Analyze the position of a chess program online. Chess Game Analysis with Chess Engines

Hello dear friends. With you dad Zhorik.

In today's article I will tell you about how we spend with Zhorik chess analysis played game online. At what the analysis passes very qualitatively.

The computer shows with arrows the moves (where it is better to go), where the error is. Shows “+” or “-” with numbers, immediately finds mate options in a certain number of moves, sacrifices, combinations and everything like that.

And everything is very convenient. Played - pressed the button - you analyze the game for each move. The computer is not a fool, it analyzes everything very well. Don't think that you are smarter than him. =)

In fact, now there are a lot of different free and paid programs both in Russian and in English, where all sorts of engines are connected. There are services, etc. But personally, both me and Zhorik like to analyze everyone more at lichess.org.

If you play on a computer, then it looks like this:

And if on the phone (iPhone), then like this:

The scheme is simple if you play on the lichess.org site itself. Played, after the game you press - analysis:

And by clicking on each move in the table with the mouse, look at what the computer shows you. The chess game will be analyzed by the Stockfish 8.0 engine. In fact, a very cool engine, so you can be sure of its quality of analysis.

See an example of a game that I played with Zhorik. They tested him for knowledge of the trap in defending the pawn on e5, with the pawn on f6. The game was: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 f6 3. Nxe5 fe:

You see, the computer shows with an arrow they say to move the next move, he advises the queen on h5. In terms of position, he also estimates it as +3.6 in favor of White.

In fact, you sit like this after the game, look at your mistakes and understand how easy it was to win, however.))) The opponent made mistakes here and there ... Eh ... I wish I could turn back time. I would arrange for him.)))

Thanks to chess analysis, your level of play increases. You start to find good moves, you start to see sacrifices, good combinations, etc.

Farther. If you don’t play on lichess, but for example, somewhere on another site or even offline with a friend in a chess club in your city or at some competitions, you sit down and write down the game on the form and want to analyze it, then again, with lichess is not a problem.

If you have a pgn file, then you can import it into lichess and analyze it in the same way:

Also, if you don’t need analysis from the very beginning of the game, but you want to analyze some chess position and find out how you could have made a better move than you actually did, then everything is just as simple here.

Come in board editor and choose whose move:

Clearing the board:

Set the desired position by dragging the figures onto the board:

Click the "Analyze" button. As a result, this is what kopm shows me:

Checkmate in 4 moves. With a rook sacrifice.)) These are the pies.

Analyze, practice and improve your playing skills. In conclusion of the article, I suggest that you analyze the games of Sergey Karjakin and Magnus Carlsen.

Watch the games here, and make moves on lichess.org under stockfish analysis. I also advise you to analyze various.

That's all for me. Wait for new articles. We will further describe other possibilities of computer analysis. For example, there is such a mega cool program - Chessbase.

See you soon...

Introduction This is a new article about computer chess, in which we will consider a new version of the most popular chess program Chessmaster 9000, localized for the first time in our country, and look through it as through a prism at the latest computer chess events.

First, let's look at the localized Chessmaster 9000. This is probably the most popular chess program in the world and in our country. In principle, it is clear why the games of the Chessmaster series have always attracted chess fans. Often, especially in the past, chess programs went to two extremes: either there was a powerful chess engine and a not very friendly boring interface, or, on the contrary, a pleasant interface, beautiful sets of pieces, but a weak chess stuff itself. Chessmaster has always been a combination of both (both a strong chess program and a user-friendly interface with a variety of sets of pieces and boards). Thanks to the harmonious combination of form and content, he won his immense popularity.

After installing version 9000, a read-me file immediately appears, and an inscription like this immediately catches your eye: if the program starts to crash and give error messages, check that the latest versions of video drivers are installed on the system. And what about the chess program and video drivers? Really a new version uses pixel or vertex processors of new video accelerators to calculate variations, and for the fastest search for positions in the database, chess games are written to textures? No, it's just that now the drawing of 3D chessboards and figures has been replenished with options for bump mapping, reflections and shadows. Now in Chessmaster shadows are drawn no worse than in Doom III, it's time to complete the reviews of video cards with tests in this program as well.

