Which chess engine to choose for game analysis

[Jnaud]

Hi,
I have Deep Shredder 12, Hiarcs 13.2a MP, Deep Junior 12.5.04, Critter 1.4 x64, Stockfish 2.2.1 x64 and Komodo 3 x64 installed in my GUI and I wonder which one is the best for analyzing my games. Do I have only to choose the stronger (e.g. according to SSDF, CCRL 40/40 or another rating list) or are there other criterias to consider?

[RadioSmall]

Hi,
I have Deep Shredder 12, Hiarcs 13.2a MP, Deep Junior 12.5.04, Critter 1.4 x64, Stockfish 2.2.1 x64 and Komodo 3 x64 installed in my GUI and I wonder which one is the best for analyzing my games. Do I have only to choose the stronger (e.g. according to SSDF, CCRL 40/40 or another rating list) or are there other criterias to consider?

Computer rating lists do not tell the user how strong programs are against human players and hence which one is the best for the analysis of HUMAN GAMES .Of the programs you have Hiarcs 13.2 MP is the best for human game analysis but Chessmaster 11 and Gandalf 6 are even better .

[Jnaud]

What is the difference between a chess computer game and a human game? Why a strong chess engine is not nececessarily good with human chess games?

[RadioSmall]

What is the difference between a chess computer game and a human game? Why a strong chess engine is not nececessarily good with human chess games?

It is not that an strong engine is not good with Human chess games.The point is that the quality of analysis varies greatly from engine to engine.Computers do not approach chess the way humans do and hence the type of positions they reach and games they play is very different than Human games. Some engines mimic the stlye of a very strong Human Grandmaster and Hence the lines and variations that one sees in Analysis mode is much more understandable than Engines that do not have that style. For example old versions of Fritz did not have much positional understanding and misevaluated a lot of positional pawn sacrifices , but all this did not prevent Fritz from being at the top of the SSDF rating list long time ago.However such a program surely cannot be good for analyzing Human games because (for example ) positional pawn Sacrifices happen in Human versus human games and not as often in Computer vs Computer games. Programmers are well aware of the fact that one could tune a program to be strong against other programs or to be strong against humans. I believe the main reason that Junior did not win its 2003 Match against Kasparov was that it was mainly a program that was optimized for Computer vs Computer games.

[Jnaud]

Thanks, I understand more now.