Talk:Chess engine

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[edit] old talk

I have disambiguated many references on this page that formerly linked to unrelated articles because the chess engines in question had the names of common items. However, as I was in the P's (I was working alphabetically) I began to wonder if this is in the Wikipedia's best interest. Certainly, to add "(chess)" to the links on this page is productive, as it eliminates references to unrelated articles, even if it only creates a redlink in its place. But, as I disambiguated these dozens of chess engines on other article pages, I found that I was just adding redlink after redlink to the bottoms of articles and disambiguation pages. AFAIK, dab pages aren't really supposed to link to nonexistent articles if possible. I also felt really bad tacking on this barely related redlink notice to some wonderfully written pieces of brilliant prose. What should be done here? I know I've left the job half-finished...should I revert or continue? —Ed Cormany 22:15, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Adding red links to disambiguation pages is absolutely fine. I'd say it's quite useful, in fact, because there may be several reasonable ways to disambiguate something, and if you don't add them, people won't know know what other articles are pointing to (for instance, there may be a risk of somebody linking to Adam (chess engine) rather than Adam (chess) unless there's a pointer to the latter from Adam). And putting a link at the bottom of an article (even a really good one) doesn't really take away from the article itself, IMO, so I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with what you're doing.
That said, I wouldn't worry too much about carrying on with it if you find it boring or have pangs of guilt or whatever. Most of the engines listed on this page are rather obscure and I doubt we'll have articles on them any time soon. I doubt we'll even have links to them from any article other than this. So although it's a job that will probably need to be done at some point, it's not a pressing issue, and nothing much will be hurt if it isn't done right now. --Camembert
Thanks. Your words are encouraging. I'm not sure if I'll carry through to the end of the alphabet or not, but I may well now. =) —Ed Cormany 01:38, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
The other thought is that having red links eventually adds up if a topic *is* referenced from multiple places--might appear on a most-wanted list or, when someone is considering whether to create a new page and is staring at a blank "Editing" page, they can click What Links Here and see whether there are articles that reference it. Sometimes helps me decide whether to create an article that will fill in a few red links automatically. Anyway, nice job (as I also said on your user page). Elf | Talk 04:15, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Most of the programs on this list should not have encyclopedia articles. There just is not enough to say about them to ever get a verifiable article that will ever be greater than stub-length. I am going to unlink all but the ones which already do have an article. Please do not re-create the link until you also create the detailed article about the engine itself. (And as a caution to new users, people who create many self-evident articles with the sole content of "XYZ is a chess engine" as a way around this principle have been accused of vandalism for that behavior.) Rossami (talk) 03:08, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a category for computer chess players too? --Malathion 5 July 2005 02:46 (UTC)

Yes, it happened. See Category:Chess engines. --IanOsgood 17:06, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Licensing

Is it possible to add information about the license of each engine, such as GNU, BSD, closed-source, or whatever? Nicholasink 15:11, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I think that the title of the page should be more explicit, and that a phrase in the beginning of the document should present the target of the list and what is allowed. Is the target of the list presenting what is a chess engine and how it works? In this case the list should only contain the most representative engines. Is the target to present the best engine available to the public in order to chose one that fit your need? In this case the list would contain only the best one. I would perhaps let this page in this actual state - open to all chess engines - and create a new one with a link to it. So there would be less problems. Outsiders with new engines could put there engine one the wikipedia and have less excuse to pollute the page you have in mind.

[edit] List is of dubious value

This list is of dubious value. To the layperson, it is just random names. It does not distinguish between software and dedicated computers. It does not distinguish programs of historical interest from those of current interest. Half these engines are non-notable personal projects. Any static list will become obsolete almost immediately. I recommend removing the list entirely, perhaps merging the notable programs into computer chess, perhaps introducing categories instead. --IanOsgood 20:37, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Listcruft is exactly what I was talking about. I'd propose this page for deletion, but it seems to have a lot of history, therefore interest. Could we at least categorize the links on this page a little? I propose at least deleting every item that does not have an internal or external link. --IanOsgood 00:26, 11 October 2006 (UTC)


Note: around this time the page was renamed from List of chess engines to Chess engines.