But is this really the only difference between the new version and previous games in the series? Yes, there are new beautiful boards, new sets of figures. For people who love chess, collect various sets of chess pieces, the new version will be very interesting. You can directly take screenshots, print on a laser printer and put in a sideboard. But what can fans of the game actually expect? Almost everything has undergone small but noticeable improvements.

Here they are, reflections and shadows. And more - a lot of sets of figures

Why is Chessmaster especially valuable? It can be called rather than a chess program, the term "chess game simulator" is more appropriate. The interface is not as convenient for professional analysis of games and opening variations as, for example, the interface of the well-known chess program Fritz and other programs of the ChessBase company, which produces computer databases of chess games for highly skilled chess players. On this basis, a silly misconception has arisen that Chessmaster itself is inferior in a chess sense to other programs such as Fritz. Allegedly, they are used by professionals, which means they play better. This is not so, we will return to the specifics of the program's chess engine, but for now let's see what is offered to the average user.

Chessmaster 9000

The developers of Chessmaster have focused on meeting the needs of the casual chess fan. It is not interesting for non-professionals to play with actual chess programs on modern powerful computers. Calculate and it'll all be over. The game with the computer will turn into a complete pacing, in the end, by brute force it will be possible to find a winning game and beat the computer as many times as you like in this opening variation. But Chessmaster offers the user to play honestly without going back moves with computer characters that simulate players of a certain strength. Each computer player has a rating that should roughly match the rating he would get in real competitions. It is on the creation of diverse characters and the most accurate determination of their rating that the developers have concentrated. This is not an easy task at all, because the strength of the game also depends on the time control, and you can choose it any way you like, you can play both blitz and classical time control.

Chessmaster determines the performance of the processor and adjusts the rating of its players based on it. The developers of the program found out that when playing with a computer, amateurs are very annoyed by the fact that the computer responds very quickly, almost instantly, if it is given a few seconds to think. And at the same time he plays strong enough, then the person also tries to play quickly, and immediately misses something. And if the computer is given a lot of time to think, then, on the one hand, it will get tired of waiting, and on the other, it will play very hard. So the characters in Chessmaster think like human beings, according to the set controls, but can play pretty weakly.

So, you can play not only with the super powerful Chessmaster chess engine, which has the practical power of playing at the level of a grandmaster, but also with simulated amateurs with various ratings. You can simply play individual games with the selected character, or create your own tournament and recruit opponents of players of various strengths. And depending on the results, the program will calculate your rating, like professional chess players.

It turns out an analogue of a chess club or an Internet gaming zone. Even better than when playing on the Internet, because in a densely populated playing area on the Internet they play, basically, with a control of 3 minutes per game, sometimes plus 1 second per move. Or even one minute per game. Otherwise, the temptation to use the help of a computer is very strong, then the game goes into a different plane. But a game with such minimal control cannot be called chess, since the time factor plays a huge role. Even with an extra piece in an absolutely won position, it is quite possible to simply not have time to checkmate. Moves not only have chess power, you also need to take into account the time required to make this move. For example, a rook's move across the entire board is quite long, and a king's move to an adjacent cell is fast. If you just moved this piece, then its next move will be shorter than the move of another piece, since you do not need to move the mouse.

So if you don't want to go to the chess club, or it's closed, or somehow you are deprived of the opportunity to find a suitable opponent, you can use the chess simulator.

Of course, then the developers should try very hard to ensure that the personalities are different from each other, somehow model the behavior of people, and are not just weakened copies of the same chess engine. And so the developers are trying, from version to version, improving the character of the characters and adding new ones. So if you beat everyone from the previous part, you can take on a new one and see if your opponents have changed.

