Stockfish 14 Really Amazes!

On July 2, 2021, www.stockfishchess.org published such text: "Today, we have the pleasure to announce Stockfish 14". There are many announcements in the world of engines but I am firmly convinced that this one made a huge impact on our chess world. In this short article, I will try to prove why I think so.

Here you can find technical reasoning why Stockfish 14 is stronger than all previous versions. I’m not an expert in this sphere. I have another vision – as a GM, as a coach, as an author, as a correspondence player. I need to say that I have never been a big fan of downloading the newest versions of the engines. I was absolutely satisfied by Stockfish 8 and considered it as a good assistant in both my coaching/author activity and my correspondence games.

First, I want to tell you about my correspondence experience. At the moment I play two RR tournaments with 2300-2400 players. Before August 2021 I had no single problem in my games but somewhere in the middle of August, I started to experience difficulties in a few games. It seemed strange to me, but my arguments were like “probably, I became less diligent in the analysis”. But after I had uploaded Stockfish 14 on my laptop, I have seen what was going on for the last few weeks. Stockfish 14 has an absolutely different evaluation system and appeared more correct than Stockfish 8. When I reviewed my running games with Stockfish 14 I realized that saving in some of them will already be a tough task. 

After that, I started to use Stockfish 14 more actively and some finds really amazed me. That’s why I decided to share three of them (probably I will add more later) with you.

The first example is taken from the game between two strong GM's Michael Adams and Maxim Matlakov.

Of course, one can say that d6-d5 is typical and a strong chess player has a chance to find both of these ideas. I agree. But I show you the positions where the engine whom I trusted completely was showing other evaluations and was far from these ideas. The most amazing thing is that Stockfish 14 does this almost instantly. I do not know if there is a maximum for the engines. But for me, this transformation is definitely the most impressive.

In the end, I would like to show you the recent game from the Grand Swiss.

Conclusion: 

1. I am convinced that Stockfish 14 is going to change the theory of the openings. I have already seen the theoretical position (which has been played tens of times) with a score about 50%, where Stockfish 14 shows “+1” for White (Stockfish 8 says it is about “0”). If you have many sharp lines in your repertoire, double-check your lines with Stockfish 14.
2. A strong chess player should never trust the engines. Only a serious deep analysis can confirm that or another evaluation. This statement is not a secret but it is hard to follow this advice.
3. Probably Stockfish 16 or 19 will make another quality jump and I will be forced to delete Stockfish 14 from my computer (or to save for new comparisons) but from now I have a new good friend.
4. Stockfish 14 is a free product; that is why all above-written is not an advertisement. It is just a story of one GM who was amazed by the engine’s progress.