But the statement doesn’t go
far enough. By and large,computers are also the present
of chess.
With the question of man vs. machine long-ago settled
over the chessboard, the field of computer chess is now a collaboration between
some of the most dedicated chess teachers in the world (the developers), and
the best students in the history of chess: the engines themselves.
Gobbling up every bit of chess knowledge given to
them, computer chess engines are getting better at a faster rate. The machines
have left humans to play among themselves as the computers probe further into
the chess unknown.
They are playing higher levels of chess than anyone
imagined, and sometimes even the best humans can scarcely understand the
insanely nuanced maneuvers the computers play seemingly without effort. Behind
the scenes, of course, the engines are busy calculating millions of variations,
which -- added to their superior ability to judge resulting positions -- allows
them to play chess more accurately than ever before.
While any decent chess program could easily beat the
world's top humans, there are vast differences in strength among the ranks of
the engines.
Just as Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Vishy Anand, Veselin Topalov, and Hikaru Nakamura(et al.) rule the world of human
chess, so too do the elite engines dominate computer chess.
Here are the top five
strongest computer chess engines. Let us know your thoughts on
computer chess in the comments and on Facebook.
5. Gull 2.8b
Rating: 3214
Gull gained 11 rating points
in the new CCRL
40/40 pure rating list (a method that allows only one version per
engine family, removing distortion), earning it the number-five slot in the
ranks of the known universe’s best chess players.
4. Fire 4
Rating: 3229
Fire is a free engine that used to be (but no longer is) open source.
In development since 2010, Fire is another fast riser
in the world of computer chess. It gained 16 rating points in the CCRL pure
list compared to its normal database rating, the most of any engine in the top
15.
3. Houdini 4
Rating: 3277
Houdini, a commercial engine, used to be the strongest in the world, and remains a very formidable chess program.
According to its creators, “the name Houdini was
chosen because of the engine's positional style, its tenacity in difficult
positions and its ability to defend stubbornly and escape with a draw –
sometimes by the narrowest of margins.”
2. Stockfish 6
2. Stockfish 6
Rating: 3318
The best thing about Stockfish is that it is
completely free, open source, and cross-platform.
Stockfish even won Chess.com’s craziest
game of 2014 award, earning the engine a nice mention in the
Wall Street Journal.
Stockfish also emerged
victorious in one of the most entertaining Chess.com events ever,beating
a "cyborg" Hikaru Nakamura, who played against Stockfish
with the help of an older, weaker chess engine.
1. Komodo 9
Rating: 3340
“I am extremely
impressed by Komodo's play. I watched and analyzed every game and it was
absolutely flawless positional chess, the likes of which has never been seen
before by an engine or human.”
