Stockfish 10 was released in late 2018 and was, at the time, the best chess player that had ever existed by a wide margin. It would still comfortably beat every human being alive.
It would also lose badly to the version of Stockfish that ships as the default here. That is the single most interesting thing about it, and the reason it is included: putting Stockfish 10 against Stockfish 18 is the same program eight years apart, and the gap is enormous and visible.
This matchup is the clearest demonstration available of what happened to computer chess between 2018 and now — not a difference in hardware or thinking time, since both run on your machine under identical conditions, but a difference in what the program understands.
What makes it distinctive
- ▸Classical evaluation, predating NNUE by two years
- ▸Still far stronger than any human player
- ▸The best available illustration of how fast engine strength has moved