Clash of the Titans

Introduction

This test is carried out because many people of the computerchess community demanded for it. Of course it’s very interesting to see how the Top 5 Engines will fight each other at tournament time controls. So they’ll play a round robin tournament virtually, but devided into single matches.

The competitors

Engine	Version	Threads	Hash MB	Tablebases
Houdini	2.0c Pro (64bit)	6 / 1	4096 / 512	5men Gaviota
Critter	1.4a SSE42 (64bit)	6 / 2 / 1	4096 / 1024 / 512	5men Gaviota
Stockfish	2.2.2 JA SSE42 (64bit)	6 / 2 / 1	4096 / 1024 / 512	---
Deep Rybka	4.1 SSE42 (64bit)	6 / 2 / 1	4096 / 1024 / 512	5men Nalimov
Komodo	4 SSE (64bit)	1	512	---

Hardware

CPU: AMD Phenom II (x6 / x4) @ 3.0 GHz

RAM: 8192 / 4096 MB

SSD: 60 GB

OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64

Fritz Benchmark for 1 thread: ~ 1900 kN/s
Matches 6 vs. 6 threads will be played on two different computers using NetChess

Time controls

125min / 50 moves + (60min+5s)
Ponder = ON

Opening books / Test positions

I chose the Noomen Opening Suite 2012 (created by Jeroen Noomen). Jeroen sorted the positions by their classification (Sicilian, French, Ruy Lopez etc). I changed the sequence a bit to see more variety when following the test. Download the pgn with my order of the positions: Testset.pgn

The opponents have to play every one of the 30 position with both colors, so a single match includes a total of 60 games.

Results

	Houdini	Komodo	Critter	Rybka	Stockfish	Total
Houdini	---	32.0 – 28.0	32.5 – 27.5	32.0 – 28.0	36.5 – 23.5	133.0 / 55.42%
Komodo	28.0 – 32.0	---	29.5 – 30.5	33.0 – 27.0	31.5 – 28.5	122.0 / 50.83%
Critter	27.5 – 32.5	30.5 – 29.5	---	29.5 – 30.5	33.0 – 27.0	120.5 / 50.21%
Rybka	28.0 – 32.0	27.0 – 33.0	30.5 – 29.5	---	28.5 – 31.5	114.0 / 47.50%
Stockfish	23.5 – 36.5	28.5 – 31.5	27.0 – 33.0	31.5 – 28.5	---	110.5 / 46.04%

Download all games: PGN (zipped) and CBV

Best regards,
Timo