Answers.Body: <p>Dr Tom Murphy examines 30 interesting chess algorithms in a joke paper for SIGBOVIK 2019, which can be read here:</p>
  <p><a href="http://tom7.org/chess/weak.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://tom7.org/chess/weak.pdf</a></p>
  <p>Among them are strategies such as:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>&quot;worstfish&quot;, which plays the worst move according to Stockfish</li>
  <li>Various neural networks strategies, some of which are given modified views of the board</li>
  <li>A strategy that plays the move that minimises the number of resulting legal moves for the opponent</li>
  <li>&quot;equalizer&quot;, which prefers to move pieces that have been moved the fewest times</li>
  <li>Less popular classical chess engines such as Topple and ChessMaster for the NES</li>
  </ul>
  <p>A video version of the paper is also available: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA</a></p>
  
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Answers.Body: <p>One that is different is CorChess. CorChess was designed having correspondence chess in mind. Later it has been adapted to be competitive in any kind of time control. It is 100% free. Here is the link: <a href="https://chess.massimilianogoi.com/download/corchess/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://chess.massimilianogoi.com/download/corchess/</a></p>
  <p>Lichess uses Stockfish, but something interesting is that level 1 makes mistakes on purpose. So, it is like a Stockfish reversed! People who just learned the rules of chess can defeat it! In the following link, you need to select play against the computer, and then select level 1: <a href="https://lichess.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://lichess.org/</a></p>
  <p>About your comment that all engines are equal... I am not an expert, but as far as I know Stockfish tries to search and calculate all the possibilities but Leela Chess Zero (LC0) uses a different system, using probabilities and neural networks.</p>
  <p>If you love to learn more about chess engines, my favorite website is <a href="https://chessengines.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://chessengines.blogspot.com/</a></p>
  <p>They also have a weekly free magazine that I highly recommend to you.</p>
  <p>P.S. Even though the last version of Komodo is not free, they have been sharing previous versions for free. At this time, the latest version that is free is Komodo 13. You can download it here: <a href="https://komodochess.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://komodochess.com/</a></p>
  
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Answers.Text: Yes, stockfish and leela are indeed very different, but they are created for the same purpose of playing as best as possible. In the question, I asked to list the engines that are created for other purposes
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Answers.Text: @ASTA Even though the last version of Komodo is not free, they have been sharing previous versions for free. At this time, the latest version that is free is Komodo 13. You can download it here: https://komodochess.com/
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Answers.Body: <p>Leela Zero with one node is an interesting engine setting in Sadler's book <em>The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement</em>, as it doesn't do any search but relies purely on its neural net evaluation function.
  This makes it &quot;plays like a positional genius with flawed tactics&quot;.
  See more here: <a href="https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/42360/how-to-play-with-leela-zero-restricted-to-a-one-node-search">How to play with Leela Zero restricted to a one-node search?</a></p>
  <p><a href="https://github.com/amchess/ShashChess" rel="nofollow noreferrer">ShashChess</a> is unusual in its evaluation as &quot;The goal is to apply Alexander Shashin theory exposed on the following book: <em>Best Play: A New Method For Discovering The Strongest Move</em> by Alexander Sashin.&quot;</p>
  <p><a href="https://github.com/MinusKelvin/ice4" rel="nofollow noreferrer">ice4</a> is a chess engine in only 4096 bytes! It implements many standard engine features like Zobrist hashing, transposition tables, PV search with quiescence and null move pruning, iterative deepening, and more.</p>
  
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Body: <p>Almost all current engines are similar and built for the same tasks (stockfish, lc0, slowchess, comodo...). And I only heard about a few unusual engines</p>
  <p>Crystal: based on Stockfish but used for problem solving</p>
  <p>SimpleEval: as I know also built on Stockfish, uses only material counting (1, 3, 3, 5, 9) as evaluation</p>
  <p>Boris-Trapsky: plays not the strongest position, but position in which a person is likely to make a mistake</p>
  <p>Maia: try to play like human</p>
  <p>There are also different game modes in Komodo, but they are not free.</p>
  <p>From serious and large projects, I heard only about this. I would like to know if there are similar engines, it is not necessary that the engine plays very well or was created by a large company, the main thing is that it is not ordinary.</p>
  
