From the early days of the Rybka 1.0 beta, computer chess programmers have had concerns about the origins of the Rybka code.  Was it an original work of Mr Rajilich or did the code originate elsewhere?  Rumours abounded, but with very few of the community having the technical skills to examine the code and arrive at an informed opinion, the debate was often characterised more by emotion rather than logic and reasoned argument or production of factual evidence.

During those times some fans of the program at times behaved in a manner more reminiscent of a fundamentalist religious movement than rational human beings and logical(?) chess players.  Chess forums banned discussion of rival programs and posters merely mentioning the rivals names had their accounts banned and posts deleted.  It was a period very reminiscent of Stalin’s Russia in many ways, except that the violence was limited to character assassination rather than live ammunition.

The suppression of dissent over the origins of Rybka was one of the reasons that this website was founded.  I found the stifling of debate and lack of real effort to find the truth depressing.  The repression of debate is never a good thing.  The lunatic behaviour of some moderators on a number of chess forums ensured that the ability of the community as a whole to arrive at the truth of the matter was severely hampered.

It was always an object of curiousity to me that Mr Rajilich never sought to prosecute those behind any of the several Rybka clones that were released over the last year or two.  Surely a man that has worked hard to produce an original piece of intellectual property that was a world leader in its class would act to protect his product?  Now it seems that we have been provided with a possible reason why.  David Levy has accused Rybka itself of being the plagiarised work of two separate computer chess programs – Crafty and Fruit.  If the accusations prove to be correct then this would of course provide ample reason to avoid any public court case involving Rybka.  After all, how can you prosecute someone for stealing your intellectual property if your product is itself plagiarised?

As Houdini is currently leading the rankings in terms of playing strength (Elo) the point is somewhat moot anyway, except for one thing: Many assert that Houdini itself is merely a Rybka clone.  If this is also true and Houdini gets banned too, then where do the folks that want to play chess versus computer opponents go then?

Original article: Washington Times.

Computer Chess Online - Rybka Stripped of World Chess Champion Titles

Free Online Chess for Kids

Use the online flash chess game here on this website. (Shameless plug!)

Flashchess3 gives a great game of chess for kids and plays on a nice 3d board.  Left click with the mouse selects a piece to move (when it is your turn). The legal moves for a given piece are all highlighted so teaching the moves is straightforward and the computer is not too strong as to make it impossible to win.  There are of course three difficulty levels to further match ability of the player to the level of the game.

Click here for an easy chess game for kids.

Download the Crafty Chess GUI

This is an offline option and little bit more complicated.  Some knowledge of software is required as the program will have to be downloaded and installed on your PC, but the results are worth it. The advantage here is that once the initial setup is completed your child will never outgrow the program.  Not bad for a fee download.

How can I be so confident?  Well, chess software beat the world’s best chess player at the time (Gary Kasparov) some years ago.  Since that time chess programs have only got better.

The Crafty chess engine plays chess to a very high standard (Grandmaster) on maximum settings, but using this free interface it can be limited to a more reasonable level. After all, we did promise you “Easy Chess Games for Kids”, right?

First, download and install the Crafty GUI itself.

The interface can be downloaded from: http://valters-and.co.cc/crafty/gui.php

The Crafty book files are available from: http://valters-and.co.cc/crafty/files/crafty_23.2_book.zip

Unzip the GUI file into a folder of your choice and then download the Crafty book files and copy them into exactly the same folder as the folder Crafty was unzipped into.  (Copy the book files over only, not the files still in the unzip folder.)

When you double click the Crafty.exe in the folder you chose the program will automatically find the book files if they have been placed in correct folder. At this point it might be worth making a desktop shortcut icon too.

If you run into any difficulties along the way please follow the instructions given on the main Crafty website which is at: Crafty Chess

All downloads are free.

Commercial Options

Free software is often excellent, but sometimes you want life to be simple.  Commercial chess software installs automatically and offers a great user experience. A very popular piece of chess software is what we will consider next.

FRITZ CHESS 12

The Fritz Chess software has been around a long time.  It offers a good user interface and can be set to play at almost any level. The interface offers all the usual refinements such as allowing moves to be taken back and so on. It can also assess your child’s playing strength once they reach a reasonable level.

