Aart's Blog

To test recently released versions of Android engines, I conducted a new tournament between the top UCI engines on a Nexus One using a random book opening play, one second-per-move, 32MB hash, and 8MB tablebases cache with the 3- and 4-piece Robbobases endgames on SD card. Congrats again to the Stockfish team!                        1         2         3         4         5 1 Stockfish 2.1            *     54.0-46.0 60.5-39.5 64.5-35.5 65.5-34.5 244.5/400 2 Komodo32 2.03 AB     46.0-54.0     *     46.5-53.5 52.5-47.5 66.0-34.0 211.0/400 3 Critter 1.2 32-bit   39.5-60.5 53.5-46.5     *     51.5-48.5 58.0-42.0 202.5/400 4 RobboLito 0.085e4l   35.5-64.5 47.5-52.5 48.5-51.5     *     62.0-38.0 193.5/400 5 IvanHoe-Beta 999947c 34...

Richard Vida released Critter 1.2 for various platforms, including ARM-based Android devices. Below you can see some screenshots of this UCI engine running in Chess for Android . To get a rough idea of the strength of this new engine, I conducted a few quick matches with other engines on a Nexus One using a random book opening play, one second-per-move, 32MB hash, and 8MB tablebases cache with the 3- and 4-piece Nalimov, Gaviota, Scorpio, Robbobases endgames on SD card. More games upcoming. Critter 1.2  - RobboLito 0.085e4l     3.5 - 6.5  +2/-5/=3   35.00%  - Komodo32 2.03 AB       5.0 - 5.0  +4/-4/=2   50.00%  - Stockfish 2.1          6.0 - 4.0  +4/-2/=4   60.00%  - GNU Chess 5.07.170.7b  7.0 - 3.0  +7/-3/=0   70.00%  - Gaviota v0.83          8.0 - 2.0  +7/-1/=2   80.00%  - Rotor 0.6a         ...

The new Komodo has been heavily tested by many chess fans, and Larry and Don had to make a few bug fixes. You can find an Android binary of the latest version 2.03 at the usual place . Quick tournament on a Nexus S: 1   Komodo32 2.03 AB  +34/-23/=43 55.50%   55.5/100 2   Komodo32 2.01 AB  +23/-34/=43 44.50%   44.5/100

Another tournament between the top engines on a Nexus One, 32MB hash, one-second per move.                      1           2           3                                    1 Stockfish 2.0      ***         48.5 - 51.5 59.0 - 41.0 107.5/200 2 RobboLito 0.085e4l 51.5 - 48.5 **          50.0 - 50.0 101.5/200 3 Komodo32 2.01 AB   41.0 - 59.0 50.0 - 50.0 **           91.0/200

Don Dailey and Larry Kaufman released version 2 of their chess engine Komodo. You can find an ARM-based Android binary on UCI engines for Android . The new release seems stronger than the already impressive previous version. A quick one second-per-move, 32MB hash tournament on a Nexus S against Komodo1.3 resulted in 73 vs. 27 in favor of Komodo2. 1   Komodo32 2AB     +58/-12/=30 73.00%   73.0/100 2   Komodo32 1.3 JA  +12/-58/=30 27.00%   27.0/100 The new Komodo scored 48.5% against Stockfish 2.1 under the same settings. 1   Stockfish 2.1  +38/-35/=27 51.50%   51.5/100 2   Komodo32 2AB   +35/-38/=27 48.50%   48.5/100