The list of players is opened by a monkey in a multi-colored cylinder, making random moves and having a rating of 1. And so on, up to the professional level, like stars in the Milky Way - players now more densely, sometimes less often cover the range of ratings. Sometimes there are colorful people. In general, each player has his own opening repertoire, corresponding to his style and manner of playing. By the way, an experienced amateur immediately has the thought, what if you win against a character once, catch him on an opening variation, and then repeat this game all the time? Naturally, the developers took into account this possibility: firstly, the computer player does not always make the same move in the same position. If there are several moves with approximately the same score, there is an element of randomness in the choice of move. Secondly, the computer player remembers his defeats and turns away from the opening variations that led to the loss.

Returning to the characters... There are ordinary amateurs of an average level who make average moves all the time, there are drunk grandmasters, they play very strong almost all the time, but sometimes they blunder something. In the previous version, there was such a player, he had a craving for rooks (well, not for bishops or knights), and he even gave a queen for a rook and gave up a few pawns. But it was still hard for him to win, because he was very good at counting options. And when you play with him, you always wait for him to give up a queen for a rook, and the realization will begin. Sometimes you bring out the rook on purpose. In this version, there is an unusual player, a natural blitz player, who makes moves instantly, but not always good ones. However, he provokes the player to play quickly too, which, of course, is fraught.

In general, the characters are quite diverse. Until you learn them all, it's interesting to mess around with them. By the way, each computer player has a portrait and a short biography with a textual description of the game style. All this is translated into Russian, which is somewhat unusual if you use English versions all the time.

What I've always liked Chessmaster for is an honest chess engine with no gimmicks. All the parameters that the computer takes into account are visible at a glance. And so, including their variation, various computer characters are obtained. By the way, you see, the endgame base has been added. And what is this parameter, selective search? You will not find its description in the documentation, you need to look for old versions, when the developers wrote the documentation. This parameter determines how quickly the program will discard low-promising options. If it is set to the minimum, then the program will consider tactics badly, because after a temporary sacrifice it will quickly discard this option and will not be able to reach the return of the material. And if you set the maximum value, then the program will always count a lot of nonsense, completely incorrect victims, and work slowly, because it will not discard bad options in time

In this case, the classical ratio of material is established, but it is possible to make the bishop somewhat more valuable than the knight, and the rook less valuable than a minor piece and two pawns.

Education

Even in the earliest versions of the program, there were computer characters that simulate, to some extent, the style of play of famous chess players of the past and present. World champions and just famous grandmasters. Here, of course, they are also present, and the localization made their presence unforgettable. The fact is that the computer prototypes are accompanied by a brief biography and a description of the playing style of real chess players. Well, the style is understandable, just a simplified representation of amateurs, like Kasparov likes to attack, Karpov likes to defend himself. But a biography is something completely unimaginable. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. In general, Chessmaster is made by a separate development team, not the one that deals with the chess engine. And she is not so immersed in chess. And those who wrote the biography have little to do with chess in general, the information was taken from American sports magazines. They write about chess players, something like about boxers, the prize fund of matches is mentioned all the time. Chess player so-and-so went to a match for 2 million dollars with chess player so-and-so. But this is still true, they have a very simple and independent idea of ​​​​chess intrigues. They write simply, Kramnik became the only chess player who could resist Kasparov in his pursuit of money. And everything in this spirit. And this is translated literally, even somewhat tracing.

Now in the United States of America, chess is gradually entering education. Americans somehow found out that chess develops logical thinking (which helps to get a higher ranking at the university and, thus, a more prestigious and well-paid job). In many states, chess is taught as an elective in schools. For example, the new governor of California appreciates chess, it is included in the educational program of his family. And now Chessmaster goes in this wave. In addition to the actual game, the program includes an interactive chess tutorial.

There are lessons for the very beginners who want to get acquainted with chess. How to place the board correctly, how the pieces move, when you can castle, etc. And, accordingly, a set of simple exercises, for a checkmate in one or two moves, a checkmate with a king and a rook, a king and a queen. If you do something wrong, the program will explain your mistake and show you the correct move.

For slightly more experienced players, there is training on the basic principles of playing in the opening. The program will play the main classical opening variations and ask you to indicate the correct second, third, fourth opening moves.

Next, several hundred tasks on elementary tactics in various types of position, opening, middlegame and endgame.

