Chessify Setup

Every once in a while I wake up from my habitual sleepwalking and try to grasp the basics of current trends in chess engines. At the end of this post is a summary of those efforts over the past few years.

With this post I set out to bring myself up to date once again, but quickly decided that I needed to look at chess engines in the so-called cloud. My first stop was Chessify: Powerful Cloud Engines for Chess Analysis (chessify.me; 'Powerful Cloud Platform for Chess Training'). The site's home page promises a great deal:-

Top Engines: The latest versions of Stockfish (NNUE and traditional), Leela Chess Zero, and other engines available for your use. • Free Analysis: Analyze at up to 1,000 kN/s speed with Stockfish, asmFish, SugaR, Koivisto, and Berserk for FREE when you register on Chessify. • Cloud Servers: Fast & secure: up to 1 BN/s for Stockfish, 100 kN/s for LCZero, 130 MN/s for asmFish, SugaR AI, Koivisto, and Berserk.

Promises are one thing, but 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating', as they say. I set up a Chessify account, received some free time on their service, and started a new game on the LSS server, where engine use is generally allowed. I'll report on my progress in a future post.

***

Seven years ago I posted a long series that has already been summarized.

• --- 2015
• 2016-01-04: Chess Engine Summary • 'How Stockfish Works'++

Following are other series plus individual posts that looked at other aspects of engines.

• --- 2017
• 2017-10-30: Improve Engine Software
• 2017-11-06: Improve Engine Hardware - Specs
• 2017-11-13: Improve Engine Hardware - Parts List
• 2017-11-20: Improve Engine Hardware - High Performance
• 2017-11-27: Improve Engine Software - Tablebases
• 2017-12-04: Engine-to-engine, Head-to-head • TCEC S10; CCC01
• --- 2018
• 2018-10-26: GPU Specifications • Video: 'Graphics Card Specs - The Basics'
• 2018-11-02: GPU Configurations
• 2018-11-09: GPU Pricing
• 2018-11-16: GPU Benchmarks
• --- Misc.
• 2019-11-18: 'Fat Fritz' by Albert Silver
• 2020-06-15: Fat Fritz Followup
• 2021-01-11: CCC Hardware Upgrade
• 2022-01-10: Ipmanchess
• --- NNUE
• 2020-08-10: Stockfish NNUE = +90 Elo • 'I hope some kind, understanding soul will eventually produce something like "NNUE for Dummies".'
• 2020-09-21: Stockfish NNUE Dev
• 2020-10-05: Stockfish NNUE - Three Early Threads
• 2020-11-02: Stockfish NNUE - Three Useful Pins
• 2020-11-16: Komodo NNUE
• --- Misc. NNUE
• 2021-01-25: Engine Scaling
• 2021-02-22: The Transformation of Fat Fritz
• 2021-12-13: Komodo Dragon

I expect this new cloud series will become one of the longest to date on chess engines.