of the program numbered 1, 2 and 3 scored a total of 22 points out of 24 possible and occupied the entire podium, with a huge lead over their pursuers. The dominance of Richard Lang's programs began with this tournament. In the previous WMCCC 1984, his PC software Psion tied for 1st to 4th.
1986. The first Mephisto model with a fully 32-bit 68020 processor. At WMCCC 1985, such a processor was already used, but only in an experimental version on a PC, which won the championship. Then the Mephisto Amsterdam model based on the 68000 processor went on sale.
1987. At WMCCC 1987, Mephisto Roma was overclocked to 25 MHz.
1988. First Mephisto with hash tables. Confidently won the WMCCC 1988 championship, participating in a version overclocked to 30 MHz. In the same year, Mephisto and Fidelity cars successfully performed at the "big" ACM 1988 championship, where they took 3rd and 2nd places, respectively, immediately after Deep Sot.
1989. At WMCCC 1989, Mephisto Portorose performed on a 68030/40 MHz machine. After the championship, the 68020/12 MHz version went on sale for 4600 DM (in terms of 2300 euros). It was also possible to order a "tournament" version on 68030/36 MHz for 7600 euros. Only a few dozen sets were sold. It was several times faster and almost 100 elo stronger than the regular version.
1990. Mephisto Lyon performed/sold similar to Mephisto Portorose. They differed little.
Mephisto Lyon is the latest world champion in the Mephisto series. In fact, the era of special chess computers with pre-installed programs, the so-called "electronic chess boards". Since then, some models are still being produced, but no longer play a decisive role. From next year, the benefit of programs for personal computers begins. The Mephisto program also migrates to the PC, under the new name Chess Genius. In 2015, for the first time in long years, for lovers of real chess "boards" a special version of Mephisto, medium strength, was released under the brand name Millennium ChessGenius Chess Computer.1991. Gideon played on a special PC equipped with an ARM-branded RISC processor, one of the distant predecessors of today's smartphone processors. The "chess machine" was sold as an expansion board for installation in a standard ISA slot on an IBM PC. Included were two chess programs King and Gideon.
Gideon won the 1991 WMCCC championship on a 32 MHz processor, while only 16 MHz models were commercially available so far.1992. Gideon unexpectedly wins the 1992 WCCC World Big Machine Championship where there are no performance limits. True, it must be said that there were few supercomputers at that tournament.
1993 Richard Lang's Mephisto was rewritten for PC and sold under the new Chess Genius brand. For some time, the name Mephisto Genius was also used. Two versions were produced, one traditionally for the 68000 platform for "boards", and the second for the 86000-series processors for PCs.
1994. Year of glory of Genius. He beats Kasparov 1.5-0.5 in the London Intel Grand Prix rapid chess tournament. The pre-release version 2.9 played in the match.
1995. In the first half of the 90s, MChess was constantly in the group of leaders. Back in 1991, he was playing at about the same level as the top models of Mephisto and the Chess Machine. At the end of 1995, he again shares the first place in many rankings, this time together with Chess Genius 3. In the same year, MChessPro wins the 1995 WMCCC World Microcomputer Championship.
1996. Ed Schroeder has written quite a few programs in his life. His programs were released in the "younger" Mephisto series, under the brand name MM IV and MM V, based on the outdated 6502 processor. In the early 90s, he finally emerged from the shadow of "King Lang" with his Gideon. His most famous PC program was called Rebel, and it briefly outperformed the competition in late 1996.
1997. Hiarks had already made headlines in the early 1990s when he won the 1993 World Microcomputer Championship, but the program's real credibility began in the middle of the decade. Its best, relative to other programs, assessment of the position was noted by Garry Kasparov himself. Throughout the second half of the 90s and the first half of the 00s, Hiarks was constantly in the group of leaders, and in 1997 he rose to the very top. In the same year, Hiarks beat IM Deen Hergott (2485 FIDE) in a classical control match 4-2 (+3=2-1).
1998. The long-awaited advent of 32-bit programs on the PC. Switching to 32 bits made it possible to increase the speed by 1.5-2 times, which Fritz 5 took advantage of. Previously, almost all PC programs were 16-bit, although suitable processors had been produced for many years.
1999. Junior 6 - perhaps the only program that played on general terms in a human supertournament with classical control. It happened in 2000 in Dortmund, where Deep Junior 6, running on a powerful server, took a place in the middle of the table, earning a tournament rating of 2700 elo.