But it's not as interesting as the tasks for more experienced players. For amateurs who play by virtue of the first or second rank according to our classification, it will be useful to solve a course of fifty problems in various typical endgames. Such things are taught in the classroom in various chess circles and sections. But if, say, you are retired and you are reluctant to study with schoolchildren, you can study these tasks and then beat someone in the park.

In conclusion, you will be asked to pass a rating-exam consisting of a mixture of tasks on tactics, endgame technique and strategy. It will also be very useful for chess players. Upon completion of the exam, you will be given an assessment of the rating adopted by the American Chess Federation. When the FIDE ratings ended at 2000, a rating system was adopted in America that continued down the FIDE ratings. So don't be surprised by the 1900 rating and so on.

The training room also contains interesting game- Guess the move. It is necessary to indicate the correct moves in positions from the games of famous chess players. The games are commented in detail and it is explained in key positions why the chess players played this way and not otherwise. There is also a set of fifty well-known etudes and compositions of varying complexity. You can get a hint or an explanation why a particular move is wrong.

A small useful exercise on the theme of the pawn endgame

The quality of the translation is acceptable, but it could have been translated more literally. For example, do not write all the time, we walk there, we walk here. Sometimes it was worth writing at least move a pawn to such-and-such a square, or, using some jargon, move a pawn to such-and-such a square. But it's good that at least we don't "go down as a pawn". And you shouldn't have called the kingside or queenside a side. Thus, an understandable, but too literal translation is obtained.

In general, the program contains several shortcomings, now there are few programs that do not require patches for completely correct operation. And this program is no exception, there are some pretty funny bugs. For example, in the game room, the computer chess move adviser is buggy, all the time it advises h4 or some other nonsense. But he doesn't really need it. Another cool glitch, during installation, the program wrote its files from the root directory of the program to f:\program files, and subdirectories to c:\program files. I was wondering for a very long time, looking in f:\program files, where is this lot of directories? But all this - does not interfere with the correct work.

By itself, the chess material of the textbook is quite high quality, at a professional level. We used educational materials from the books of American grandmasters, who specialize in this, in fact, some of them advised the developers of the program. True, there is such a funny moment there: there is a list of the simplest exercises for various types of elementary tactics, forks, etc. And then there are unthinkable positions where you need to find a fork, although there is a checkmate in one move. But, apparently, it is believed that in this way tactical vision is trained for various types of tactics. Although I think it's a little strange.

By the way, the program also contains a library of eight hundred classical and modern games of famous chess players. In the games, the main moments of the struggle are marked, where one or another side made a serious mistake. And sometimes it is not clear whether the grandmaster resigned in a hopeless position, or overstayed time in a won one. It can be more convenient to view games in electronic form than to read in a book and reproduce moves on the board. This, of course, is very valuable. And this is in addition to just a base for five hundred thousand parties. Probably, such a large base is nowhere to be found so cheaply. Usually bases for professional chess players are much more expensive, and differ only in more freshness, but those who play in serious tournaments need this to keep abreast of opening novelties.

Of course, this course is not extensive enough for those who want to study chess deeply. It is not intended for future professional chess players. Just one of many benefits. You can find much more extensive interactive computer tutorials on tactics, strategy and whatever. But you still have to look for them, and they are quite expensive, since only those who really need them buy them.

So, Chessmaster 9000 is a whole complex that allows everyone to plunge into the chess world. And stay there, at least until the release of the next version. However, the question is still interesting, how powerful is the Chessmaster chess engine compared to other chess programs?

Match Kasparov-X3Dfritz

At the end of last autumn, New York hosted another match from a series of fights between the world's strongest chess players and chess programs. The match Kasparov - X3Dfritz received a lot of publicity in the media, and readers have probably heard that it ended in a 2-2 draw. However, this match was not something special in a series of duels between Human and Computer. It was a continuation of previous matches. A new round of confrontation turned out to be somehow very closed, they came to the same place they left from.