Fritz 12 offers chess for kids and adults both. The user interface is quite straightforward and if you don’t like a particular element on screen it is easily removed.

Buy Fritz 12 from Amazon USA

Buy Fritz 12 from Amazon UK

Teaching Your Child to Play Chess

Over time your child will of course improve in their chess playing ability.  There are a number of books available to speed this process along and probably the best modern book on this subject is:  Chess for Children

It is a hardcover book with a reading age of 9-12. The books main character George is taught how to play chess by his pet alligator, Kirsty. Kirsty is the Grand Alligator of Chess, or so he says…

All in all a good, fun book to teach your child chess.

Computer Chess Online - Easy Chess Games for Kids

What also might not be commonly known is that whenever the code for these free chess engines is publicly available Jim will also recompile the code to run more efficiently. Jim’s recompiles of well known chess engines often run better than the original chess program did!

Have a look at Jim’s work at: http://jimablett.hostwebs.com/

(The old site at: http://homepages.tesco.net/henry.ablett/jims.html is no longer maintained.)

It is a testament to the quality of the work that Jim does in his recompiles that many of the authors of many free chess engines are now going to him to have their code “tweaked”.

So, if you are looking for free chess software in the form of winboard or UCI chess engines then Jim’s page is a good place to start.

Some of the files he hosts include (no particular order):

• Rival Chess
• Red Queen Chess
• Protector
• GNU Chess
• Simplex
• Greko
• Komodo
• Gez
• Mizar
• Sjeng
• Scorpio
• Chess One
• Crafty
• Beaches
• Fimbulwinter
• Sungorous
• Alibaba

And many, many more.

Stockfish

As a separate word of note.  Jim also compiled the lastest version of Stockfish.  Stockfish is a free chess engine that is now within a few Elo points of Rybka 4 (currently the worlds strongest chess engine).  This is a great achievement by the team behind Stockfish and it must be mentioned that they deserve full credit and the thanks of the community at large for making a chess engine of this quality freely available.

If for some reason the download is offline you can get the Stockfish chess engine from: http://stockfish.com

Also take a look at the custom made opening book to suit the engines particular style of play.

About UCI and Winboard Chess Engines

Winboard and UCI compatible chess programs do not run on their own.  You need a GUI to operate them.  Thankfully there are a number of free chess interfaces available.

My personal recommendation is Arena – which is hosted at: http://www.playwitharena.com/

Full explanation of the various parts of the install is dealt with on the site and Arena even comes with an early (and free) version of Rybka.

Of course if installing all these bits of software is not your thing then feel free to try out our free online chess game here at computer chess online.

Happy playing!

Computer Chess Online - Jim Abletts Free Chess Engine Site has Moved

Grand Masters Use Computer Chess Programs

Top level players use chess software to assist in their chess analysis. If this is a solution for world class chess grand masters then surely there is a use for chess software to also improve the games of players of lower ability also? While world class players may use complex and expensive clusters of many computers to enhance the speed of their analysis these resources are unlikely to be available to an ordinary player. What is available though is a multitude of chess engines, many of which are free, that are arguably stronger than any human chess Grandmaster. Such instruction and guidance would cost a lot of money if it was provided by a human instructor, yet a computer program can offer this for free.

Memorising Openings by Rote is Unproductive

Many beginners make the mistake of trying to improve their game by attempting to memorise openings, arguing that they suffer a tactical disadvantage early in the game from which they never recover. Analysis by an unbiased source, such as a chess program, will expose this as a fallacy in the majority of cases. At low levels of chess skill a player will have reasonable results by merely adhering to sound opening development theory, rather than spending time learning a particular opening by rote. After all, if they are playing against opponents of similar level, their opponent is very unlikely to play many of the normal “book moves” anyway. Surely it is far better to develop sharp tactical awareness and good concentration skills that will serve you well in almost any position you may come across.

Over the coming weeks and months it is my intention to show how computer chess engines, when used appropriately, can contribute to a rapid increase in playing strength for players below the level of an International Master (IM).

