An UCI chess engine that combines the power of Lc0 and Stockfish - or any two other engines you like.
The code borrows heavily from the project CombiChess. Many Thanks to Tom Friederich for his work!
GoratschinChess is a "chess engine" that supports the UCI chess protocol and combines 2 engines (called 'boss' and 'counselor', respectively) into one. It works by asking the engines what they think the best move is for a given position, and then applying some logic to determine what move to actually do.
The rules that it uses are fairly simple:
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If an engine sees a mate, then do that move leading to mate immediately.
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If both engines give the same best move, then do that move.
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if the engines say something else, and the score of the counselor is better than that of the boss by a margin 'cp' (see self.score_margin in code) do the counselor's move. The default margin is 50 centipawns.
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Else, always listen to the 'boss engine'.
'Goratschin' is the name of a double-headed character from the german sci-fi series "Perry Rhodan".
Just recently i stumbled over this: Adviser
This "adviser" attempt by D. Kappe led to the following conclusions:
- Leela really doesn't blunder that often.
- Too small of a window, and you kill Leela's style. Too big, and you might not catch blunders.
- How can an AB engine distinguish between a blunder and a patented Leela positional sacrifice?
- Without using AB data in the MCTS, having an AB engine blundercheck Leela is of limited use.
- You can't just use any old engine to provide advice on tactical blunders. It will try to give advice on any position that moves the needle, not just on ones with material loss. So the strength of the engine is crucial.
- The adviser had a small but noticeable positive effect, with a few exception.
- An 80 cp window was most positive: Sf9 at 80 cp made the most difference
My considerations:
- Regarding the fifth point, I use the strongest Stockfish available.
- The third point is still open and crucial and under my investogation.
To use GoratschinChess, clone the project or download it as a zip. Unzip it if needed, and then place the engines (and any files they need, e.g. lc0 weights file) you want to use in the engines folder. Open GoratschinLauncher.py and change the filenames to the ones in the engines folder you want to use.
GoratschinChess has one dependency: python-chess. Assuming you have python on your computer, you can install it by opening a terminal and typing the following:
pip install python-chess
To run GoratschinChess as a python program, execute the GoratschinLauncher.py, NOT the GoratschinChess.py!
On Windows, you may run Goratschin.bat for convenience. This can also be used as the engine command in Arena, CuteChess, etc.
To build a Windows EXE, which is needed for Chessbase / Fritz UCI engines, get the tool PyInstaller by doing
pip install pyinstaller
and run build_exe.bat which will put the executable file GoratschinChess.exe in the root folder of this project.