This article is in many ways a continuation of the article "Computer chess from all points of view", which contains the history of chess matches with computers and analysis of the game of chess programs. Actually, the last match confirmed all the conclusions made in the previous publication. So, let's go over the games of this secondary match, since there are only four of them. And ask Chessmaster if he will repeat the mistakes of the Fritz program? But, by the way, why did this well-known program get the X3D prefix? The fact is that the match was sponsored by a company that produces some kind of "stupid" virtual reality glasses. They developed a technology called X3D, which allows you to see a three-dimensional image on a more or less ordinary monitor with the help of special glasses. This effect is achieved as follows: an image for the left and right eyes is generated alternately on the monitor screen at high frequency. And the glasses become opaque synchronously with the monitor and block the view of the right and left eyes in the same way. Thanks to this, a three-dimensional image is formed, approximately, as in a dioscope - remember, there were and are such devices for viewing slides? Each eye is shown its own slide, and the picture is presented as three-dimensional. X3D works on a similar principle, and the picture is not super high quality. Although, those who have not seen it with their own eyes cannot appreciate it. Kasparov, who had to play in these glasses, complained that after a long game the image was somewhat floating, and, in general, fatigue was felt. The chessboard is drawn on the monitor screen, and the moves are pronounced by voice. By the way, the computer itself had to recognize them. Not very familiar playing conditions, in general, probably for most chess players, the most convenient representation of chess on a computer screen is flat. But Kasparov, in order to popularize chess, had to agree to play with glasses. It is not entirely clear why the producers of this cheap virtual reality chose to sponsor a chess match, and not some kind of erotic show, where three-dimensionality would probably be more appropriate. Perhaps the view of the chess pieces for each eye is easier to calculate, but this is just speculation. One way or another, instead of chess aspects, we have to discuss these points. True, without sponsorship the match would not have taken place at all.

The first game of the match, in which Kasparov played white, became the arithmetic mean of the first two white games in his duel with Junior. Again the Slav Defense, again Kasparov has the initiative, only in those games Kasparov first developed a successful attack and won, but in the second game the attack was not so successful, and Kasparov blundered checkmate in a draw position. Here Kasparov also got a strong initiative, and even won an exchange, but his king was quite open, and the man could not protect himself from a perpetual check. Thus, the game ended in a draw and did not add anything special.

In the second game, Kasparov played black, and in the Sicilian Defence, Fritz didn't really know what to do. He put the rook stupidly in the center, acted in this spirit. Kasparov, on the other hand, was gradually preparing an attack on the kingside, and everything would be fine, but the man took and out of the blue blundered a key pawn in one move. In the most ridiculous way, as is often the case when playing with a computer. Moved the wrong rook. It would have been necessary to take the move back and act like a regular rook, but Kasparov - not some depraved amateur - courageously continued the game, and after a few moves he resigned. This game also, unfortunately, has no special value, you yourself can play something like this with your home computer. By the way, what kind of computer was used by the chess program? Particularly interesting, what kind of processor? It is clear that there should be enough memory. I searched the match site for a long time for information about this, but could not find it. Everywhere, in every line, one could see the inscription X3D, it can already be written on the fences, especially since it consists of three letters. However, nevertheless, I managed to find information in some forum, Fritz played on a four-processor Xeon-based server. True, it is not entirely clear whether the entire computer was at his disposal, or whether he shared power with programs that serve to create the image of a chessboard. And it’s also a question whether these were four real processors, or virtual ones, because Xeons have Hyper-Treading technology for virtual multiprocessing. One way or another, this is very close to modern desktop computers, especially from a chess point of view. After all, the power of chess programs is more proportional to the logarithm of performance than just speed.On a twice as fast processor, a chess program will only calculate variations slightly deeper, not even a move further.

Decisive game

But the third game in the match turned out to be entertaining and caused a lot of controversy. The fact is that many commentators suspected the agreed nature of the match, in which the duel would certainly end in a draw. Many grandmasters have stated in interviews that they are absolutely sure that the match will end in a draw. And so Kasparov, on order, won his last white game. How did it happen? In the opening, Fritz chose a line leading to a closed position, where the entire board is blocked by a pawn chain. This nature of the position implies a long planned maneuvering of pieces without immediate threats. And so Fritz rearranged the pieces without any plan, simply maximizing their formal activity, the number of squares they could go to, and lost very easily. The position had been strategically hopeless for a long time, and he still continued to evaluate it almost as equal. Only at the very end, when large material losses became inevitable, or rather, easily visible, did he realize the full horror of his situation.

