Crafty is a chess program written by UAB professor Robert Hyatt , with development and assistance from Michael Byrne, Tracy Riegle, and Peter Skinner. It is derived from Cray Blitz , winner of the 1983 and 1986 World Computer Chess Championships . Tord Romstad, co-author of Stockfish , described Crafty as "arguably the most important and influential chess program ever".
22-585: Crafty finished in second place in the 2010 Fifth Annual ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships. Crafty lost only one game, to the first-place winner, Thinker. Crafty also finished in second place in the 2010 World Computer Rapid Chess Championships. Crafty won seven out of nine games, finishing behind the first-place winner Rybka by ½ point. In the World Computer Chess Championships 2004, running on slightly faster hardware than all other programs, Crafty took fourth place with
44-525: A rating of 3110, 135 points higher than Deep Junior 10.1, and 103 points lower than no. 1 ranked Deep Rybka 3 x64. Deep Fritz 11 is eighth on the same list, with a rating of 3073. On the December 2010 edition of the CCRL rating list, Deep Fritz 12 placed sixth with an Elo rating of 3088, 29 points higher than Deep Junior 11.1a x64, and 174 points lower than no. 1 ranked Deep Rybka 4 x64. Deep Fritz 11
66-556: A transposition table , a refutation table , an evaluation cache, selective extensions, recursive null-move search, and many other features. Special editions of the program include enhanced features such as an opening book , positional learning, and an endgame tablebase . Crafty was one of the programs included in the SPEC CPU2000 benchmark test. It is also included as an additional engine in Fritz . Fritz (chess) Fritz
88-610: A 32-bit one. In 2002, Deep Fritz drew the Brains in Bahrain match against Vladimir Kramnik 4–4. Fritz 7, which was released that year, included the ability to play on the Playchess server. In November 2003, X3D Fritz , a version of Deep Fritz with a 3D interface, drew a four-game match against Garry Kasparov . Fritz 8, which appeared around this time, provided a 3D Spanish room setting for games to take place. Fritz 9 added
110-635: A 3D virtual opponent, the Turk. In 2004, Fritz 8 added a Handicap and Fun mode, allowing players to choose the Elo rating and style that the engine will use. Chessbase native engines can use the Handicap feature: Chess Tiger , Crafty , the Fritz engine, Hiarcs , Houdini , Junior , Rybka , Shredder and Zappa . Some UCI engines can also make use of Handicap, e.g. Fruit and Stockfish . On June 23, 2005, in
132-508: A green circle and bad moves with a red one. This version again uses the Rybka engine. Fritz 17 was released on November 12, 2019, and uses the Ginkgo engine, written by Frank Schneider. Fritz 18 was released on November 16, 2021. On March 30, 2022, Fritz 18 Neuronal was released that supplemented Fritz's handcrafted evaluation with an efficiently updatable neural network . In July 2021,
154-453: Is a German chess program originally developed for Chessbase by Frans Morsch based on his Quest program, ported to DOS, and then Windows by Mathias Feist. With version 13, Morsch retired, and his engine was first replaced by Gyula Horvath's Pandix, and then with Fritz 15, Vasik Rajlich 's Rybka . The latest version of the consumer product is Fritz 18 Neuronal. This version supports 64-bit hardware and multiprocessing by default. In 1991,
176-538: Is a series of introductory chess programs based on the Fritz engine. Each program provides basic tutorials and games based on one aspect of chess, allowing children to learn the basic rules easily without overwhelming them with too many options at once. Games follow Prince Fritz, the son of King White, and his cousin Bianca, as Chesster the rat (among others) teaches them the fundamentals of chess so that they can defeat King Black. There are three programs available in
198-413: Is also sixth on the same list, with a rating of 3097. Fritz has not kept up with modern advances, attaining only 14th on the 2013 CCRL rating list and not participating in any world championships since 2004. The 2013 release of Deep Fritz 14 switched engines from the original author Frans Morsch's to Pandix, written by Gyula Horváth. A long-time participant in world computer championships since 1984, Pandix
220-425: Is available, but the software is for "personal use" only and redistribution is only allowed under certain conditions. Crafty pioneered the use of rotated bitboard data structures to represent the chess board, and was one of the first chess programs to support multiple processors. It also includes negascout search, the killer move heuristic , static exchange evaluation, quiescence search , alpha-beta pruning ,
242-591: Is known for its high level of strength and as a trainer engine to help beginners improve their chess techniques. The playing strength of Chess Tiger is inferior to better known programs such as Fritz and Shredder . In 2001 Chess Tiger won a tournament in Buenos Aires ahead of a number of top grandmasters , and achieved a rating performance of 2788 Elo rating . Chess Tiger won the French and Dutch Chess Computer Championships three times each. Chess Tiger won
