Komodo 9.42 for Android: Still not stronger than Stockfish 7

I've just heard some whispers from chess birds flying around my devices. Unfortunately, what they are telling is not very brilliant for the newest Komodo. It was supposed to recover the unexpected ELO gap between 9.3 and Stockfish 7. It's done but not fully... Is all hope gone?

It looks like the ranking will  be the same. 15 rounds out of 19 total should be already speaking enough for the trend.

Now, take a look at the Rapidroid Top-10 and compare only Komodo to Stockfish.

It doesn't make sense to correlate this list and last Rapidroid because this one is based on Android engines only and remaining rounds will surely effect the overall ELO distribution:


Ra Name                    Elo +  -  gam sco oppo dra
1  Stockfish 7            3356 43 40 278 85% 3082 27%
2  Komodo 9.42            3327 41 39 278 81% 3085 26%
3  Critter 1.6a           3148 34 34 278 57% 3105 44%
4  Sting SF 4.8.4 JA      3109 35 35 278 56% 3065 37%
5  Firenzina 2.4.1 xTreme 3106 34 34 278 52% 3096 46%
6  BlackMamba 2.0         3079 33 33 278 48% 3100 49%
7  Fritz 14               3067 33 33 278 48% 3086 49%
8  Gull 3 x64 (syzygy)    3056 35 34 276 54% 3031 42%
9  Texel 1.05             3035 35 35 276 47% 3060 34%
10 DeepSaros ver.2.3f     3011 35 35 276 49% 3022 35%

So what? 4 rounds and 70 games remain to play but i'm sure Stockfish 7 will still be on top.

Komodo 9.42 for Android doesn't have the dynamism option like in Windows and contempt is set to 10 by default. Looking at the games played so far, i see that Komodo has serious issues vs Stockfish, way beyond Windows platform.

Even Stockfish 6 overcame Komodo 9.42 in a head-to-head match not yet posted here, in 4.5 times reduced "cpu + tc" conditions (!).

Should this weakness be blamed to the contempt and relatively lower search depths?

Or would tablebase usage & tournament time controls change the status on a 64-bit octacore CPU?

I can't answer these questions with available hardware and time.

By the way, i think it will be interesting to attach some performance comparisons of both toppers against other engines in detail when next Rapidroid release will come.

Cya!