And then there was talk that, firstly, Fritz played badly on purpose, and secondly, he deliberately chose a losing option. It is interesting to see what Chessmaster has to say about this, will he act in the same inept way? For starters, the base of five hundred thousand parties included in the program said that the option chosen by Black is the most percentage. That is, according to statistics from more than a hundred games, in this position, the chosen continuation gives the highest average percentage of points. Further, the opponents followed one game for a long time, in which Black won. Like this. True, after the debut they got a hopeless position. It is interesting that one of the strongest chess players of the middle of the last century, Reshevsky and Keres, played. Anyway, there is a blunder of the Fritz team - they chose a variant, albeit a percentage, but not suitable for the program in terms of the nature of the position.

If you put Chessmaster in key positions from this game, then no matter how much you tune him up, attacking, not attacking, and no matter how much time you give him to think, he still acts like Fritz, no understanding. So in positions of this type Chessmaster is just as stupid as Fritz. True, he used to begin to evaluate the position in favor of the enemy and, at least, did not go back and forth as a king. They say that Junior tried to play more or less correctly, but Junior can do a lot of things, we will see it soon...

In this position, the programs only think about how to quickly move e4, as if they win more than the queen with this move. However, the closed center is not in their favor.

Now the computer will miss the chance to go f5 and start his counterplay on the kingside. Instead of f5 followed by meaningless Kf6

Thus, if this party was a contractual one, it was very competently made, you can’t distinguish it from the real one.

In the last game, the opponents changed everything and agreed to a draw. Thus, the match also ended in a draw, adding nothing new to the already held matches between Kaparov-Junior and Kramnik-Fritz. It can be noted that of the five white games, Kasparov won all in which his king was secured, and those games in which the king was open ended in disappointment. Indeed, people are not cross-eyed, they look in one direction, looking through unexpected side counter attacks. As I already wrote in the last article, a person fights in unequal conditions with a computer, which gives rise to games that have no chess value.

Computer Championship

Let's move on from the duels of man and artificial intelligence to the competition between the chess programs themselves. At the end of the year, the next championship among programs just passed. Such competitions attract more and more attention, especially since then their participants fight with people. Unexpectedly, the computer championship takes place in a much more spectacular and uncompromising fight than human fights. Computers are hardworking, and don't do so short draws, unloved by the fans. They always choose the sharpest principled continuations, White attacked the rook, Black did not take the rook away in response, but attacked the queen, and White gave a check, then pinned the piece that attacked the queen, and so on. An unimaginable "mess" is obtained on the board. People never play like that, because most chess players don't risk taking variations that they can't more or less reliably calculate to the end. And computers are not cowards, they are not afraid of anything, they do not think that they can easily miscalculate and lose. Indeed, computers are more suitable for chess sports than people, as they possess the most important quality that all athletes need - unshakable unshakable self-confidence. Such competitions are in some respects interesting to watch, since the games abound in the sharp struggle so beloved by chess fans. Moreover, the programs allegedly learned to donate material for positional factors. In fact, often such a sacrifice is a delayed long exchange combination that you can’t immediately see, or a miscalculation when the program did not count the opponent’s response on the tenth move. But it looks enticing. And of course, if programs evaluate positional factors, such as the activity of pieces, in pawns, then they can exchange a real pawn for a pawn of a virtual advantage. Sometimes it looks beautiful and human.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to find comments on the games of chess programs that would highlight all the stupidity that is happening on the board. The fact is that many commentators have been using the same chess programs in their work for a long time, and in this case they are poor helpers. They make mistakes in the same places as computer players and give the corresponding wrong scores. With the help of them, it is good to analyze the games of people ("here the grandmaster did not see the taking of a pawn in five moves", etc.). Computers constantly miscalculate in sharp positions, because they do not see the opponent's silent moves at the end of long multi-move variations, but this is difficult to detect, since programs need to be given a very long time to analyze the position.

