Komodo 9.1 Release

[lkaufman]

We have just released Komodo 9.1, the first strength upgrade from Komodo 9.01/9.02. It is free for those with subscriptions. Non subscribers may order it at full price, or, if they have purchased Komodo 8 or 9, at a 20% discount.
We estimate that the elo gain over Komodo 9.01 (or 9.02) is about 15 on single core. This is based on a +16 elo result in a direct matchup at 2' +1" after 8600 games, plus similar gains based on testing at this level against Stockfish 6. We believe we have improved MP a bit and so would expect the gain to be perhaps 20 on 4 or more cores, but there has not yet been time to confirm this.
As usual, the gains come from many areas. Many eval weights were re-tuned, some free speedups were found, lmr was refined, and a change was made to MP search that appears to be beneficial. The readme file has more details.
Please allow a day for the information on the website to be fully updated, but ordering should work properly now.
Testing groups are encouraged to treat this as a new version, as the changes are significant.

[Hurnavich]

Many thanks,

I notice the default draw score has changed to -10 as opposed to -7

Any reason for this change?.

[lkaufman]

Many thanks,

I notice the default draw score has changed to -10 as opposed to -7

Any reason for this change?.

It was partly for technical reasons, but also because we are pulling further ahead of the competition so it seemed reasonable to try harder to avoid draws.

[Hurnavich]

Hi,

Thanks Larry

Would you still say draw score 0 is better against Stockfish in LTC games?

[lkaufman]

Hi,

Thanks Larry

Would you still say draw score 0 is better against Stockfish in LTC games?

If you are talking about current Stockfish dev., probably so. Against Stockfish 6, perhaps not. But in any event we're only talking about a couple elo difference from this setting.

[Robert Flesher]

We have just released Komodo 9.1, the first strength upgrade from Komodo 9.01/9.02. It is free for those with subscriptions. Non subscribers may order it at full price, or, if they have purchased Komodo 8 or 9, at a 20% discount.
We estimate that the elo gain over Komodo 9.01 (or 9.02) is about 15 on single core. This is based on a +16 elo result in a direct matchup at 2' +1" after 8600 games, plus similar gains based on testing at this level against Stockfish 6. We believe we have improved MP a bit and so would expect the gain to be perhaps 20 on 4 or more cores, but there has not yet been time to confirm this.
As usual, the gains come from many areas. Many eval weights were re-tuned, some free speedups were found, lmr was refined, and a change was made to MP search that appears to be beneficial. The readme file has more details.
Please allow a day for the information on the website to be fully updated, but ordering should work properly now.
Testing groups are encouraged to treat this as a new version, as the changes are significant.

WOW! I just recently purchased Komodo 9.01. This is a very fast improvement, but it also seems like a slap if the face of those of did not pay the one year subscription. It seems like a very clever way to make people feel like they should have purchased the one year option. As a long time customer, and a beta tester ( gave CPU time to help development) I did not expect this. Simple math seems to say, be cheap, get F*****. Funny Don once gave me a free copy of 8.0 when we had purchase troubles, I declined and still made the purchase. Times have changed. IMHO

[lkaufman]

We have just released Komodo 9.1, the first strength upgrade from Komodo 9.01/9.02. It is free for those with subscriptions. Non subscribers may order it at full price, or, if they have purchased Komodo 8 or 9, at a 20% discount.
We estimate that the elo gain over Komodo 9.01 (or 9.02) is about 15 on single core. This is based on a +16 elo result in a direct matchup at 2' +1" after 8600 games, plus similar gains based on testing at this level against Stockfish 6. We believe we have improved MP a bit and so would expect the gain to be perhaps 20 on 4 or more cores, but there has not yet been time to confirm this.
As usual, the gains come from many areas. Many eval weights were re-tuned, some free speedups were found, lmr was refined, and a change was made to MP search that appears to be beneficial. The readme file has more details.
Please allow a day for the information on the website to be fully updated, but ordering should work properly now.
Testing groups are encouraged to treat this as a new version, as the changes are significant.

WOW! I just recently purchased Komodo 9.01. This is a very fast improvement, but it also seems like a slap if the face of those of did not pay the one year subscription. It seems like a very clever way to make people feel like they should have purchased the one year option. As a long time customer, and a beta tester ( gave CPU time to help development) I did not expect this. Simple math seems to say, be cheap, get F*****. Funny Don once gave me a free copy of 8.0 when we had purchase troubles, I declined and still made the purchase. Times have changed. IMHO

We had said to expect an upgrade at least quarterly, and we were pleasantly surprised to get enough elo in under two months instead of three. Also, Mark will soon be leaving for the World Computer Championship and some time in Europe, so there won't be much progress in the next month probably. There was no reason to keep subscribers waiting for an extra month under the circumstances.

[christian]

there should be the possibility to üpgrade to full subscription, because having an old model after two month is not usual in economy. I decided for non subscriber, because I have bought all past Versions and getting them free as subscriber has no Advantage for me

[MikeB]

WOW! I just recently purchased Komodo 9.01. This is a very fast improvement, but it also seems like a slap if the face of those of did not pay the one year subscription. It seems like a very clever way to make people feel like they should have purchased the one year option. As a long time customer, and a beta tester ( gave CPU time to help development) I did not expect this. Simple math seems to say, be cheap, get F*****. Funny Don once gave me a free copy of 8.0 when we had purchase troubles, I declined and still made the purchase. Times have changed. IMHO

Sounds like you should have gone with the subscription plan -- Larry is a very reasonable person and i'm sure if you asked nicely and told him how you blew it , he would let you convert the single copy purchase to a subscription plan by paying the difference.

[TShackel]

We have just released Komodo 9.1, the first strength upgrade from Komodo 9.01/9.02. It is free for those with subscriptions. Non subscribers may order it at full price, or, if they have purchased Komodo 8 or 9, at a 20% discount.
We estimate that the elo gain over Komodo 9.01 (or 9.02) is about 15 on single core. This is based on a +16 elo result in a direct matchup at 2' +1" after 8600 games, plus similar gains based on testing at this level against Stockfish 6. We believe we have improved MP a bit and so would expect the gain to be perhaps 20 on 4 or more cores, but there has not yet been time to confirm this.
As usual, the gains come from many areas. Many eval weights were re-tuned, some free speedups were found, lmr was refined, and a change was made to MP search that appears to be beneficial. The readme file has more details.
Please allow a day for the information on the website to be fully updated, but ordering should work properly now.
Testing groups are encouraged to treat this as a new version, as the changes are significant.

Thanks very much Larry. I'm amazed you made this much progress in such a short time. I don't think stockfish has even been making as much progress as you guys. I'm happy to test it, however I hope you kept whatever made Komodo 9.0 such a vast improvement over Komodo 8.0. I don't want to lose what Komodo 9.0 has developed! Keep up the good work Larry and Mark.

Sincerely,

Tim.