Pure Chess: Grandmaster Edition

[fern]

That is not an answer.
We already know what means "GM participation" in many cases, exception made of our pal Larry K. here and Komodo.

[AdminX]

Programmer of the chess engine is ?

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From: Ripstone [mailto:info@ripstone.com]
Sent: September 5, 2016 6:32 AM
To: Sean Evans
Subject: Re: Pure Chess

Hi Sean,

Thanks for getting in touch! Pure Chess uses a custom built engine with 10 levels of AI difficulty. We worked with a pair of Grandmasters to enable accurate AI leveling so we're really happy with how the engine runs. Let me know if you have any more questions!

Kind regards,

Hollie Pattison
Community Manager
Ripstone Games

Test it for under-promotion to a bishop!

[mclane]

?

[Leto]

I would recommend staying far away from it. I have the PS4 version which released a few years ago. Unless they learned how to have actual live one vs one games against real people the multiplayer mode they offer is more like a rapid version of correspondence chess, you have to make your move within three days or the other player can claim a win.

I was number one in the leaderboard for almost two years but now I'm number two and I don't mind, the new number one guy refuses to play against me and I bet he's just playing his buddy over and over. The lack of a decent auto-matchmaker and the fact you can choose exactly who to play against makes the leaderboard a joke.

Another thing that I hated was that if someone is losing they can just offer a draw. If you decline the draw you don't get to make a move, it goes back to the other player and the other player can offer draw again without making a move. There was one player I was playing against that did this to me for half a year before I gave up and accepted the draw in a completely winning position.

I tried to communicate with the developer and the publisher but they never got back to me. Oh and for those interested in who programmed the engine, it's not one of the top programmers the engine set to Grandmaster is easily beatable by any engine rated 2500 and it plays its moves in seconds even if it has plenty of time in its clock.

[fern]

It is almost incredible that these days products such as the one you describe can still be presented in the market. What a nerve!!!

[Sean Evans]

That is not an answer.
We already know what means "GM participation" in many cases, exception made of our pal Larry K. here and Komodo.

Hello Fernando,

I sent to follow up emails to Ripstone asking for more information on the engine and they will not respond. I assume they have downloaded a program like Stockfish or Crafty and changed it a bit and are now using it for their own needs without a license from the author. I have no proof of that assumption, but something is wrong.

On a side note, I presume the UCI engines will not run on an Arm M4 cpu; only the old 1980's engines can use it. Actually that might not be to bad a thing. It might not be to difficult to have authors just give for "free" their old engines to use in next years edition. It could have Rebel, Crafty, Hiarcs, etc.

What do you think Fernando?

Cordially,

Sean

[fern]

any action that bring to us that old engines is welcome...

[Sean Evans]

Ripstone got back to me, with another non-answer! I have a feeling that VooFoo or Ripstone have downloaded someone's engine and just tweaked it a bit and now they are claiming it as their own!

=============

From: Ripstone [mailto:info@ripstone.com]
Sent: September 12, 2016 12:10 PM
To: Sean Evans
Subject: Re: FW: Pure Chess

Hi Sean,

As explained in our initial email, the engine was custom built for Pure Chess by our development team at VooFoo. This engine is only used in Pure Chess as it was purpose built, so that should answer both questions.

Kind regards,

Hollie

[Sean Evans]

Ripstone had a marketing match with GM Simon Williams vs. Twitch, which appears to have met with some success.

More than 6,000 people beat a chess Grandmaster on Twitch

Pure Chess Grandmaster Edition comes with cross-platform play on Steam, meaning that you'll be able to cross pawns with the existing Pure Chess community of over 2.5 million players.

If this is the case, Ripstone could be in serious financial trouble if they are using a derivative chess engine and not paying for a license to use it!

Cordially,

Sean

[Leto]

Here's a video of the PS3 version of Pure Chess at level 10 ("Grandmaster") as black vs Roce (an engine rated below 2000) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TldYTPwoQnQ

Here's a video of the PS4 version of Pure Chess at level 1 ("Monkey") as white vs a human : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esaho3yyY4Y

Here's a video of four games in parallel, you see "Grandmaster" lose to Garbor chess engine, and Houdini:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoybA-9CoL8

Maybe someone here can figure out which engine Pure Chess is using.