Swedish Chess Computer Association

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The Swedish Chess Computer Association (Swedish: Svenska schackdatorföreningen, SSDF) is an organization that tests computer chess software by playing chess programs against one another and producing a rating list. On November 3, 2007, the list was released with Rybka 2.3.1 Arena leading with an estimated ELO rating of 2935. Rybka's listing in June 2006 was the first time a program on the list has passed the 2900 mark. (The SSDF rating pool is independent from any national or international rating pool such as FIDE, so the computer ratings can only be used for relative comparison between themselves.)

The SSDF list is one of the only statistically significant measures of chess engine strength, especially compared to tournaments, because it incorporates the results of thousands of games played on standard hardware at tournament time controls. The list reports not only absolute rating, but also error bars, winning percentages, and recorded moves of played games. However, it has recently come under criticism, due to its continued use of computers that are far slower than the typical computer today (256 MB memory, single processor Athlon 1.2 GHz). Therefore, engines listed in the SSDF are likely to have ratings on leading-edge hardware that are higher than their SSDF-listed ratings.

The SSDF has announced that their next platform for testing will be an Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 2.4 GHz with 2 GB of RAM-memory and a 64-bit operating system.

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