In the mean time, please feel free to play chess online against computer opponents right here at computer chess online.

Computer Chess Online - Learning to Play Chess Online Against Computer Opponents

Anyone who follows computer chess will know that Rybka 3 has been the top computer chess program for a long time now.  Yet Rybka is not without faults in its playing style and move selection.  In short, it remains beatable. What is less well known by the general chess playing public is that many months ago another program was released that could beat Rybka, or so it was claimed.

Most of these “tests” were actually played a Blitz chess speeds and favoured a stripped down chess engine.  There was clearly a need to test both pieces of chess software at a more realistic time control in order to establish a true playing strength.  While Elo ratings for chess engines are somewhat meaningless because they are not calibrated against established human players it is interesting to note that many agree that Rybka is well over a 3k rating and Firebirds developer claims a 3,400 Elo rating for his engine.

The Robbolito Cloning Controversy

The program that could beat Rybka has had many names and forks in its development.  One of the early names the program went by was RobboLito.  Many have accused RobboLito of being a cloned copy of Rybka itself and have refused to test its actual playing strength.  The program remains banned from use on many of the internet chess servers because of these accusations.

At one point the censorship about the program was so severe that it was impossible to make a post on many of the internet chess forums without having the post deleted if it mentioned the name of the software at all.  Thus the program became known as “”The Engine that Shall Not Be Named”.

This kind of Stalinist repression really turned me off frequenting those forums and eventually drove me to set up this website as I feel that the best service of computer chess fans is served by free information exchange and allowing adults to make up their own minds on an issue.

It should be pointed out that despite the fact that accusations were made against Robbolito and its developers that to date no case has ever been heard against them.  It is my opinion that if the law has been broken then of course what Robbolito’s developers did was wrong, but as there is presently zero evidence in the public domain to support this and there has never been any prosecution against them I have to assume that they are innocent.  This is a fundamental principle of Anglo-Saxon law and I agree with it – innocence until proven guilty.

Perhaps the only real clone is Dolly the Sheep?

Firebird – Rising From the Ashes

Robbolito’s development was extremely rapid, with a new beta release almost weekly.  Over time this hectic development slowed and later it became apparent to external observers that the software developers had gone on separate paths and the engines development had forked.

One of those forks is Firebird, which when I tested it had a public release number of 1.2.

One of the accusations thrown at Robbolito and Firebird both is that they are essentially the same program, but with much of the error checking code stripped out to make them “think” faster.  The argument goes that at short time controls this makes them stronger than Rybka, but at longer time controls Rybka should be equal or maybe stronger as it would make fewer mistakes.

Of course with many in the testing community refusing to test the engine it is impossible to know the answer to these kinds of question without doing the research yourself.  Thankfully I have a spare dual core Athlon PC and decided to make use of it to try and get to the truth.

Firebird 1.2 versus Rybka 3 Test Results

To test the two programs I gave them both the same narrow book from Aquarium 2010 and set the UI to make the engines play the same opening as black and as white.  My goal here was to remove any book or colour advantage as the object was to test the engines relative to each other and not to find a champion.  The time controls used were 40 moves in 2 hours, recurring.  This means that even this modest list of games took several days to complete.  I would have left it to run until at least one hundred games were completed, but the computer chess world is moving quickly recently and I terminated the test to start another as a different program has recently surfaced that claims to be able to beat Rybka.

The Final Result?

I am sorry to report that the final result was something of an anti-climax.  After 32 games played the result was a dead draw with 16 points apiece, although the games won and lost were different in many cases.

As the sample size is so small it is hard to say anything conclusive about this.  The difference in choice of moves may just be to small randomising factors within the engines themselves, or it may be evidence that the programs do indeed “think” differently. Whatever the truth, this is my contribution to the debate.

For those interested in the test and the moves played, the PGN of the games is available below.

PGN games download.

Resources

Rybka Homepage

Firebird Homepage

(Firebird has recently been renamed “Fire” and so the original link changed.  To save further confusion the link goes to the homepage of RobboLito and Firebird both.)

Computer Chess Online - Rybka 3 vs Firebird 1.2 (Long Time Controls)