#STOCKFISH CHESS PROGRAM SOFTWARE#

By 2006, programs running on desktop PCs had attained the same capability. Within 40 years, in 1997, chess engines running on super-computers or specialized hardware were capable of defeating even the best human players.

The early programs played so poorly that even a beginner could defeat them.

#STOCKFISH CHESS PROGRAM SOFTWARE#

The first chess machines capable of playing chess or reduced chess-like games were software programs running on digital computers early in the vacuum-tube computer age (1950s). The computational speed of modern computers, capable of processing tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of nodes or more per second, along with extension and reduction heuristics that narrow the tree to mostly relevant nodes, make such an approach effective. Such trees are typically quite large, thousands to millions of nodes. Stockfish, Leela Chess Zero, GNU Chess, Fruit, and other free open source applications are available for various platforms.Ĭomputer chess applications, whether implemented in hardware or software, utilize different strategies than humans to choose their moves: they use heuristic methods to build, search and evaluate trees representing sequences of moves from the current position and attempt to execute the best such sequence during play. Standalone chess-playing machines are also available. Computer chess applications that play at the level of a chess grandmaster or higher are available on hardware from supercomputers to smart phones. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysis, entertainment and training.

Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess.

Stockfish chess program