Reckless, a Challenger to Stockfish?

 

    While visiting the CCLR engine rating site I noticed something interesting. Stockfish 168is still the #1 rated engine, but the #2 engine, 52 points below it, is Reckless. The interesting thing is that in their games against each other Stockfish 18 has scored +1 -0 =29 against Reckless 0.09.0. Against Reckless 8.8.0 it has scored +0 -0 =30. There is, apparently, a Reckless 0.10,o dev version out as of late March, but U have not located a download for it. 

    Stockfish is known for its precise tactical play. The primary advantage of using Reckless is its sharp strategic insights that often lead to highly aggressive, often speculative, sacrifices. 

    Like other strong neural network (NN) engines Reckless can generate new ideas and strategic principles that go beyond traditional engine analysis. Thus it can be useful in discover subtle positional ideas and less conventional moves that might be overlooked by human players or older engines. 

    I decided to play a Reckless vs. Syockfish match on my old laptop with a time limit of 4 minutes plus 2 seconds per move. The result was Stockfish won +3 -1 =8.

    Below is Reckless'  sole win. As a further test, I let Reckless analyze the position after 10...Nxb3 in the Ivlov-Donner game given in the last post. After about 10 minutes its top choice was the “normal” 11.axb3 although Ivkov’s 11.cxb3 (Reckless’ second choice) was evaluated only a few Centipawns below it. Below is Reckless’ only win in my match and I’ll let Reckless itslef explain how it pulled ofr the win and you can compare its analysis with the ChessBase engine. 

    You can download Reckless HERE. Go to the bottom of the page and select your version. However, at this I still see no reason to use any engine than Stockfish for analysis.