Computer chess engines have been around for quite a long time. Fritz, Hiarcs, Junior, Shredder, Houdini, and Stockfish are all very powerful engines that can beat amateurs and professionals. New powerful engines are released to the market all the time. Komodo has been around for a while. The latest version has climbed its way back to the #1 ranking among computer chess engines (at the time of this writing). The engine relies on extensions to see deeper than other engines and helps you perform deep opening analysis.
The new engine uses Syzygy tablebases and can rely on 8 or more CPU cores to offer better performance. It supports 64 processor cores and up to 16 GB of has memory. Those of you who are familiar with Chessbase software are going to find the user-interface for this new program very familiar. Best of all, you don’t need to have a speed demon of a computer to put Komodo 8 to good use. Will there be stronger engines in the very near future? There is no doubt. But Komodo 8 is strong enough to beat grandmasters, so it will remain a valuable tool for chess students for years to come.