2000. Beginning of the era of parallelization on the PC. The multiprocessor version of Fritz, under the brand name Deep Fritz, was released at the end of the same year, separately from Fritz 6. Within two or three years, most leading programs have their multiprocessor / multicore versions, and the problem of high-quality parallelization becomes relevant.
2001. Chess Tiger 14.0 - a kind of program that was released in fact in two versions - regular and gambit (under the Gambit Tiger brand). In general, it did not surpass the best programs in strength, but that year it shared the first places in the ratings along with different versions of Fritz.
2002. Draw with world champion. In autumn 2002, one of the latest Deep versions Fritz 7 played an eight-game match with Vladimir Kramnik. The computer did not yield - 4:4.
2003. The Shredder program became a discovery in the second half of the 90s when it won the 1996 microchampionship. During the first half of the 00s, she belonged to the elite club of engines. In 2003, it finally deservedly rose to the top of the rating, confidently enough ahead of its competitors.
In the same year, the pre-release version of Junior 8 played a draw with Kasparov (3:3).2004. Shredder's margin of safety was high enough, which allowed him to remain at the top in 2004.
2005. Fruit - the program that most strongly influenced the development of chess engines in the next five to ten years. The reason was the source code, open to view for anyone, combined with a fair amount of power of the game. True, Fruit did not become the world champion, but he headed the SSDF rating list. Such a powerful open source program has not appeared for a long time, which in turn entailed some long-term consequences.
That year in the world computer chess a whole group of interesting programs appeared. In particular, the world champion Zappa, and at the end of the year and real phenomenon- Fish.
2006. Rybka is a rising star and a new hegemon in the world of computer chess for the next five years. She made a shocking impression on her contemporaries, emerging at the very end of 2005 literally from nowhere. Five years later, she was accused of borrowing a code from Fruit and stripped of many regalia.
2007. Year of gradual improvement of the second version of Rybka. Each of its next version was a little stronger than the previous one, until finally, by the middle of the year, the final version was released - Rybka 2.3.2a.
2008. Another global improvement of Rybka. The 3rd version was released with an increase in power of about 100 elo points. Rybka has no competitors. Complete dominance.
2009. Nothing much happened during the year, except for the appearance of some harbingers of subsequent events.
2010. The emergence in late 2009 of a strong program and a freely distributed code of unknown origin, called "Ippolit", launched a whole chain of scandals related to the unauthorized use of the code in various chess programs. At first, the author of Rybka accused Ippolit and all the programs that followed him of stealing the code. Then a special commission of the Computer Chess Association (ICGA) found extensive borrowings from Frukt in the early versions of Rybka, which led to the disqualification of Rybka herself. In December 2010, Houdini 1.5 stood out from the group of programs based on the Hippolyta code, rising to the very top of various ratings. With its playful power, this free software has impressed all sections of the chess community.
2011. This year, Houdini 2 has become commercially available, but did not make as much of an impression as the previous version.
2012. Houdini 3 is still a clear favorite in the world of computer chess. In the 3rd version, an improvement of 50 points compared to the previous one is claimed.
2013. The same 50 points are declared. For some unknown reason, at this stage, the improvement of the chess program was suspended by the author.
2014. Houdini's pursuers have finally overtaken him. Stockfish and Komodo together became the strongest programs of the following years. In the summer of 2014 Stockfish 5 becomes the winner of the unofficial TCEC World Championship Season 6.
2015. Some hitch at Stockfish. Komodo outperforms Stockfish, in part due to better scalability on multi-core systems.
2016. The year marked the rise of Stockfish, finally sorting out his problems.
About speed
Sources of data on enumeration speed:
No. 4. Levy/Newborn 1982, part 2, p. 83.
No. 8, 9. www.chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/WMCCC+1983; "Computerschach und Spiele" 4 "1983, pp. 4-5.
No. 17. www.chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/WMCCC+1991; www.chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/WCCC+1992
No. 18. www.chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/WCCC+1992
No. 19. "Selective Search" No. 54, p.19For other programs, the speed is given in recalculation. Raw data taken from "Fritz Chess Benchmark" by Sedat and from http://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php?id=41270 for Fritz 5.32, Fritz 6, Deep Fritz 7, Houdini 1.5; www.chessprogramming .wikispaces.com/WMCCC+1991 for Mephisto Lyon 68020.
