Which are the chess engines written from scratch ?

[Arsha Mahdavi]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your interest. Here I replaced the file with GNU GPL ver2 and Smash source code added.

Download Deep Smash x64

[Adam Hair]

Thank you very much, Arsha!

[carldaman]

What about The Baron by Richard Pijl ?

(It's an interesting idea to look for the most original engines, but things aren't that simple, unfortunately.)

Regards,
CL

[Sedat Canbaz]

What about The Baron by Richard Pijl ?

(It's an interesting idea to look for the most original engines, but things aren't that simple, unfortunately.)

Regards,
CL

Nice..., but of course I have no any idea about Baron was written from scratch or not


Best,
Sedat

[pedrox]

If you use alpha-beta, you do not you start from scratch.
If you use null move, you do not you start from scratch.
If you use hash tables, you do not you start from scratch.
If you use mailbox or bitboards for gen moves, you do not start from scratch.
If you're using futility prunning, razoring or LMR you do not you start from scratch.
etc.

No offense, but that is one of the stupidest lines of reasoning I've ever read. If I read up how a Runge-Kutta integrator works and write one from scratch, I've still written it from scratch, haven't I? I may not have invented the algorithm, but I wrote the code, and that is what the question was.

"Written from scratch" does not imply "written from scratch and invented all the algorithms and data structures independently".

If you consider this stupid reasoning then I have a question for you:

Your consider that the list of 20 engines to be used Sedat is a good representation of engine written from scratch?

I could give the name of 200 engines that could probably get on that list to the same conditions that the engines are on that list.

Ex --> A-Engines

Abrok (WB/UCI) Roman Korba
Ace (UCI) Adam Adair
Adam (UCI) Dominique LONGBIEN
Adamant (WB) George Varentsov
Aice (WB/UCI/FRC)(Linux) Milikas Anastasios
Ajedrez Táctico (WB) César Rodolfo Contreras Pérez
Akiba (WB) Maciej Szmit
Alaric (WB/UCI) Peter Fendrich
Alarm (WB) Benny Antonsson and Erik Robertsson
ALChess (WB/UCI) SDChess Alexander Lobanov
Aldebaran (WB) Mauro Scarpa
Alderon (WB) Norman Schmidt
Alex (WB/UCI)(Linux) Normand Marcel Blais
AlexUCI (UCI) Alexander Turikov
Alf (WB) Casper Willestofte Berg JA
Alfil (WB/UCI)(Linux) Enrique Sánchez Acosta
AliBaba (WB) JA Dennis Breuker
Alice (WB) DC Sven Reichard
AliChess (UCI) Anton Lindenmair
Amateur (WB) Will Singleton
Amundsen (WB)(x64) John Bergbom JA
Amy (WB)(x64)(SMP)(Linux) Thorsten Greiner JA
Amyan (WB/UCI/FRC) Antonio Dieguez
Anatoli (WB) Martin Giepmans
Anechka (UCI) Sergei Nefedov SDChess
Animats (WB)(Linux) Stuart Allen JA
AnMon (WB/UCI) Arena Partner Chr. BARRETEAU
Ant (WB) Tom Vijlbrief
ApilChess (UCI) Ulf Lorenz JA
Arabian Knight (WB) Marcin Gardyjan JA
Arasan (WB/UCI)(Linux)(x64)(SMP) Jon Dart
ArcBishop (WB/UCI/FRC) Matthias Gemuh
Ares (WB/UCI) Charles Roberson
Arics (WB) SDChess Vladimir Fadeev
Arion (UCI) Gabriel GUILLORY
Aristarch (UCI) Stefan Zipproth
Armageddon (WB) Grzegorz Sidorowicz
Asterisk (WB/UCI) Peter Horvath
Atak (WB) Mateusz Luksik
Atlanchess (WB) Grant Osborne
Atlas (WB/UCI)(SMP) Andrés Manzanares Campillo
Averno (WB) José Carlos Martínez Galán
AviChess (WB) Michel Gaillard
Awesome (WB) Bill Jordan
Ax (WB) Pham Hong Nguyen
Ayito (WB/UCI/FRC) Jaime Benito de Valle Ruiz


Of course, Sedat is free to organize the tournament he want and choose the desired engines. But giving the name to the tournament as a tournament between engine written from scratch is not a good name because it seems to imply that the 20 engines are the only written from scratch.

[Uri Blass]

Dear Friends,

My new current project has no any goal about proving which engine is original, which is clone and so on...

With the current test,
Just I want to test and see those engines, which have more own playing styles...

One thing more,
Just I'd like to make it more clear about in case of 50 % + similarity
Then I will allow testing that X engine, which is scored with higher winning percentage


Once more I'd like to mention,
PLEASE dont take too seriously the current my new testing
It's a just a fun testing (it's not official...)

I am really sorry if I have offended anyone

Have a nice weekend,
Sedat Canbaz

Note that written from scratch is not the same as having a different playing style.

If you want to test difference then you can simply use the similiarity tool and decide not to accept 2 engines with more than 55% similiarity.

You can consider an engine to be different enough if it has less than 55% similiarity to every previous engine from different authors and get a competition between engines with different playing style(note that I do not think that above 55% means not written from scratch and I also do not think that below 55% means written from scratch).

[Evert]

If you consider this stupid reasoning then I have a question for you:

Your consider that the list of 20 engines to be used Sedat is a good representation of engine written from scratch?

Almost certainly not, but what does that have to do with anything?

I could give the name of 200 engines that could probably get on that list to the same conditions that the engines are on that list.

I'm sure many more could be found. In fact, I would expect the vast majority of chess programs out there to have been "written from scratch" in the sense I just described.
Conversely, I would estimate the number of chess programs out there where the author invented all of his own algorithms to be close to 0.

Of course, Sedat is free to organize the tournament he want and choose the desired engines. But giving the name to the tournament as a tournament between engine written from scratch is not a good name because it seems to imply that the 20 engines are the only written from scratch.

As long as he makes no claim to include all of them (which I wouldn't suggest doing, since there'd be too many out there), that's not really a problem, is it?

Mind you, it looks like a pretty diverse set of programs, in terms of playing strength.

[pedrox]

As long as he makes no claim to include all of them (which I wouldn't suggest doing, since there'd be too many out there), that's not really a problem, is it?

Mind you, it looks like a pretty diverse set of programs, in terms of playing strength.

Of course you can consider Junior as the best engine of the world, he has won the world championship of the ICGA.

But let me think to my that call World Championship a tournament where the best engines do not play is a bad name for the tournament.

I have no problem with Sedat organize a tournament between programmers whose engines started from scratch, but I think it's a bad idea to make the tournament specifying that are engines whose code started from scratch as it seems implies that other engines did not.

This is my opinion, it seems that some people have a problem that others have a different opinion.

[carldaman]

What about The Baron by Richard Pijl ?

(It's an interesting idea to look for the most original engines, but things aren't that simple, unfortunately.)

Regards,
CL

Nice..., but of course I have no any idea about Baron was written from scratch or not


Best,
Sedat

I've been under the impression that it was written from scratch. However, there is also a newer, private version of the engine, that (the author says) has been completely re-written (from scratch?!).

Would you consider such a re-written engine as being written from scratch?

http://rpijl.home.xs4all.nl/html/the_baron.html

[jdart]

Arasan has a dev history going back to 1994 so I think it counts as a "from scratch" engine. There was hardly anything to clone from back then.

The current codebase has some code of external origin, including the Nalimov tablebase interface and magic bitboard code derived from Pradu Kannan's work.

--Jon