The Beginning of Stockfish Chess: Version 1 to 4
Stockfish Chess is an open-source chess engine developed by Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, and Joona Kiiski. The name âStockfishâ comes from an old Nordic term for the common Atlantic cod fish, which was once dried and preserved as a stockfish and commonly used as food in medieval Europe. The original version of Stockfish was released in 2004, and it has since evolved into one of the strongest chess engines in the world.
Version 2 of Stockfish was released in 2008, and it was a significant improvement over the first version. The development of Stockfish 2 was done by Tord Romstad and was supported by other developers such as Marco Costalba and Joona Kiiski. The main focus of this version was to improve its search algorithm and make it more efficient. It also introduced various new features such as an opening book, multi-processor support, and endgame tablebases. With these enhancements, Stockfish 2 became the strongest open-source chess engine of its time.
Stockfish 4 was released in 2010 and brought a significant change in the development of Stockfish. It was the first version developed with a completely independent codebase, which allowed the engine to evolve rapidly. This version introduced numerous advanced features such as multi-threaded support, improved search algorithms, and better opening book. These developments made Stockfish 4 one of the strongest chess engines in the world, capable of beating even the top commercial chess engines.
Continuing to Evolve: Version 5 to 8
After the success of Stockfish 4, the developers continued to push the boundaries and improve the engine in the subsequent versions. Version 5 was released in 2011 and saw a major overhaul of the Stockfish evaluation function, which improved its positional understanding and made it more aggressive in the endgame. The following year, Stockfish 6 was released, which further improved its playing strength and introduced several new features, including the Lazy SMP search algorithm and Syzygy endgame tablebase support.
The next major milestone in the development of Stockfish was the release of Version 8 in 2016. This version saw the introduction of the Contempt feature, which improved Stockfishâs performance in matches against other top chess engines. It also introduced a new evaluation function, which was developed based on machine learning techniques and greatly improved Stockfish´s positional understanding.
The Present: Version 9 to 13
Stockfish continued to improve in the following years with the release of Version 9 in 2018. This version saw several improvements in its engineâs search algorithms, making it faster and more precise in its evaluations. It also introduced a new NNUE neural network architecture, which further improved its playing strength.
In 2019, Stockfish 11 was released, and it introduced significant improvements in its Neural Network AI. This version also saw the addition of new evaluation features such as probability-based pruning, a time element in the evaluation function, and improved king safety evaluation. With these developments, Stockfish 11 became one of the strongest chess engines in the world and inspired many chess enthusiasts to contribute to its development.
Future Developments: Version 16 and Beyond
Stockfish is constantly evolving, and the developers are always striving to improve its playing strength and make it more human-like. The latest developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning are being incorporated into Stockfish´s codebase to improve its positional understanding and playing style.
In the future, we can expect Stockfish to continue to evolve and maintain its position as one of the strongest chess engines in the world. It has demonstrated that open-source software can compete with and even surpass commercial chess engines in terms of playing strength. With its continuously evolving development and passionate community of contributors, the future of Stockfish looks very promising.
