Ethereal 14.00

Ethereal 14.00 (NNUE) has been released, marking a significant improvement in playing strength, which can be seen in events like TCEC, CCC, and soon to be seen in many rating lists like CCRL, CEGT, SPCC, and FastGM. With this release, Ethereal once again solidifies itself as the leader of the pack of rapidly rising and innovating engines vying to break into the top 3 to join Stockfish, Leela, and Komodo.

This most recent version has been a massive undertaking. In the process of data generation for the Standard NNUEs, a total of 1.456 billion games were played, ranging from low depth games, to extremely high node counts. For the Fischer Random NNUEs, an additional 600 million games were played. The results of these efforts are significantly larger, and more powerful NNUEs, with the ability to perform well with an increasingly diverse set of positions.

Ethereal's NNUE release marked the first time an engine offered a secondary Network trained exclusively for Fischer Random Chess (FRC). Later versions also marked the first use of mirrored-halfkx NNUEs, now a de facto standard. Ethereal 14.00 continues that tradition with a new FRC network once again, granting immense gains over the Standard Network, helping Ethereal to create new theory where there is none.

With all of these advances, Ethereal has put up incredible accomplishments since the most recent release...

• Taking 3rd place on CCRL's Fischer Random Chess Rating List, within striking distance of Dragon
• Taking 4th place in TCECs Season 23 Premier Division, showing superior scaling at long time controls
• Taking 4th place in Chess.com's CCC 19 Bullet (1|1), showing strength at even short time controls despite its large NNUEs

For new users, Stripe will verify your payment of $60 USD. Afterwards, you will receive an email from andrew@grantnet.us within 24 hours containing a download link for the Standard and Fischer NNUE files, as well as the binary or executable files for Windows and Linux. You will continue to receive updates for versions 14.25, 14.50, and 14.75 as they are available, as well as lifelong bug fixes.

If you purchased any previous version of Ethereal, you should have received an email containing updates to 14.00 free of charge, with a notice concerning future releases. If you did not, and the email cannot be found in your spam folder, please reach out to me.