Tuesday
Jan112011
Houdini Rolling in Computer Tournament
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 2:30PM
Computer-computer battles are ubiquitous nowadays, but I mention this one because Houdini, which is at the moment running away with the aforelinked tournament, was mentioned more than once in the Svidler interview and because it's a freebie. Naturally, there are bells and whistles you get when you buy a Rybka or a Fritz, but for just a plain Jane engine, free is good, and as Houdini might actually be the strongest one out there at the moment, that's even better.
HT: Freddie Jones
tagged computer chess
Reader Comments (1)
I have Fritz 12 and Deep Rybka 4 but I found Houdini 1.03a (which works ok with the Fritz 12 GUI interface) as good as Rybka 4 and far superior to Fritz at evaluating many complex positions, sometimes even better. One thing Houdini does better is that find mates. Once you get a position with a mate that is over 10 moves out, Houdini can often find it in seconds while Rybka takes minutes. They are different in the way they calculate but most often arrive at the same results and evaluations. Rybka uses a very selective pruning method of analysis, while Houdini is more of a brute force engine. I just down loaded Houdini 1.5 so I don't want to comment on it just yet but is supposedly better than Houdini 1.03a.
I would recommend adding Houdini (since it is free) if you now have Rybka, but not sure I see it as superior to it. Compared to the other highly rated free engines (Stockfish, Critter, Komodo and Spark) that I have it does seem superior to them, especially in head to head competition.