What was the top Chess engine before it was Stockfish, Komodo or Houdini?

[JohnW]

Just curious if anyone happens to know..

[zullil]

Just curious if anyone happens to know..

Rybka comes to mind.

[Dariusz]

Many, many.. many..!

After a lot of years, today I still loving sharp style of play DeepJunior engine. It was and it is my favorite..!
What ideas Junior produced, what surprised analyze lines it generated. In this days, I analyze my games with it amazing engine.

Next, Hiarcs with very "human" style of play and very strong endings without tbs.

And, maybe not so strong as Junior and Hiarcs, but Phalanx was for me strong and interesting oponent for my long games. Very fun, sharp and fast opponent.

I have very good memories

[Edsel Apostol]

Just curious if anyone happens to know..

Top engine was Shredder when I started in this hobby in 2003/2004. Then Rybka came in 2005 and blew everyone out of the water. It stayed in the top I think for 5/6 years before the trio takes over.

[Uri Blass]

Just curious if anyone happens to know..

Rybka comes to mind.

After Rybka comes to mind ippolit that there are claims that they were illegal and I did not use them.

looking at wikipedia for ippolit I find

IPPOLIT, released on May 2, 2009
RobboLito released in September 2009
Igorrit released in January 2010
IvanHoe released in January 2010


I am not sure if part of them or all of them were the top chess engines before houdini(I remember in the beginning claims that the ippolit is good at short time control but have problems at longer time control because of bugs)

Houdini1.0 is from may 2010 and I am not sure if it became the best engine before Houdini1.5
that is from December 15, 2010 or
houdini1.5a from January 15, 2011

[Guenther]

Just curious if anyone happens to know..

Top engine was Shredder when I started in this hobby in 2003/2004. Then Rybka came in 2005 and blew everyone out of the water. It stayed in the top I think for 5/6 years before the trio takes over.

It would be easy to create a top rank list for any time period if CEGT and CCRL had saved the release date for each entry.
It is still possible, but this requires quite a lot of manual work. E.g. the GURL rating list, which combines both rating lists and some
other important ones, is saved as version 2 at RWBC and 'just' needs a release date column added for this purpose.
No idea how long this would take and if all release dates (year/month would be sufficient I think) could be regathered again.

[Branko Radovanovic]

The last time the strongest chess engine was not Stockfish, Komodo, or Houdini was in December 2010, right before Houdini 1.5 was released. At that time, Rybka 4 was #1.

The last archived version of CCRL 40/40 with Rybka as #1:
https://web.archive.org/web/20101121055 ... ccrl/4040/

Houdini 1.5 was released on December 15, 2010, and it's been one of these three engines at the top ever since.

[Steve Maughan]

Here's my recollection of the best PC engines:

1989 Rex 2.3
1990 M-Chess 1.0
1993 Genius 3.0
1997 HIARCS / Rebel
2000 Tiger
2001 Shredder
2005 Fruit 2.3
2006 Rybka
2009 Stockfish

Steve

[Ozymandias]

Just curious if anyone happens to know..

Top engine was Shredder when I started in this hobby in 2003/2004. Then Rybka came in 2005 and blew everyone out of the water. It stayed in the top I think for 5/6 years before the trio takes over.

Shredder 7 was top dog, up to Rybka's debut, in December of 2005. Then Houdini really started to shine at the end of 2010 (v 1.5 14/12/2010). For a few years, it was undisputed 1st, until it stopped progressing with version 4. Shortly after, the other two (of the trio) joined the race at the top, which has been effectively been won by SF, for at least at year now.

[jpqy]

To fill up Steve list a little more..

08-02-1997 Rebel 8.0
09-03-1997 Rebel 8.0
06-05-1997 Hiarcs 6.0
04-09-1997 Hiarcs 6.0
22-02-1998 Fritz 5.0
13-09-1998 Fritz 5.0
28-01-1999 Hiarcs 7.0
28-03-1999 Chessmaster 6000

JP.