Ever since Deep Blue won against the World Chess Champion, (Garry Kasparov at the time) computers have gained the upper hand when it comes to chess. Today, even your laptop can beat grandmasters when running the right software.
You can use chess engines to analyze your games and play them as a challenge. Many chess websites, such as chess.com, offer opportunities to do this. You can also download some engines for free! Here are 5 of the most popular chess bots to try out:
1. Stockfish
The strongest engine in the world, Stockfish 15 is used by many websites to analyze games. On of its key features is its use of neural networks. The software is free to use and open source. You can download it on a wide variety of operating systems and devices.
2. Leela Chess Zero
Leela Chess Zero is the world’s second strongest chess engine. It was made in 2018 and has continuously gotten better by playing itself. This engine is also open source and was inspired by Google’s AlphaZero project. (AlphaZero has been discontinued)
3. Komodo
Komodo has been one of the most successful engines on the web since its debut in 2010. In 2018, Chess.com acquired Komodo and uses it in the website’s “play computer” function. Using it, you can play famous players and personalities, such as Mr.Beast.
4. Houdini
Another engine that made its entrance in 2010, Houdini was developed by Robert Houdar, a Belgian programmer and chess player. It is a very powerful engine, but can only be used on the Windows operating system.
5. Fritz
The oldest engine on the list, Fritz was created for ChessBase in 1991. It has won many Computer Chess Championships over the years. The software is very accessible and can even be downloaded on Playstations and the Nintendo DS.