[edit] Free chess engines

List of non-notable engines removed, so there is no temptation to add them back to the article. --IanOsgood 16:57, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Took out those engines that now have links Laetoli

Could you please give your reference for the ELO ratings? Peferably list both the testing agency, date of testing, and the reference hardware used. Without a reference, the ratings could be removed at any time. Also think hard about the notability of these engines. We don't wan't this page to turn back into a link farm. --IanOsgood 21:38, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I took the ELO rating from three sites and normalised the data because the ELOs depend on CPU speed. If you want I can link to those sites or I can show my data and how I derived it. What do you think?
As regards notability, I see your point but a lot of people like to run compative tournaments or play against an engine with a specific strength, i.e. no one can beat Rybka, so I think they're all useful. Writing a chess program is not trivial with scarcely any prospect of financial gain, so I doubt anyone is going to do it in order to harvest links.
What I had intended to do once I'd gathered all the engines plus data is list them according to ELO strength and include the author's name and country they come from. If you prefer we can dump those for which I cannot find ELO rankings.
I noticed someone removed the approximate sign (~) I'd put that in to show that the rating were just that (they're rounded to the nearest 5). Laetoli —Preceding comment was added at 23:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Merging data from multiple sources constitutes original research, and so does not belong on Wikipedia. Please reference a single source for ratings, or remove them altogether. We already give links to the major rating lists if folks want to go look up ratings themselves.
If you want to work on the page, you could cull the list only to those few dozen free engines that are near the top of one of the rating lists, as a measure of notability. --IanOsgood 04:35, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I concede defeat. Took out Ikarus (private engine & not freely available) and put in authors and country codes. I hope this is alright by you. Also gave link to ratings page. Laetoli —Preceding comment was added at 12:16, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed page move

I propose that this page, currently at Chess engines should be move to Chess engine to conform with WP naming conventions regarding plurals of nouns. The page cannot be moved by a non-administrative user because the redirect page Chess engine has a history. BlueValour 23:25, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Source Code

It would be nice to list which engines are provided with source code. I know the following do: Amundsen, Amy, Arasan, BBChess, Crafty, Faile, Fruit, Glaurung & Scatha, GNU Chess, Knight Cap, Nero, Pepito, SJeng, Toga II, Witz. (add more if you know)

[edit] This article should merge with Computer chess

Subject says it all Rocksong 23:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Oppose - Computer chess is already long and a merge of the two articles would push it over the top. I agree that some rationalisation is needed but length indicates two articles though not necessarily split as now. BlueValour 05:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose - As per Bluevalour. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aarontay (talk • contribs) 05:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC).
  • Oppose - This page started out as a "list" article, with only minimal explanatory paragraphs. Such a (large) article should remain separate from the (large) main topic article. I would instead suggest refactoring by moving content related to computer chess theory back into the main computer chess article. --IanOsgood 17:12, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Then what is the difference between the subject matter of the two articles? "Computer chess" and "Chess engine" are almost synonyms. Rocksong 06:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Not quite. Of course any chess program by definition would have an engine (the component that actually runs the algorithms), but in the Computer chess circles (as you probably already know), chess engine typically refers to the relatively new idea (1990s?) of splitting a chess program into two parts so the engine or brain can be ported to run on any other interface that runs the same protocol. It is allied to the concepts of Xboard Communication Protocol, UCI, etc and there has being a trend in the past 2 decades for modular engines to be released even by commercial packages. It is also a more specialized term than computer chess which is devoted generally to computer chess programming techniques (and history of). You can argue whether this concept is notable, but it is clearly distinguishable from computer chess topic.Aarontay 07:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

But that's not what this article is about. All the "chess engines" concepts are (AFAICT) already there in Computer chess, and don't need to be duplicated here. Apart from the section "Increasing strength" (which I think is out of place and belongs in Computer chess), this article more about listing/comparing the different engines, so it should be renamed to reflect that. So I guess I've changed my mind and I'm proposing a rename (to keep the article focused) rather than a merge. To put it another way, "Computer chess" is the main computer chess article, and this is one of the sub-articles, and should be named to reflect that. Rocksong 10:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually that's what the article is about as can be seen by the first two sections , though it seems that it was duplicated in the main computer chess article as well. I agree "The increasing strength portion" is not quite relevant here. As you know, the main effect of this chess engine portability factor is that it makes engine versus engine contests a lot easier, and as a result, many hobbyist focus exclusively on chess engine strength that is perhaps why it was added here. If you give me a week, I can expand the first two sections with more meat (history etc). A seperate issue is what to do with the lists of chess engines as discussed above, that one I'm not too concerned. I propose keeping the chess engine article, and moving the lists to another article. Aarontay 02:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
But in any case, this article is not about "chess engines" as you have defined. It even lists dedicated hardware. If you look through the history of the article, you will see that until Oct-Nov 2006 it was almost nothing but a list of chess engines/computers. Since then well meaning editors have added extra comment, but honestly I think it is unnecessary and distracting, duplicating what is already in the very thorough Chess computers article. Now in my opinion, the fact that engines can be separate to the interface is pretty uninteresting, and really only deserves a sentence or two in Chess computers. (The real revolution has been that computers have become so powerful that almost all chess computers are now software - back in the 80s / early 90s you could buy a "chess computer", now these things I think are extinct.) Let's just focus on improving the main computer chess article, rather than doing the same (or very similar) work in two different articles. Rocksong 06:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
IMHO This sounds a lot like "I'm not interested hence it is not notable". I submit that the majority of editors including the originator of this article actually recognize this concept, though many are newcomers so they are not able to place it in context, but enough "well meaning editors" do. You are a well meaning editor as well, but correct me if I'm wrong but you are not quite familiar with computer chess as opposed to other well meaning editors in this article? Aarontay 14:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


