Does every engine have to be stockfish?

[adams161]

After reading some of viewtopic.php?f=2&t=70628 ( end of an era thread) i'm struck that many on here seem to think an engine is only good if the world champ prefers it to study in preparation for his next world champ game.

I've seen an active market just for playing engines. Many of the online playing programs offer engine play and despite the prevalence of people to play online this remains popular. It's still common after a game of any sort, against a human or computer, to offer some ability to analyze the game, check where the player went wrong. Does simple analysis of ones own game against an engine always require the strongest engine for analysis? I don't think so for most. Now if you're watching a broadcast of chess on the highest levels the advantages of the strongest engines for analysis start to come through. Where does Carlsen really stand, what's his best move? But if you're an under 2000 player that just played a game i'm not always sure it's entirely necessary in that case though its nice when available to have the stronger engine. But nice and needed aren't the same.

Also it seems a lot of after game analysis isn't always so heavy and adventurous. Fast and quick may be valued. "oh i screwed up on move 11 and 21", those were moves with obvious blunders.

[jdart]

It's a good point. I find myself using Houdini more for game analysis lately. Stockfish tends to give more unstable evals, maybe that's better and it really is more accurate. Houdini seems a little slower but less noisy, and it is still tactically pretty acute. That is just my unscientific impression though.

--Jon

[adams161]

It's a good point. I find myself using Houdini more for game analysis lately. Stockfish tends to give more unstable evals, maybe that's better and it really is more accurate. Houdini seems a little slower but less noisy, and it is still tactically pretty acute. That is just my unscientific impression though.

--Jon

Having coded support for stockfish analysis in my lantern interface for several years now and most recently Openingtree on Android, default stockfish has some sort of bug or what appears to be a bug to us people who want analysis. It jumps around too much. In fact so much its hard to read a line of a few moves before its replaced with some short line. I got this fixed in my apps by ignoring and not printing short lines. So now i just get one line per depth and as it gets deeper it slows down a lot. i noticed chess - analyze this(i only saw the Android update though i know the app is also on iOs) updated recently. he says he set the contempt value to stockfish to 0 or something in release notes. I ran it, his analysis has stopped jumping

[adams161]

I've coded Stockfish analysis with multi PV into Pulsar Chess on Android for when looking at the users log of games in app. iOS is going to get Crafty. Now originally this was for legal reasons. On iOS, an engine has to be coded into the program with the engine code. It can't be opened like on Android as iOS apps cant start other programs. But you know for looking at one's Pulsar games or exploring openings on OpeningTree with an opening took, I think Crafty is just fine. Fun engine with character. It's not GM level tasks to check out someones games against Pulsar and Crafty 23.4 that we use is 2700 computer rating which is GM level.

Now Pulsar Chess with Stockfish on Android is in release now in Play Store. Pulsar with Crafty for iOS has Crafty now as a work in progress. It's all hooked up but i'm still working on the board to make it look right when sized smaller above analysis.