And how did Chessmaster, or rather, his chess engine, prove himself among his brethren? No, he didn't take part at all. The King, as the Chessmaster chess engine is called, won some other software championship that was in the first half of the year. How these championships relate, why programs are either accepted or not taken part in them - this is little clear to the uninitiated. This is its own incomprehensible world of incomprehensible intrigues. There is even more room for manipulation than in the human championship. For example, they decided to hold a new championship on multiprocessor machines, and all programs that do not support multiprocessor are in the red. Lots of things you can think of. Creators sometimes save new versions of programs to prepare them for the same matches with people. As a result, every popular program is a champion. Everything that is sold has won a championship once, and you can safely write on the boxes: "The strongest chess program!". It turns out, as in boxing, where almost every fighter is a champion, world champion, intercontinental, continental, etc.

Further, probably, in a computer championship, opening preparation means quite a lot, since the computer stores the entire database in its memory and can effectively play at the initial stage of the game according to a predetermined scenario. This is especially important because chess programs are especially confident in positions with weaknesses in the opponent and a clear plan for strengthening and attacking weak points in the position. Then they gradually harmonize and carefully strengthen the position of their pieces, gradually bringing their superiority to a decisive one. Moreover, not knowing the winning plan in advance, they will see it later when they strengthen the position to the maximum. And this opening preparation is an expensive pleasure, because you need to hire qualified chess players. Entire teams work with popular programs, as with leading athletes who have their own chef and anyone else ...

Apparently, the creators of Chessmaster decided to save money this time. The first place was shared by Fritz and Shredder, the third was taken by Junior, all other programs were far behind. They do not have such supercommands as hyped programs. Yes, they don't need to. Let's look at two interesting examples and compare the moves in games with those offered by Chessmaster.

This is a position from a Junior game with one of the outsiders. Here Junior will soon lose, and it is this defeat that will not allow him to catch up with the leaders with whom he will play successfully, since no one else will give points to outsiders. What happened? Junior played with White, went Qd3, sacrificing the b4-pawn for the initiative. However, the attack turned out to be incorrect, the opponent ate everything, defended himself and won. After the game, the creators of Junior said that it was a terrible programming problem, this time the program's intuition failed. It was a game from the first round, probably by mistake the same settings were brought into the program that were in her match against Kasparov. Where she also unexpectedly sacrificed something in the fifth game, and Kasparov went to a draw by repeating moves, because he was afraid to play for a win in a very sharp position. And the computer is not afraid of anything, did not repeat the moves and beat Junior.

But Chessmaster doesn't play like that, of course. It chooses between the most active and accurate h4! and more reliable Rd1. So at least Junior is not always stronger than Chessmaster.

And here is the key position from the decisive game between Fritz and Shredder in the additional match for the first place. Fritz has long had a reputation for being a slow and bad calculation program. And then it affected, the program seriously miscalculated, not noticing a few quiet moves of the enemy. On g6 Fritz answered Rg3?, not fully calculating Rc8! with a lot of tactical threats, and lost. And Chessmaster also wanted to play Rg3 in the beginning, but quickly found the correct move leading to a draw, f-g!

Fritz commentators like to use chess games because the program has a user-friendly interface - so how many holes are there in such analyzes? Especially when considering games between chess programs...

So, we have finished talking about computer chess. As you can see, nothing of the kind is happening - new versions of programs are slowly coming out, everything goes on as before ...

Analysis of selected games of the championship among chess programs.

The site of the Kasparov-X3Dfritz match.

With a huge number of servers where you can play online with a "live" opponent - from playchess.com to chess.rc-mir.com or chesshotel.ru (yes, there are a legion of them), it's not easy to find a web interface to a decent chess "engine" offhand I was only able to find this:

1. Play chess online with the "engine" Shredder:

P.S. According to the professional, the online engine has little to do with the power of a real Shredder :)

2. Play chess online with Rybka engine:

Code for connection on your site:

P.S. It seems that the second script is buggy - it hangs stably after several moves.

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