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official-stockfish/Stockfish

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A free and strong UCI chess engine

46 mentions on Hacker News by 40 people: 5 stories, 41 comments · first 2016-11-12 · latest 2026-09-16

Mentions per year 46 mentions · busiest year 2021 (10)
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  1. …you ask those same frontier models to write a chess-playing program? they shit out a carbon copy of https://github.com/official-stockfish/stockfish that they have in their training data. Still doesn't make Fable good at playing chess.
    comment by well_ackshually · 2026-09-16 · in Why I'm still bearish on LLMs after Navier-Stokes
  2. …this is not the case. The first reason is the optimization of the Transposition Table in stockfish. https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/... Basically this optimization means that stockfish will sometimes take a bad…
    comment by kuboble · 2026-09-10 · in Stockfish 19
  3. …>= nmpMinPly && !is_loss(beta)) { [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null-move_heuristic [1]: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/1a882ef...
    comment by ucarion · 2026-05-02 · in Zugzwang
  4. …a function of the centipawn evaluation of the position and the value of the remaining material. See https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/a6d055d...
    comment by n_e · 2026-02-23 · in What Is a Centipawn Advantage?
  5. It found a small but nice little optimization in Stockfish: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/6613 Previous models including Claude Opus 4.6 have generally produced a lot of noise/things that the compiler already…
    comment by anematode · 2026-02-12 · in Gemini 3 Deep Think
  6. …this comforting trap. Face the future with us, despite the terror. Posterity is counting on us. [1] https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/commit/af110... [2] http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html [3]…
    comment by bbor · 2025-09-20 · in An untidy history of AI across four books
  7. Stockfish has got rid of old handwritten evaluation now. https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/pull/4674 Its evaluation now purely relies on NNUE neural network. So it's an good exmaple of the better lesson. More compute evently…
    comment by rfv6723 · 2025-07-20 · in “The Bitter Lesson” is wrong. Well sort of
  8. …optimization to reduce memory for storing precomputations of moves in their transposition tables ( https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/commit/2198c... ). The commit switches from using bitwise AND (&) and power-of-2 table sizes…
    comment by pbrowne011 · 2024-11-15 · in A fast alternative to the modulo reduction (2016)
  9. …been difficult to run. You can run a limited search Stockfish on a laptop using the UCI protocol: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/wiki/UCI-%26...
    comment by janalsncm · 2024-10-17 · in Grandmaster-level chess without search
  10. …code on github uses 6 bits each, which actually gives you 64 possible values, so works out fine: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/... Thats 16 bits. Thank you for sending me down that (small) rabbit hole!
    comment by maverwa · 2024-06-11 · in The rarest move in chess [video]
  11. …program can be set to play at strength level 0-20. Estimates of the levels' Elo is provided here: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/commit/a08b8...
    comment by seraine · 2024-03-26 · in Manipulating Chess-GPT's World Model
  12. …it wasn't used for much or made much difference before then, after they introduced the neural net. https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/commit/af110...
    comment by shpx · 2023-12-18 · in Advancements in machine learning for machine learning
  13. …0, which stockfish considers an edge case) See: http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/html/UCIProtocol.html , https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/3720 That said I don't think a strong chess engine alone would be enough to pass this…
    comment by missblit · 2022-10-01 · in Hacking Google
  14. A little bit of python and some stockfish could probably improve your play dramatically! https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish
    comment by hayst4ck · 2022-10-01 · in Hacking Google
  15. …size of each entry. You can't use locks. Lookup times need to be practically constant time. [0]: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/... [1]: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/...
    comment by mtlmtlmtlmtl · 2022-07-03 · in How to build a chess engine
  16. Stockfish -- https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish Some of the best C++ code written. Extremely clear and concise. Chess-AI is a bit complicated but the source-code + comments seems to inform the programmer where all the problems…
    comment by dragontamer · 2022-05-02 · in Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
  17. Stockfish is well written, commented, and documented C++ code: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish
    comment by happy-dude · 2022-03-21 · in Ask HN: Codebases with great, easy to read code?
  18. …engine is used on both Chess.com and Lichess. https://www.chess.com/terms/stockfish-chess-engine https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish
    comment by gringoDan · 2022-02-03 · in Top Chess Engine Championship
  19. …auto-vectorization that WASM can do, its really hard to beat handcrafted assembly / intrinsics ( https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/... )
    comment by dragontamer · 2021-12-15 · in Chess.com vs. Lichess
  20. …it’s unclear that ChessBase meets it. You seem to be talking about this paragraph in the GPLv3 ( https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/sf_14/C... ) : "Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated…
