Originally posted by moteutsch
I'm looking for a free engine that I can use to analyse my games. Which would you recommend?

Ooh, it looks like there will soon be a new "free engine" king of the hill. (At least in a "legal" sense. The Strelka engine is widely thought to be an illegal clone of Rybka.) In the Rybka forums, Vasik stated that soon, "A free Rybka package will also be available for download from rybkachess.com. It will include Jeroen's RybkaII.ctg and Rybka v2.2n2."

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=5020

This is great news, although I'm still considering getting the commercial Rybka 3 either from Convekta or Chessbase when it's released.

So when this new free Rybka is made available for download, I suspect that it will be the preferred free analysis engine.

Originally posted by Mad Rook
Ooh, it looks like there will soon be a new "free engine" king of the hill. (At least in a "legal" sense. The Strelka engine is widely thought to be an illegal clone of Rybka.) In the Rybka forums, Vasik stated that soon, "A free Rybka package will also be available for download from rybkachess.com. It will include Jeroen's RybkaII.ctg and Rybka v2.2n2."

e available for download, I suspect that it will be the preferred free analysis engine.

I was just about to post the same news. it's astonishing, isn't it! I wonder what non-Rybka commercial engines will do from now. They already had a difficult time competing with Toga which was free, but now, an engine, which is way above their level, is free when they still float around 99 $.

If I were from the Fritz, Shredder or Hiarcs staff I would start crying at this moment. Now I think it all will come down to different styles, considering Rybka 3 could will probably be on top in the following 3 years just like that. And it will be so difficult to overcome that, so maybe, just if they are clever enough, other engine developers may focus on different styles. Maybe they'll be weaker than Rybka, but they will be interesting. That's all they could do at the moment.

My second favorite engine (other than Rybka) is a personality I had created in the good old Chessmaster, which is around 2200 elo perhaps (a 800 points lower than top commercial engines), but plays an incredible attacking and sacrificial style. It will give up central pawns for it's e and d rooks, it will make speculative sacs (even two pieces) to demolish your king's pawns, it will do anything to come after you in crazy fashion. I just love it.

and for Jie, who had said "Patzers don't have to be ignorant. They can read chess books and chess magazines and not be patzers anymore. It is useless from a practical standpoint of knowing engine x is stronger than engine y if you cannot even improve your chess. Don't tell me you cannot teach an old dog new tricks 😀":

It's obvious that you don't know anything about computer chess, and you don't have the interest. Well I'm a patzer too, and I think I know a little about CC, and I enjoy it. I enjoy following the news, some cc tournaments, some brilliancies, how Rybka smashes strong GMs at pawn odds, how things are evolving, what makes an engine better than the other, etc.

It's no different than being interested in soccer or baseball. you don't have to play football on a professional level to enjoy watching it. I don't have to use engines for cheating or become a master to enjoy computer chess.