It should be borne in mind that different microprocessors have different chess performance per megahertz. According to "Selective Search" No. 34, p. 11 and No. 37, p. 18, the real speed in chess applications of processors 6502/ 68000/ 68020/ 68030/ 8086/ 80486 at the same frequency correlates as x1/ x0.55/ x0.9/ x1.2/ x0.25/ x1.5.
The Z-80 processor is apparently also 2-3 times slower than the 6502 at the same frequency. See "Computerschach und Spiele" 4 "1986, p. 36.
In addition, it should be taken into account that even on the same machine, different programs perform enumeration at different speeds.The ratings given in the table are taken mainly from the SSDF rating list and recalculated through a linear function in order to approximate them to the FIDE rating. The recalculation function is selected on the basis of parties against people that the organizers of the SSDF rating used to calibrate around 1985, 1990, 2000. The correction is taken from the calculation of +200 elo at 1500 SSDF rating and gradually decreases to +0 elo at 2700 rating, going beyond the limits of the range.
Recalculation function:
Amendment = 450 - SSDF/6
or,
Rating = 450 + 0.833 x SSDFResults are rounded to the nearest tens. In the range of 1750 - 2850, the error can be estimated as ±100 elo for each program separately (due to the generalization of the error of the SSDF, FIDE ratings and the recalculation function) and ±30 elo relative to each other. In the ranges above 2850 elo and below 1750 the error is much larger than the indicated values. In the upper range due to the lack of opportunities for rating calibration, and in the lower range due to the end of the main SSDF list.
It should be noted that ratings in the upper range are almost impossible to correlate with FIDE ratings with acceptable accuracy. First of all, due to the fact that the density of positions in the ratings depends on the performance of test computers, and it is not possible to correlate performance with human chess. Test games with people could help, but this requires opponents of approximately equal strength, which, obviously, do not exist at this level.
Ratings for:
MicroChess - derived from CCRL 40/4 data, plus test games, including with the Chessmaster 11 program;
Fidelity Chess Challenger - based on www.schach-computer.info and also Douglas Penrod "Computer Chess Newsletter", Issue 1 (1977);
Sargon - for test games, including with Lucas Chess 8.11;
Sargon II - from Levy/Newborn 1982, part 2, p. 83, as well as test games, including with Lucas Chess 8.11.MChess Pro 5.0's rating has been rounded up to align with Chess Genius 3's rating, which also rounded up.
Houdini 1.5, 2, 3, 4 and Stockfish 5 ratings are recalculated from the CCRL 40/40 rating due to the absence of these programs in the SSDF rating.
/ What is the strongest chess program? (print version)
What is the strongest chess program?
Despite all the tricks of human players, today no one has much hope that a person will be able to resist the computer for at least a few more years. And the point here is not even the notorious increase in the speed of programs - in this Deep Fritz 10, in general, is not much superior to its predecessors, who played similar matches with the same Kramnik and Garry Kasparov in 2002-2003. The four-socket Intel Core Duo 5160 used by the ChessBase team was no supermonster at all. Over the past three years since these matches, the general situation in chess programming has changed radically.
A new generation of computer engines, the flagship of which today is the Rybka program of the Czech programmer and international chess master Vasik Reilich living in Hungary (http://ins1der.livejournal.com/3039.html), has learned to play so competently and not machine-wise, that further resistance of people is absolutely futile.
The day before the start of the match between Kramnik (November 24, 2006) and the car, the first place in the world ranking was occupied by game program Rybka:
1. Rybka 1.2 (on one processor)
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2918 (people did not have such a coefficient)
2. Junior 10
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2854
3. Hiarcs 10 HypMod
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2850
4. Fruit 2.2.1 (starting from Fruit 2.1 by Fabien Letouzy, we have a very strong open source engine, After that a new generation of software has appeared)
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2842
5. Spike 1.2
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2840
6. Shredder 10 UCI
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2832
7. Shredder 9.0 UCI
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2819
8 Fritz 9.0
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2812
9. Shredder 8.0CB
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2808
10. Shredder 7.04 UCI
256MB Athlon 1200MHz
2804
First chess program appeared in 1974 in the USSR. It was the well-known Kaissa. The car was huge, and took up almost an entire room. Played "Caissa" at the level of the second category of the USSR. Of course, after so many years, progress has not stood still, and at the moment there are programs that play the strength of an international grandmaster. The world champion among cars is now the Rondo program, created in Japan.
