Human-Like Engines

[De Vos W]

What are the best engines with a human-like playing style in other words,
i'am looking for impressing chess-engines with a unique style of play,
extremely aggressive and sacrificing pawn's and pieces.

[Togga]

Kaissa 2 plays sacrifice without opening book :))

try philou, the only engine which play 1.d4 d5 2.c4 like a human:) at short timecontrols.

[Graham Banks]

What are the best engines with a human-like playing style in other words,
i'am looking for impressing chess-engines with a unique style of play,
extremely aggressive and sacrificing pawn's and pieces.

Hiarcs has always been considered to have a human like playing style.
Of course, there are those who would ask what you mean by a human like playing style.

Cheers,
Graham.

[David Dahlem]

try philou, the only engine which play 1.d4 d5 2.c4 like a human:) at short timecontrols.

What is the estimated rating of Philou?

[Togga]

the version 3.1.2 was not tested yet. i guess elo over 2500.

the engine plays good moves but it is very slow.

http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/details1/Philou.html

[Kirk]

What are the best engines with a human-like playing style in other words,
i'am looking for impressing chess-engines with a unique style of play,
extremely aggressive and sacrificing pawn's and pieces.

Chess Tiger and ProDeo have anti-human setting. I believe Hiarcs does so too. Delfi might be an option as well

Oh, and we cannot forget HOMER

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4357

[LaurenceChen]

What about Rybka 3? Its style is very unique and it will make sacrifices. I think Rybka plays like Fischer + Tal combination. Solid chess and it will sacrifice for positional gains. Hiarcs, I find that it has a weakness in its style, it likes to go for kingside attacks too much even when the position does not support this plan.

[yanquis1972]

of course this 'weakness' is my favorite part about the engine, so it's a case of ymmv.

[Alexander Schmidt]

What are the best engines with a human-like playing style in other words,
i'am looking for impressing chess-engines with a unique style of play,
extremely aggressive and sacrificing pawn's and pieces.

Gothmog plays for sure the most interesting sacrifices.

Not like the modern engines because of long extensions, it plays real sacs due to it's evaluation, not only at the kingside, also on the queenside.

I remember a positional rook vs. knight sac on c3 as black in a sicilian game where such sacs are common for human players. The only advantage of this sac is a weak pawn structure. It was on the edge but Gothmog even won that game.

As a more positional human like engine I would suggest Amyan. Sometimes nice positional play, sometimes suddenly a kingside pawnstorm.

If you look for a weaker engine playing human like, I suggest Fusch. A little bit buggy, but for a weak ~1600 ELO engine very nice positional play.

[yanquis1972]

i wonder about gaviota, but i dont know as i have difficulty getting it to run. i just recall being impressed it was the only engine to prefer kasparov's RxB sacrifice against shirov, & if i'm not mistaken it's author is a pretty strong player.

re the HIARCS talk, that is the only top engine i have ever played against (at full strength) because it was the only one where i felt like i wasn't simply being outcrunched which is rather dull; even though i am a very aggressive player it would often beat me to an attack on the KS. i should probably give DJ 2010 a chance in this regard.

komodo imo plays very human-like chess already (at the SGM level), very quiet, karpovian compared to many engines, & from games i have watched it gives the appearnace of having plans. however unless you're extremely strong i doubt it would be fun to play against, as it will simply wait for you to make a mistake then pounce.