    comment by codehotter · 2021-07-21 · in Our lawsuit against ChessBase
  21. …products (e.g. a Digital Video Recorder) and it's not clear that it can apply to Fat Fritz 2. https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/sf_14/C...
    comment by codehotter · 2021-07-21 · in Our lawsuit against ChessBase
  22. …would have been Fat Fritz 2. [1] https://groups.google.com/g/fishcooking/c/DygaIdBvJm0 [2] https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/sf_14/C...
    comment by codehotter · 2021-07-21 · in Our lawsuit against ChessBase
  23. There's a 30 day window to cure violations: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/3597f19...
    comment by sillysaurusx · 2021-07-21 · in Fat Fritz is not the Only Ripoff and now ChessBase is Getting Sued
  24. …up Leela [2], which explots traditional GPU-based networks based on AlphaZero architecture. [1] https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish [2] https://github.com/LeelaChessZero/lc0
    comment by Ambix · 2021-04-09 · in CPU-based algorithm trains deep neural nets up to 15 times faster than top GPU
  25. …Albert Silver fella did the same with Leela Chess Zero two years ago is even worse, no remorse! [1] https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/compare/550f...
    comment by autocorr · 2021-02-19 · in Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish
  26. https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/... Stockfish _is_ currently licensed under GPLv3. Chessbase is allowed to sell a modified copy, but only under the same license and they have to provide the source.
    comment by tutfbhuf · 2021-02-18 · in Open source chess developers warn about a commercial engine based on Stockfish
  27. …budget instead of a time limit. Maybe that makes CPU vs GPU games more interesting & fair. [1] https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/issues/2823
    comment by stabbles · 2021-01-13 · in The neural network of the Stockfish chess engine
  28. …"simple". Stockfish's search and evaluation subroutines are pretty complex and distinctly clever: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/... https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/... But I agree…
    comment by ucarion · 2020-12-24 · in Building My Own Chess Engine
  29. Aren't both Leela and Stockfish both freely available? https://github.com/LeelaChessZero/lc0 https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish
    comment by AzN1337c0d3r · 2020-12-15 · in Shallow Trees with Heavy Leaves
  30. https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish
    comment by dragontamer · 2020-10-28 · in Ask HN: Good C++ code bases to read?
  31. …is now the officially sanctioned one, at least his commits don't show up in the new lc0 repo. https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/graphs/contr... https://github.com/LeelaChessZero/lczero/graphs/contributors
    comment by est31 · 2020-06-11 · in How much did AlphaGo Zero cost? (2018)
  32. …chess engine [1] is very nice, especially so since chess engines tend to be very kludgy. [1] https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish
    comment by dfan · 2019-07-29 · in Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?
  33. …In fact the leaf level scores are themselves floating point. eg. check out the scores here: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/... ... actually realized it uses an int typedef for the 'Score' type so it's…
    comment by nikki93 · 2019-05-29 · in Chess-playing neural network LC0 beats Stockfish in 100-game match
  34. …make_score(90, 72) * popcount(b1); And look at all of the magic numbers and logic in evaluate.cpp: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/... [1]: http://tests.stockfishchess.org/tests
    comment by judofyr · 2018-12-07 · in Show HN: AlphaZero Science paper
  35. It's not that far from the truth though is it? https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/...
    comment by have_faith · 2018-12-07 · in Show HN: AlphaZero Science paper
  36. …SECOND EDIT: I was wrong! They did play against a newer SF than 8, specifically, SF at this commit: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/commit/b508f... , which was about 2 weeks before SF 9 was released, so maybe it is close in…
    comment by gamegoblin · 2018-12-06 · in Show HN: AlphaZero Science paper
  37. stockfish is an open source chess engine that uses BitBoards https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/
    comment by fastcum · 2018-01-02 · in Is abstraction overrated in programming? Chess, interviews and OOP
  38. It's actually https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/tree/master No, SF doesn't use machine learning, it's entirely heuristic.
    comment by ZirconiumX · 2017-11-19 · in Stockfish Wins Chess.com Computer Championship
  39. …all with support for different C++ compilers. Pretty neat stuff from one of the best chess engines. https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/...
    comment by xoroshiro · 2017-07-25 · in Ask HN: In what creative ways are you using Makefiles?
  40. The Stockfish chess engine: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish I learned a ridiculous amount from reading the source code to TeX ( https://www.amazon.com/Computers-Typesetting-B-TeX-Program/d... ) but it is written in a very…
    comment by dfan · 2017-02-12 · in Ask HN: What are some well written/engineered open source software?
  41. …engines and mathematically perfect chess. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number [1] https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/master/...
    comment by throwaway_yy2Di · 2016-11-12 · in U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from airing moves