In 37 years, countless games have been made, both for beginners and for grandmasters. Whether you are an amateur or a professional player, you will always find the optimal program that suits you. There are programs that teach combinational and positional thinking; play in the opening, endgame and middlegame. Chess programs have become so versatile that even a good chess player can hardly beat them, so they began to make the level of difficulty of the game. Max level The difficulty of the program's game reaches 3200, while the current world chess champion, Viswanathan Anand, has a rating of 2817.
We offer you download chess programs various manufacturers and various types. To be good, it is not necessary to hire a coach, sometimes it will be better to just download chess program, and engage with it, especially since on our website, you can do it for free. Playing daily with an opponent who is stronger, the level of your game will certainly increase a lot, and, in the end, you will play with him on equal terms.
Chess Assistant is a chess program that will help improve the level of a chess player. I think it's the best program among the like. The program provides an opportunity to play chess with a computer. Rating of the computer at the level of MG. Also in the program you can analyze batches.
We present to the attention of the visitors of our site Deep Fritz version 14.
This program has been the most popular all over the world for many years. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, Deep Fritz 14 has everything a chess player could dream of: automatic game strength adjustment, handicap and coaching features, position explanations, color-coded threat warnings, statistics, automatic game analysis, various tactics, endgame training and a database. 1.5 million chess games.
Fritz continues to fascinate the chess world. In this version, he can even entertain you with fresh and humorous verbal comments.
Present to your attention best chess for PSP, which will not let you get bored, but on the contrary, will make you think, reflect. This program is called Chessmaster 2. Fully Russified, the interface is quite easy and understandable. One of distinctive features of these chess is that you can choose the style of the board, as well as the style chess pieces, which cannot but please the players. Chess may not be as popular as other games on the PSP, but fans of this game will really appreciate it.
Many are wondering where to download chess for sony ericsson phone. full news you can download chess data from a direct link. Of course, sometimes you want to have fun when there is no computer at hand. Chess on your phone will save you from boredom. This game has a lot of useful features, which can be found below.
We present to your attention a series of chess programs for ipad, which you can download for free via a direct link from our server.
Let's start with Shredder Chess for iPad. The program is paid. So when downloading it from our server, be careful, do not post it on third-party resources and do not sell it. In my opinion, the program is the best of its kind. Its biggest plus is that after a few games played, Shredder Chess automatically adjusts to the level of your game. With each game it becomes more and more difficult to play. Shredder Chess is suitable not only for beginners, but also for more experienced chess players.
In addition to playing chess shredder Chess for ipad brings to your attention various tasks and studies, the solution of which raises the level of the game of any chess player. But that's not all! This chess program, which is perfect for your ipad, provides the ability to analyze the position. That is, at any moment of the game you can stop the game so that the computer analyzes the situation. Size: 11 mb.
Other programs will be considered in the full news.
Great chess for your phone. Java chess has always attracted fans of this game. Many avid chess players play chess for hours, and even on the way home from work or school, they want to continue playing. Many play right at the place of work, or under the desk at the university. I even know a couple of these people
The development of scientific and technological progress does not bypass chess either. Today we present a 3D chess program - Chess3D. The development of three-dimensional space is possible not only in cinema and other areas, but also in chess, as you can see. The program is the best of all similar 3D chess, because it was developed by such a well-known company as sw-winsoft. After downloading any of the products of this company, you will understand why these 3D chess are the best.
Let's start looking at the highest quality mobile chess called Mobi Chess. This game began to be developed back in 2008, and immediately won recognition among fans phone games. This is understandable, because we all have free time, when it is really inconvenient, or just do not want to do our daily business. That's when we come across our own phone. It is possible that as a child you played chess, maybe you even have some kind of rank. Well, then these mobile chess are for you - remember "youth".
I present to your attention the game Totally Spies. This is an unusual chess played by a team of boys and a team of girls. You play as a female team and must defeat the boys from the neighboring town who are bullying and molesting the girls from your town. After clicking on the "shape", you can see how she walks. The peculiarity of this game is that each figure moves in its own way. There are 3 pieces on the board that you control.
Shredder 12 is a legendary chess program that has repeatedly won world championships among chess programs. We can say that she is one of the first, so she deserves respect. The program plays like a grandmaster, with a rating of about 3000. This version is the last one, which was released in 2010. The program will not cause any problems during installation, crack is present.
Whether you are an amateur or a professional player, you always want to improve the level of your game. There are many different methods to improve the quality of a chess player's game. One of them is classes with a chess program, which is stronger than the trainee "by head". Now there are a lot of such programs in the public domain. That's why we created this page so that you can download chess free that are right for you.
