Final Rodent - Review / Config. / Download
Updated: Jan 20
A crazy attacker, an old-fashioned positional player, a balanced player with a modern style, customizable playing strength, excellent computer sparring partner for learning players and beginners, also for advanced.
Is this the way to describe just one chess engine ? It turns out that yes!
If I had to list some of the most important chess engines for me, I would certainly say a lot about Final Rodent.
Rodent based on Sungorus 1.4 by Pablo Vazquez is an open source chess engine by Pawel Koziol, licensed under GPL 3.0.
Rodent-IV is a free chess engine.
Table of Final Rodent chess engine specifications.
When I started writing this... entry, I wanted to create an article in which I make available the Final Rodent chess engine I compiled for Mac. This was because until recently it was impossible to obtain a Rodent-IV version with properly working Personalities for modern Macs.
However, while writing the content came and came until I found that I had created a review :)
And so please consider this text: as a review with downloadable Final Rodent for Mac and for other platforms.
Final Rodent is otherwise the official Rodent version IV. In the rest of this review, I will use the name Rodent-IV.
The raw power of the Rodent-IV on one CPU is about 3000 Elo, which is probably no surprise - it is beyond the reach of any human player.
What is a remarkable feature of the Rodent chess engine is its rich tuning capabilities.
Rodent was created for just this purpose.
Let's start with...
It is worth mentioning that all versions Rodent (I - IV), do not use a neural network (uses handcrafted eval).
In December 2021, Rodent NN was made public; it is an unofficial release with NNUE capabilities. Unlike its previous versions, Rodent NN uses a neural network and is stronger by about 300 Elo.
Since the NNUE implementation in the unofficial version of Rodent is not optimal and possible improvements are unlikely, this review will describe Rodent-IV, the latest official version, final and fully ready for use.
On GitHhub, the author provides source codes for all versions of the Rodent.
At the bottom of this review, I've placed the Rodent chess engine download for popular operating systems.
In this review, I will provide a fully working Rodent-IV for the latest Macs with Apple Silicon processors (e.g. M1, M2, etc.) and modern Macs using Intel processors.
Before we move on, let's see what style Rodent-IV plays with Tal's personality.
For the sake of completeness, I will add that the Tal personality takes its name from the outstanding chess player, the eighth World Chess Champion Mikhail Tal.
Source: ruchess.ru
Mikhail Tal often referred to as the "Wizard of Riga" he was known for his brilliant play and proficiency in tactical strikes.
Tal successfully contrasted his intuitive yet impressive style of play with a positional style based on sound theoretical preparation, represented by many of his grandmaster contemporaries. Tal was winning against the best. With his unexpected sacrifices, he led his opponents to incredibly complicated positions, creating unsolvable problems during the game. Even if in later deep analysis it turned out that the sacrifice wasn't quite correct, his astonishing concepts drew praise, and his bravado was regularly rewarded with applause from fans. He was an audience favorite.
Below is a chess game between Rodent with Tal's personality (white) vs Gaviota's chess engine (black).
According to ongoing MCERL, Rodent (Tal) has a strength about 2735 Elo (the strength of a human super grandmaster), while Gaviota plays with 2870 Elo (the level of World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen).
Let's see how easily Rodent defeats a strong opponent like Gaviota in Mikhail Tal style.
Spanish opening. Gaviota decided to launch an assault on the queen-side wing (14...b4). Rodent without delay opens positions in the center to increase the operability of the bishops (15.e5).
Gaviota continues to execut