Heh, above I accidentally wrote Chess computers instead of Computer chess. Ironically it turned out not to matter because Chess computers (and for that matter Chess computer) is a redirect to Computer chess). It really doesn't make sense to me that typing "Chess computers" brings up one article, while typing "Chess engines" brings up a quite different article, especially since the "Chess engines" article lists not only chess "engines", but also computers. I still think it makes sense to rename this article to "List of chess engines", and incorporate any discussion portions into Chess computers. Rocksong 07:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
I see that people have being overly generous with the use of redirects. But I suspect if it were up to you, there would only be one article - Computer chess. As I said, I don't particularly care for lists so if you want to move the lists to Lists of chess engines great, But Chess computers would imply hardware or even specialised hardware, so I'm not sure why you think the discussion here is suitable to be placed there. Aarontay 14:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
If it were up to me, there would be one main article - Computer chess - with lots of sub-articles. The reality is that chess computers have evolved gradually, from specialised-hardware-only 20 years ago, to almost invariably software-only now. Because the change was gradual, and the concepts overlap so much, the chess hardware and software articles need to be tightly coupled. In any case, there is no division at the moment: Computer chess has a lot on software-only, while Chess engine has some stuff on specialised hardware. I don't want people to waste time on two parallel articles. Rocksong 23:10, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
And I don't want to dumb Wikipedia down. No offense but to say that software and hardware needs to be tightly coupled, shows a studied ignorance of the origins of the field. Computer chess as a field has always focused on AI and algorithmic advances (Turing and Shannon) independent of the exact medium used as typified by Turing's historic paper/hand simulation of a chess program. That has nothing at all to do with specialized hardware vs software. Aarontay 07:55, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
You don't get my point, do you? That hardware and software can do the same thing. Look I'm not for dumbing down, I'm for avoiding duplication. I offered the suggestion to help avoid duplication. If you don't want to take that suggestion, than I guess I can't stop you. Also I strongly advise against calling other editors ignorant. Rocksong 08:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
As a compromise, I've changed the chess computer redirect to point to chess engine. This seems more appropriate, looking at the backlinks. --IanOsgood 17:12, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Personal programs

What is the purpose of these without qualifying why they are here? (i.e. defeated a nother notable program) People can't buy or even download these and it doesn't seem much more than a list of names, less useful than the freely downloadable programs that we are not allowed to add to the page. Laetoli

Good point. This section is perhaps a relic of the initial categorization of the flat list of names. The only two notable ones are Ikarus and Ferret (winners of the World Computer Speed Chess Championship). I would not mind deleting the section entirely. --IanOsgood 18:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
I've removed the section and added a reference line to Ikarus & Ferret at the end of the list of free engines.Laetoli —Preceding comment was added at 15:51, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chess engine rating lists

I have removed the text "results are statistically significant" because the engines are rarely differentiated from those a few places above and below them to a 95% statistical significance. For example, if you look at http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/ you will see that most of the engines could rise or fall several places within the given margins of error. On this list, only the top engine, Rybka, is safe in its position within the given margins of error. The 21st placed engine, Delfi, could fall to 28th place within the given margins of error even if those below 28th failed to rise (which they probably would if Delfi lost games to them, as may well be the case in this scenario). Laetoli

There was a similar wording at Chess engine rating lists:
[...] list uses statistically significant measurements of chess engine strength, [...]
I changed it to:
[...] list uses confidence interval estimates of chess engine strength, [...]
which is hopefully more to the point here. GregorB (talk) 09:54, 27 April 2008 (UTC)