Chess25 Sep 2007 10:09 pm
Fritz: Tactical, but positionally sound. Well rounded.
Hiarcs: Positional and human-like play. Good in unbalanced positions.
Junior: Very tactical, sacrificial style play.
Rybka: Strongest chess engine. Excellent positional understanding and human-like play. Excellent evaluation of dynamic positions. Great for analysis.
Shredder: Very positional and solid. Excellent endgame play.
Zappa: Human-like play, aggressive. Very strong, catching up to Rybka.
Fruit: Well balanced positional play.
September 26th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Much depends on how you tweak the parameters of the chess engine. Fritz defaults to a high contempt value while Rybka defaults to a low contempt value… which is why Fritz seems a little more tactical and Rybka a little more positional… but tweak the values and that should change. I haven’t experimented too much because I find the dichotomy useful.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
If you had to rate their default playing styles from the most tactical to the most positional, how would you arrange the list of the above engines?
If that seems like a silly question, let me ask a slightly different one: which of these are the top 3 strong positional engines in increasing order? I was just wondering, that’s all, and I have no idea myself. But am very curious as to what you think.
Much thanks in advance.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Here’s my two cents worth:
In order of positional tendencies:
1. Rybka
2. Hiarcs
3. Shredder
4. Fruit
5. Fritz