This new form of analysis, which has not been implemented yet, clearly leads to more precise analyses, especially in complex positions. An engine analyzes the positions of the engine variant and determines whether certain moves are forced!

 

 

 

Our term for this engine is Buddy Engine.

 

All forced moves are commented by a colored square in the engine window. The square is used by the program as a symbol for "single move". A forced move can be recognized immediately, because it is displayed in color and therefore looks "quite colorful".

 

It is exciting for the user to discover forced variants: for example, one could play a slightly "worse" move in the opening preparation, but it demands the highest accuracy from the opponent, because everything is forced. This has higher practical chances of winning than a move that is perhaps 0.3 pawns better but easy to deal with.

 

We have been recommending for years to analyze with two variations. This way you can see if the best move is the only possible one. This has a price: a multi-variant search runs slower than the single-variant search.

 

 

With the Buddy Engine in the current program version, the single-variant search regains greater importance, because the advantages of the multivariant mode are partially offset. The Buddy Engine simply checks the initial position and then provides the user with the information to what extent the best move is forced, i.e. the only possible move.

 

We chose the term buddy because this engine acts as a sort of buddy/supporter of the main engine. The buddy engine takes a quarter to a fifth of the hash and CPU resources, leaving the main engine with almost unrestricted power.

 

With the current hardware generation, the buddy engine manages in most cases to check if the main engine has a big gap in the score to the second best engine.

 

Thus, the main advantage of this approach is that the main engine in single-variant mode achieves higher computational depths in the same amount of time, thus significantly increasing the quality of the analysis.

 

The Buddy Engine calculates slower than the main engine and works according to the following criteria:

 

1. the engine should look at many moves and therefore has less computing time per position.

2. it has only one CPU at its disposal.

 

Therefore, discrepancies can occur when the main engine detects another sharp move only at great depth. However, this is not a problem in practice, because it is detected immediately and it is also an interesting property of the position (complexity). In this situation, one simply switches (with bulging hash tables) to the two-variant search.

 

In the separate buddy window you can see what the engine is currently calculating.^If you move the mouse pointer over a move of the engine variant, the corresponding analysis is displayed in the buddy window, so that you can see full variants.

 

And not only for the initial position, but for each of the first moves. The longer the main engine calculates, the deeper Buddy's analyses become and the further he goes into the variants.

 

The commentary symbols are two-colored and there are three geometric shapes:

 

The left/top color shows the rating of the best move.

 

The second color corresponds to the second best move: green = move leads to advantage / yellow = roughly balanced / red = loss.

 

A vertically divided rectangle shows that the best move is trivial.

 

Diagonal from bottom left to bottom right means: Not trivial, but easy to find. Diagonal from bottom right to bottom left: Move appears later in the search, so is harder to find.

 

 

21.Sf4 is a winning sacrifice and the best move. After the second best move, White is also still in a good position. 23.Sxh5 is clearly the best. If White doesn't take on h5, the advantage is gone. Black has to retake, but that doesn't save.

 

Tip:try the Buddy Engine with some critical games/positions. In practical use, you will quickly come to appreciate the benefits of this analysis concept.

 

Tip: You can switch the Buddy Engine on or off at any time in the engine window by clicking on the small green button.