Komodo 12 Now Free

     Komodo 12 is now available as a free download from the Komodo site. On the CCLR 40/15 rating list this engine is ranked number 30 with a rating of 3395. It should be noted that the list includes mostly experimental versions of Stockfish and new versions of Komodo. That means 30th place is somewhat deceptive. Komodo gets soundly whipped by Stockfish and nipped by Houdini 6 so it is probably the third best engine available, but it does have its place when it comes to analysis.

     Komodo heavily relies on evaluation rather than depth, and thus has a distinctive positional style that is supposed to be more in line with human thinking. Developer Don Dailey stated its forte is to play when there is nothing to to do. "In positions that most engines would likely struggle or find it impossible to make progress, Komodo quietly prepares a break and ends up with the victory."

     For the games in this blog I use Stockfish to do the initial automatic analysis and then use Komodo for the final analysis because I don't like Stockfish's wild evaluation numbers. Komodo's numbers are more in line with what a human GM would come up with. 

     After installing the engine be sure and read the information provided on the hash table settings. The instructions advise that the default hash table size setting will work well, but if you want optimal performance you may wish to tweak it and so they provide guidelines. 

     The article advises that setting a hash table that is much larger than it needs to be will have a negative impact on the performance because it places high demands on memory. On my laptop and my go-to program (Fritz 12) I am informed that the maximum hash table size is 2991 MB, so I use about half of that or 1145 MB.