Tags: <engines><programming><computer-chess>
Title: What unusual engines do we have?
ThreadText: # What unusual engines do we have?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2022-10-14)
  
  Almost all current engines are similar and built for the same tasks (stockfish, lc0, slowchess, comodo...). And I only heard about a few unusual engines
  
  Crystal: based on Stockfish but used for problem solving
  
  SimpleEval: as I know also built on Stockfish, uses only material counting (1, 3, 3, 5, 9) as evaluation
  
  Boris-Trapsky: plays not the strongest position, but position in which a person is likely to make a mistake
  
  Maia: try to play like human
  
  There are also different game modes in Komodo, but they are not free.
  
  From serious and large projects, I heard only about this. I would like to know if there are similar engines, it is not necessary that the engine plays very well or was created by a large company, the main thing is that it is not ordinary.
  
  **Tags:** engines, programming, computer-chess
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2022-10-31. Score: 2 | Accepted answer
  
  Dr Tom Murphy examines 30 interesting chess algorithms in a joke paper for SIGBOVIK 2019, which can be read here:
  
  <http://tom7.org/chess/weak.pdf>
  
  Among them are strategies such as:
  
  * "worstfish", which plays the worst move according to Stockfish
  * Various neural networks strategies, some of which are given modified views of the board
  * A strategy that plays the move that minimises the number of resulting legal moves for the opponent
  * "equalizer", which prefers to move pieces that have been moved the fewest times
  * Less popular classical chess engines such as Topple and ChessMaster for the NES
  
  A video version of the paper is also available: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA>
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2022-10-21. Score: 3
  
  One that is different is CorChess. CorChess was designed having correspondence chess in mind. Later it has been adapted to be competitive in any kind of time control. It is 100% free. Here is the link: <https://chess.massimilianogoi.com/download/corchess/>
  
  Lichess uses Stockfish, but something interesting is that level 1 makes mistakes on purpose. So, it is like a Stockfish reversed! People who just learned the rules of chess can defeat it! In the following link, you need to select play against the computer, and then select level 1: <https://lichess.org/>
  
  About your comment that all engines are equal... I am not an expert, but as far as I know Stockfish tries to search and calculate all the possibilities but Leela Chess Zero (LC0) uses a different system, using probabilities and neural networks.
  
  If you love to learn more about chess engines, my favorite website is <https://chessengines.blogspot.com/>
  
  They also have a weekly free magazine that I highly recommend to you.
  
  P.S. Even though the last version of Komodo is not free, they have been sharing previous versions for free. At this time, the latest version that is free is Komodo 13. You can download it here: <https://komodochess.com/>
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: Yes, stockfish and leela are indeed very different, but they are created for the same purpose of playing as best as possible. In the question, I asked to list the engines that are created for other purposes  
  > **username_2**: @username_0 Even though the last version of Komodo is not free, they have been sharing previous versions for free. At this time, the latest version that is free is Komodo 13. You can download it here: https://komodochess.com/  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_3 on 2024-04-29. Score: 1
  
  Leela Zero with one node is an interesting engine setting in Sadler's book *The Silicon Road to Chess Improvement*, as it doesn't do any search but relies purely on its neural net evaluation function.
  This makes it "plays like a positional genius with flawed tactics".
  See more here: [How to play with Leela Zero restricted to a one-node search?](https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/42360/how-to-play-with-leela-zero-restricted-to-a-one-node-search)
  
  [ShashChess](https://github.com/amchess/ShashChess) is unusual in its evaluation as "The goal is to apply Alexander Shashin theory exposed on the following book: *Best Play: A New Method For Discovering The Strongest Move* by Alexander Sashin."
  
  [ice4](https://github.com/MinusKelvin/ice4) is a chess engine in only 4096 bytes! It implements many standard engine features like Zobrist hashing, transposition tables, PV search with quiescence and null move pruning, iterative deepening, and more.
  
  
  ---
  
  