Komodo 14.1 Release and Dragon Announcement

[Dann Corbit]

If they choose Puff the Magic Dragon they can have their own theme song

[dkappe]

If they choose Puff the Magic Dragon they can have their own theme song

Speaking of theme song, HR Puff-n-Stuff would be good, but there have been 5 engines with that name: one French, one Spanish, one Polish and two(!!) Mongolian. Of course they’ve been abandoned for 30 years, but is that important?

[peter]

Nobody seems to like to call komodo simply komodo anymore.
Poor little monitor lizard, I liked the name komodo.
Don Daily used to call it komodo.
Voting for komodo regards

[lkaufman]

Thanks for freeing the Dragon!
Are there any Dragon vs. Human matches scheduled?
I find them so exciting

Nothing scheduled yet, but you can expect that we will indeed have such matches. In unofficial testing Dragon has performed around 2500 on chess.com in Rapid (usually 15' + 10") giving knight odds!

Wonderful! Is there any way to see one of these matches?

You can look up the games of "playkomodo" on chess.com. The games with Hissha are against me, better to look at other games since I am not a typical opponent due to my knowledge of both Komodo and handicap chess.

[lkaufman]

2500 at knight handicap ? Woo. How much stronger it is than Komodo MTC against human in this handicap ? 100 elo perhaps ? You finally have the best program ever for this handicap.

Keep in mind that's 2500 chess.com rapid, not 2500 FIDE. But I do think it is the strongest program at giving knight odds or similar handicaps to humans. It's not yet clear whether combining Dragon with MCTS is even better for this purpose, evidence is mixed so far.

[pohl4711]

Regarding the name, the formal name would be "Dragon by Komodo". Obviously we picked the name Dragon because the Komodo giant lizard is called the "Komodo Dragon". You are welcome to refer to it as Dragon by Komodo, or Komodo Dragon; I expect that most people will simply call it Dragon since the other dragon engines are no longer under development I believe. I guess it's like my name being Larry Kaufman; there are plenty of other Larrys, some better known than I am, but if someone mentions "Larry" on talkchess they are probably referring to me.

Why changing the name?!? That is never a good idea IMHO. Komodo is a long-used and well known name with reputation. And because Komodo is commercial, it is a brand, too.
Whats so bad about "Komodo 15 NNUE" ? Or just Komodo 15 ? Stockfish is still named Stockfish, even though it is using nnue-nets, now and had a huge Elo gain by using nnue, too.

[Gabor Szots]

Why changing the name?!? That is never a good idea IMHO. Komodo is a long-used and well known name with reputation. And because Komodo is commercial, it is a brand, too.
Whats so bad about "Komodo 15 NNUE" ? Or just Komodo 15 ? Stockfish is still named Stockfish, even though it is using nnue-nets, now and had a huge Elo gain by using nnue, too.

I agree. Simply Komodo 15. And better make NNUE default (or not a parameter at all) lest we have to use 'Komodo 15 NNUE on 64-bit' in the name which looks awful.

[JohnWoe]

Congrats!

[Krzysztof Grzelak]

Gentlemen from Komodo, please write when it will be available Komodo NNUE.

[lkaufman]

Why changing the name?!? That is never a good idea IMHO. Komodo is a long-used and well known name with reputation. And because Komodo is commercial, it is a brand, too.
Whats so bad about "Komodo 15 NNUE" ? Or just Komodo 15 ? Stockfish is still named Stockfish, even though it is using nnue-nets, now and had a huge Elo gain by using nnue, too.

I agree. Simply Komodo 15. And better make NNUE default (or not a parameter at all) lest we have to use 'Komodo 15 NNUE on 64-bit' in the name which looks awful.

We can't call it Komodo 15 due to contractual commitments, and "NNUE" is too technical and obscure for ordinary chess players. Also chess.com (which had a major role in this) really likes the Dragon name. So the program will say "Dragon by Komodo Chess", but I expect the testing groups (but not chess.com) will just call it Komodo Dragon (or Dragon-Komodo). As long as the name includes both Komodo and Dragon, everyone should be happy, there is no confusion with either normal Komodo or with some other Dragon engine, and the Dragon name means that it is the NNUE version. It will have an embedded net which will be on by default (user can turn it off).
We plan to have some test games between Dragon and my son IM Raymond Kaufman on chess.com this afternoon (Saturday) at 5 pm Eastern Standard time, probably at knight odds. Look for "playkomodo" games. This is partly to look for any unexpected problems, and also to try to determine whether standard mode or MCTS mode is more appropriate for Dragon when giving handicaps to humans. This is not a formal event, just a test.