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#1732798059160264-620: The ABC Times Square studios, the AI Accoona Toolbar , driven by a Fritz 9 prototype, drew against the then FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov . From November 25 to December 5, 2006 Deep Fritz played a six-game match against Kramnik in Bonn . Fritz was able to win 4–2. In this match, Kramnik blundered away game 2, allowing a mate in one. On SSDF 's September 2010 rating list, Deep Fritz 12 placed sixth with
286-689: The German company ChessBase approached the Dutch chess programmer Frans Morsch about writing a chess engine to add to the database program which they sold. Morsch adapted his Quest program, and ChessBase released it for sale that year as Knightstalker in the U.S. and Fritz throughout the rest of the world. In 1995, Fritz 3 won the World Computer Chess Championship in Hong Kong, beating an early version of Deep Blue . This
308-539: The German company Data Becker released the program 3D Schach Genie, containing the Shredder engine and Fritz interface. The German company Purple Hills sold Fritz 6 through 12 as Profi Schach 1 through 7. British Excalibur Publishing has published Fritz 9 through 14. American book publisher Simon & Schuster featured the Fritz engine in their Extreme Chess program, as have German game publisher TopWare Interactive in their Battle vs. Chess game. Fritz and Chesster
330-873: The balance between speed and positional understanding is weighted in favour of the former. This game from the above-mentioned 2001 Argentina Masters Event sees Chess Tiger defeat the well known Grandmaster Oscar Panno . Panno sacrifices the exchange for a pawn early on, and although he gets a second pawn he struggles to fully coordinate his queenside pieces, finally falling for a tactical shot from Chess Tiger on move 34. White: Chess Tiger Black: Oscar Panno 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.Nc3 a6 4.d4 cxd4 5.Nxd4 b5 6.Bd3 Qb6 7.Nb3 Bb7 8.a4 b4 9.a5 Qc7 10.Na4 Nf6 11.Nb6 Nxe4 12.Nxa8 Bxa8 13.Be3 Nf6 14.O-O Bd6 15.g3 h5 16.Bb6 Qc6 17.f3 Bc7 18.Qd2 Bxb6+ 19.axb6 Qxb6+ 20.Qf2 Qxf2+ 21.Kxf2 Ke7 22.Rfe1 Rc8 23.Nd4 g6 24.Ra4 Nd5 25.Bxa6 Nxa6 26.Rxa6 Bb7 27.Ra7 Rb8 28.c4 bxc3 29.bxc3 Ba8 30.c4 Nb4 31.Rea1 Bc6 32.Kf1 Rc8 33.Rb1 Nd3 34.Rb8 1-0 A version of Chess Tiger
352-480: The developers of the open source Stockfish chess engine filed a lawsuit against Chessbase alleging that Fat Fritz 2.0 is a derivative of Stockfish and is in violation of a "central obligation" of Stockfish's GNU General Public License . In November 2022, a settlement was reached in which it was agreed that the license obligations of the GPL-3.0 for the products Fat Fritz 2 and Houdini 6 have not been complied with. In
374-470: The first Berliner Emanuel-Lasker Computerchess-Tournament in October 2001. Chess Tiger is designed to be particularly aggressive in its style of play. While most chess engines tend to avoid gambits and sacrifices Chess Tiger actually prefers them. Chess Tiger calculates very quickly even in relatively weak hardware environments which implies that the evaluation function is fairly 'light' and that therefore
396-468: The future, Chessbase will comply with the license terms and to adequately inform the public about the use of the Stockfish software in its products. The American company Viva Media , now a division of Encore, Inc. has been licensed to sell many versions of the Fritz engine and GUI combination. British game publisher Eidos Interactive (now part of Square Enix Europe ) published Fritz 6 and 7. In 1998,
418-606: The same number of points as the third-place finisher, Fritz 8 . On the November 2007 SSDF ratings list, Crafty was 34th with an estimated Elo rating of 2608. Crafty uses the Chess Engine Communication Protocol and can run under the chess interfaces XBoard and Winboard . Crafty is written in ANSI C with assembly language routines available on some CPUs, and is very portable. The source code
440-539: The series: The editors of Computer Games Magazine nominated Fritz 6 for their 2000 "Classic Game of the Year" award. Chess Tiger Chess Tiger is a strong chess program developed by Christophe Théron which achieved a number of tournament successes between 2000 and 2002. Although still commercially available, the Windows version has not been developed recently so has largely historical significance only. It
462-465: Was substantially rewritten in 2009, and has been a strong contender since then. Fritz 15 was released on November 25, 2015, with new features, including switching to Vasik Rajlich's famous Rybka engine. Handicap and Fun mode was dropped, but there is now a function for pawn and piece handicaps (e.g. ceding pawn and move). Fritz 16 was released on November 12, 2017, with a new Easy game mode which provides for assisted calculation marking good moves with
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#1732798059160484-413: Was the first time that a program running on a consumer-level microcomputer defeated the mainframes that had previously dominated this event. In 1998, Fritz 5 was released including a Friend mode which would cause the engine to adjust its strength of play over the course of a game based on the level the opponent appeared to be playing. Fritz 5.32 was released soon after replacing the 16-bit architecture with
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