Chess Engines

Chess engines are the brains of any chess program. Most modern engines come as separate entities to be added to your favorite GUI (Graphical User Interface). This post is aimed at helping you get some free chess engines and prepare them to install in your favorite GUI. I'll cover the GUI installation in separate posts.

How do you know what engines are the best?

Here is a list of the top rated engines. http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/

Where can I get these engines? Well you can Google them by name. "Komodo Chess Engine" for example. Just Google "Komodo" and you'll get a lot of links to the lizard.
Below are links to the current top three free engines. After you download them. You will need to unzip them. I recommend keeping them in their own folder. First I would make a folder called chess engines somewhere easy to find. Because you may want to use these engines in more than one program. Example c:\chess engines\Fire5

Komodo https://komodochess.com/
Stockfish https://stockfishchess.org/
Fire https://chesslogik.wixsite.com/fire

The engines will often come in 32 bit and 64 bit versions. They may have both versions inside the zipped file. If you have to select at the time of download you need to know which kind of computer you have. This is how you can tell https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001121.htm.

So there may be a x32 (32 bit) version a x64 (64 bit) version. Also you may see bmi2 and popcnt versions. These additional versions are compiled to take advantage of special features built into specific microprocessors. The speed gained by running these versions are small but feel free to try them. If they don't run just switch back to the plain version. The BMI version may require changing settings in your computer bios. If you you want to do that here is a thread on that topic. http://www.chess2u.com/t10505-bmi2-or-popcnt


All about chess engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_engine

More Chess Engine Info and download links. https://www.chessengeria.eu/

ECO Encyclopedia of Chess Openings

Where will I see an ECO code? How will I use it?

Chess databases are powerful tools to improve your game. I'm building up to a post on that subject, first though we need to know about ECO codes. Because one of the easiest most powerful ways to search a chess database is using ECO codes. You'll see ECO codes displayed in most chess programs. Here are examples from Chess Openings Wizard and SCID vs PC. The SCID vs PC example being very typical of how you might see them displayed in any game database program. 

On Chess.com one pace you will see the ECO code for a game is in analysis mode under details at the bottom.

What is an ECO?

ECO Encyclopedia of Chess Openings a five volume set of books to classify all serious chess openings. Each volume is represented by a letter A, B, C, D, E, and 100 sub catagories 00 - 99. Publishing began in 1974. Here is a link to the full description in Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopaedia_of_Chess_Openings#First_edition

A link to the publishers website http://www.chessinformant.org/eco-encyclopedia-of-chess-openings

An online index. https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20160913144956/http://www.chessinformant.org/content/eco/index.html

ECO codes with opening names and example games that can be downloaded. Free Internet Correspondence Games Server (FICGS) http://www.ficgs.com/directory_openings.html

ECO codes are useful when searching for games beginning with a particular set of moves, an opening.