We update the list of programs whenever possible, about 5 new posts a week, so there is always plenty to choose from. You can download all programs from the links from Yanaroda and from Letitbit. The advantage of these services is that the download takes place in a free format. There is no registration required and the speed is acceptable. By the way, if you decide to download some program that is not on our site, you can write to us and it will appear. Today, the Internet has almost everything, which means that you can download anything.
Speaking specifically about chess, it is perfectly clear that the game is not easy, but interesting. Learning how to play it is difficult, although at first glance it may seem the opposite. There are chess programs that teach the game. You can also download them without difficulty. We do our best for the visitors of our chess portal, and we hope you will pay us the same. Leave reviews, download for free, write.
Once upon a time, at the beginning of the 20th century, many scientific minds were very skeptical about the possibility of computers being able to understand and process logic better than humans. In particular, the quote is widely known: "A machine can never beat a man in chess - be realistic!".
However, after a little over 70 years, the computer program "Deep Thought" still beat one of the best grandmasters of the late eighties - Levy. Of course, almost three-quarters of a century has passed since the above statement was made. But, nevertheless, it happened.
From the moment when artificial intelligence"For the first time defeated a man in intellectual game more than 26 years have passed. During this time, the power of computers has increased thousands of times, and the algorithms that calculate moves in chess, thanks to the efforts of numerous developers, have improved significantly.
Today there are several dozen relevant strong chess engines, which are able to settle accounts with amateur players once or twice, and make grandmasters sweat a lot. The list of the best chess programs that can be downloaded for free or for a certain (usually nominal fee) from the Internet can be found below.
Chess engine "Fritz" - a German computer program with a 35-year history
Considering strongest chess engines should pay tribute to the old people and start with the German program - "Fritz" ("Fritz"). 
It was originally developed by two friends Franz Morsch and Ed Schroeder. The project was started in the 80s, but was later abandoned. But in the early 1990s, Morsch was approached by ChessBase, who asked them to create a chess engine capable of beating the best grandmasters in the world. Using old developments, "Deep Fritz" soon came out from under the keyboard of the Germans.
It has since been reissued many times. Its algorithms improved, and the speed of work grew. The current version to date is "Fritz 14", which was released in November 2013.
The application runs under the Windows operating system. But, despite the fact that "Fritz" is a proprietary program, you can download this professional chess for free directly from the developer / publisher website.
"Stockfish" - salted with tears of young grandmasters.
All those who imagine themselves to be a great master are recommended to try "Stockfish" chess. This powerful chess engine is capable of blowing away even the most experienced players with an IQ of 160+.
The creators of the program are mathematicians and logicians from Norway, Finland and Italy. The Dried Fish code is based on the code base of the open source engine "Glaurung". The world saw the first public version in early November 2008, and almost immediately this chess program was recognized as the best of its kind. It retains its leadership to this day, although with varying degrees of success. The application has to compete with "Komodo" (we will talk about it below), which, as of 2015, occupies the highest place on the podium.
The latest version of "Stockfish" was released in early 2015. There are versions for all popular platforms: Windows, OS X, Linux, Android and iOS. Due to the fact that an open engine was used as a base, the developers had no other choice but to lay out their action for free. By the way, the source codes of the program are also available for public viewing.
Komodo - harsh merciless logic
The leader of 2015 is the most powerful chess engine Komodo. In 2014, it took first place in the list of the most complex computer programs for playing chess, displacing the Dried Fish, shoving it from the first position, where it has been for the past couple of years.
The engine runs on most modern platforms, including mobile ones. Delivers initially without GUI (graphical user interface). However, since the application uses the UCI protocol, it will not be difficult to find something to wrap it in - you can, for example, use a graphical interface from almost any other professional chess engine.
Until the fourth version of "Komodo" you could try it for free for a certain period. However, now on the official website there is latest version– 9.2, released in August 2015. She, as you might have guessed, is paid.
"Houdini" - another contender for the pedestal
Speaking of the most powerful chess engines, one cannot but mention "Houdini". This program by the number of Elo points bypasses all competitors, except for the previous two. Many grandmasters, who are not averse to playing a game or two in front of a soulless machine, speak most positively about it. It is not clear why the champions love it so much, especially considering the existence of stronger engines, but the masters know better.
Until 2010, namely before the release of version 1.5, Houdini was supplied free of charge if the engine was not used for profit. However, now it can only be downloaded if the player decides to pay the developers.
