Firebird 1.0

[roblin]

Nobody wants to talk about the big elephant in the room. Firebird 1.0 has been released and most tests suggest it beats Rybka3. It's also free and opensource.

http://www.chesslogik.com/FireBird.htm

I tried a quick matchup with it against (my legal copy of) Deep Rybka 3.



I gives really different AN and plays differently so I doubt that it's a clone. But lets at least discuss it.

[ToTheDeath]

Interesting, how is the analysis feature? when it first came out I loved Rybka for its human like positional evaluation- it was the first engine that could truly appreciate dynamic compensation, which made it great for analyzing my tournament games and preparing attacking openings. but no one stays the king forever.

would be interested in reading some more reviews before i toss my rybka in the trash.

[RoundTower]

It's not surprising a lot of people haven't heard of it, most people thought Fritz was the strongest engine in the world even when Rybka was 150+ points higher, until Rybka (or maybe just some distribution rights) was acquired by Chessbase. It's amazing how much marketing and name value can do for you even in an area like this where one product can be demonstrably superior.

As for whether Ippolit/Robbolito/Firebird use plagiarised code from Rybka, I don't think anyone knows for sure except the various authors. I've heard both from people whose opinions I would normally trust.

[Uitje]

At least it massively owns my Fritz 11 :P
I couldnt really find any links with other results vs Rybka, anyone found something good?

[BobJoeJim]

These two thread on the chess.com forums indicate that Firebird is pretty well pwning Rybka 3.0 at time controls <= 1 minute. And it may have an edge in the 5-15 minute range as well. Indications are that Rybka has an edge in legit long time controls though.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/gene...ine-descussion
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/gene...ter-then-rybka

[smilingbill]

oh wow. thanks for the heads-up

[swingdoc]

Wow, there was an elephant in the room and I had no idea. Thanks for bringing this up.

[roblin]

Originally Posted by BobJoeJim

Indications are that Rybka has an edge in legit long time controls though.]

RobboLite 0.085d3 x64 vs Rybka 3 x64 SP ( Contempt Play = 0 ) , 40/40 repeating, Ponder Off

Finished

1. Silver Opening Suite , 100 out of 100 games played

55.5- 44.5 in favor of RobboLito ( +22 -11 =67 )

2. Noomen 2008 opening Suite , 60 out of 60 games played

33.0 - 27.0 in favor of RobboLito ( +15 -9 =36)

Running

Sedat 600 positions opening suite , 132 out of 600 games played

77.5 - 54.5 in favor of RobboLito ( +33 -10 =89)

Sedat 200 positions opening suite , 110 out of 400 games played

61.0 - 49.0 in favor of RobboLito ( +26 -14 =70 )

Combined score after 402 games

227.0 - 175.0 in favor of RobboLito

+46 Elo for RobboLito


Program Elo + - Games Score Av.Op. Draws

1 RobboLite 0.085d3 x64 : 3148 20 20 402 56.5 % 3102 65.2 %
2 Rybka 3 sp : 3102 20 20 402 43.5 % 3148 65.2 %

firebird > robbolito right now I think.

[Nezh]

How did/do you install this program? I downloaded the Winrar file and tried to activate the exe. file, but it only activates a new screen without actually installing the program, I treis all three available versions on chesslogik. Probably doing something wrong.

[swingdoc]

You have to load it onto a GUI. For example, with Chessbase products, open up a new board, click the Engine menu at the top, then 'Create UCI Engine, then choose the extracted .exe file for Firebird

[Nezh]

Hmmm..I'm probably too computer-illiterate for this...have no chessbase stuff and have no idea wath a GU is lol....nevermind, i'll end up tilted if I keep trying.

Originally Posted by swingdoc

You have to load it onto a GUI. For example, with Chessbase products, open up a new board, click the Engine menu at the top, then 'Create UCI Engine, then choose the extracted .exe file for Firebird

[Dire]

Originally Posted by BobJoeJim

These two thread on the chess.com forums indicate that Firebird is pretty well pwning Rybka 3.0 at time controls <= 1 minute. And it may have an edge in the 5-15 minute range as well. Indications are that Rybka has an edge in legit long time controls though.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/gene...ine-descussion
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/gene...ter-then-rybka

Cool, that's actually pretty useful then. I just use comps for flipping through my games and Rybka can sometimes be somewhat slow with grasping positions. Downloading it now.

[Dire]

Cool, I'm really liking this engine so far. I also like how all the dirt about rybka is coming out more publicly. I wasn't aware Rybka falsified (lowered) its depth/node counts for marketing purposes. Pretty funny and it makes alot of sense. I always wondered how with like 40k nodes per second and 13 ply it'd pump out some of the lines it did.

This seems like a pretty sexy engine, and it doesn't have this annoying like 0.5s delay that Rybka does before starting to spit out lines. It also seems to hone into the key ideas in positions alot faster than rybka.

Imo further evidence that it really is the case that computers aren't particularly great at chess, humans are just particularly bad at it.

[s33w33d]

I like it, it's not bad. Memory hog though.

[BobJoeJim]

Well, I certainly just upgraded my chess engine! I never did get around to getting a copy of Rybka, I had Fritz 11. Just ran a 10 game match, 1 minute games, ponder off, and Firebird won +8 =1 -1, for a +301 ELO difference.