The SSDF chess engine rating list, 2023-05

Since the last rating list we can now present six new entrants in the list.

First one out is our new leader in the list: Lc0 0.29.0, and also the first program that has broken the 3600-barrier in our rating list. More games will be needed to lower the error bars, but after the first 297 games it has placed itself 39 points over the last version tested with a huge rating of 3610! It will be interesting to see how it will hold up as more games are played against the top programs. The Lc0-version which we have tested this time is: Lc0 0.29.0, with the 19 filter + 512 block network, named 808544 (date: 2023-01-12). As with the earlier Lc0-versions, we have used the free opening book “perfect2021.abk” by Sedat Canbaz for the testing of Lc0.

Our next newcomer in the list are one really strong comeback from the team of Ed Schroeder and Chris Wittington. Chris Wittington is formely known for programs such as: Chess Player 2150/2175, Complete Chess System and Chess System Tal (I and II). Ed Schroeder is of course known for many of the old dedicated chess computers like for instance: Mephisto Polgar, MM IV/V, RISC (I and II), Rebell and also for versions of his program in the ChessMachine ISA-plugin card for PC. On the PC-scene he has made the Gideon and Rebel-program famous and lately also made several interesting and strong versions of his ProDeo-program.

Since last year they have utilized Neural Net-technology in their joint effort and has seemingly improved fast. We have waited some time to test it, since we wanted it to share most of the functions - like for instance Pondering and Multi-Processor functionality, which the others programs that we test on our latest hardware uses. The version which we have tested is named: Rebel 16.2 and we have used its own opening book, made by the famous Jeroen Noomen, for the testing. After the first 209 games, this strong combo of the program: Rebel 16.2, and the opening book of Jeroen Noomen, has managed to get an impressive rating of 3544 on our 1800X hardware. It is placed 10th in the list at the moment, just 5 points shy of the Stockfish 12-program. A very strong comeback by Ed, Chris and Jeroen!

Our next addition to the list are Jon Dart’s strong and reliable Arasan-program. The version that we have tested on our 1800X and Q6600 hardware are Arasan 23.4. On our 1800X hardware it has reached a rating of 3524 after the initial 160 games played. That is at the moment 75 points ahead of the formerly tested 23.01 version and a very nice improvement indeed! More games will of course be needed to lower the error bars a bit. On our Q6600 hardware, Arasan 23.4 has reached a rating of 3439 after 361 games played. We never tested the 23.01 version on the Q6600 hardware, but Arasan 23.4 are a whopping 202 points ahead of the 21.2 version at least! We have, as always, used Arasan’s own opening book for the testing.

We are also glad to be able to present a new strong Wasp version by John Stanback, namely Wasp 6.5, on our latest rating list. After the first 242 games played, it has reached a rating of 3433! This is 55 points stronger than the 5.5 version which we tested before, so a nice improvement there also! We have used Wasp’s own opening book for the testing.

And we can now finally show the first rating of the manually tested: Phoenix Revelation II Anniversary Edition chess computer by Ruud Martin/DGT. This Anniversary Edition of the Revelation II, features an updated hardware relative to the ordinary Revelation II. The hardware for the Anniversary Edition is an Colibri iMX7D with 2 ARM Cortex A7 processors running at 1GHz. The software which we have used for the testing is the program Komodo 12.1 by Mark Lefler and Larry Kaufman. The rating that has been reached after the first 100 games is 3177! This is a rating that is 253 points ahead of Hiarcs 14.1, which we tested formerly on the ordinary Revelation II. It is clearly the strongest dedicated chess computer which we have tested so far and it has been able to perform admirably against the strong Q6600 opposition which it mostly has faced in our testing so far.

Aside from producing more games with the already mentioned newcomers in the rating list, we are at the moment testing Richard Pijl’s – The Baron 3.45, and also Alex Morozov’s – Booot 7.1. We also hope to have some more programs ready for the next rating list.

Table 1

The recently tested ‘Selected 50’ from SSDF rating list ‘2023-05’, 162991 games played by 435 computers. THE SSDF RATING LIST 2023-05-24^* 162991 games played by 435 computers

Table 1

(Continued)