Chess Engine Summary

For the last three months of Mondays I've been running a series on chess engines. It started with a long video overviewing basic engine concepts.

• 2015-09-04: How Stockfish Works
• 2015-09-14: Modern Chess Engines

Then I looked at some technical aspects introduced in the video. These were areas which were largely new to me.

• 2015-09-21: Chess Engines : Advanced Evaluation
• 2015-09-28: Chess Engines : Pruning
• 2015-10-05: Chess Engines : LMR
• 2015-10-12: Chess Engines : Bitboards
• 2015-10-19: Chess Engines : Fishtest
• 2015-10-26: Chess Engines : FishCooking
• 2015-11-02: Chess Engines : Parallel Search

By coincidence, the Thoresen (or 'Top') Chess Engines Competition (TCEC) was running at the same time. Stockfish, the star of the video, was playing Komodo, another super-engine, in the final match ('superfinal' in TCEC jargon).

• 2015-11-09: TCEC Season 8 Superfinal in Progress
• 2015-11-16: TCEC Season 8 Superfinal Week 2
• 2015-11-23: TCEC Season 8 Superfinal Week 3
• 2015-11-30: TCEC Season 8 Superfinal Week 4

After 100 games Komodo emerged with a convincing victory. I spent a few weeks looking at specific games that promised insights into the engines' play.

• 2015-12-07: TCEC Season 8 - Evaluation Anomalies
• 2015-12-14: Evaluation Anomaly - Long Combination
• 2015-12-21: Evaluation Anomaly - Mass Exchange
• 2015-12-28: Evaluation Anomalies - Engines Behaving Badly

Where do we go from here? I haven't decided yet, but I'll certainly come back to chess engines at some time in the future.