Rebel

Home * Engines * Rebel Rebel, a chess program developed by Ed Schröder. After Ed's retirement from competitive computer chess in 2003, his latest commercial version, Rebel 12, supports the Chess Engine Communication Protocol and is market by Lokasoft, including their ChessPartner graphical user interface running under Windows. In 2004, Ed Schröder released the free ProDeo based on Rebel. The free Rebel - The Next Generation in March 2014, turned out to be an early April fool, a Stockfish version was running in the background passing information to ProDeo.

=Rebel 14= Rebel 14, released in January 2022 as UCI compliant open source engine under the GPL v3.0, is based on Fruit 2.1 by Fabien Letouzey and Growing Fruit improvements by Pawel Koziol, the Fruit evaluation replaced by an own NNUE implementation dubbed Benjamin 1.1, along with optimized NNUE inference code by Chris Whittington.

=Screenshot= Rebel 12

=Photos & Games=

WCCC 1986
WCCC 1986 showdown: Schaeffer, Nelson (blue shirt with drawing), Berliner (brown/yellow jacket), Schröder (white T-shirt), round 5, Rebel - Bebe [Event "WCCC 1986"] [Site "Cologne, Germany"] [Date "1986.06.15"] [Round "5"] [White "Rebel"] [Black "Bebe"] [Result "0-1"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 4.Nc3 exd5 5.cxd5 d6 6.e4 g6 7.Bf4 a6 8.Nf3 Bg4 9.Be2 Qb6 10.Qd2 Bg7 11.O-O O-O 12.h3 Bxf3 13.Bxf3 Nbd7 14.Rad1 Rfe8 15.b3 Ne5 16.Be2 Qb4 17.Qc2 Re7 18.Bg3 Rae8 19.Rfe1 g5 20.Rf1 Kh8 21.Rc1 h5 22.f4 gxf4 23.Rxf4 Ng6 24.Rf5 Nxe4 25.Nxe4 Qxe4 26.Qxe4 Rxe4 27.Bxh5 Ne7 28.Rxf7 Bd4+ 29.Kh1 Nxd5 30.Rxb7 Rd8 31.Bf3 Re3 32.Bh4 Nf6 33.Rf7 Re6 34.Bd5 Nxd5 35.Bxd8 Nb4 36.a3 Kg8 37.Rcf1 Nc2 38.Rf8+ Kg7 39.a4 d5 40.h4 Ne3 41.R1f7+ Kg6 42.Rc7 Nd1 43.Rg8+ Kf5 44.Rf7+ Ke4 45.g4 Kd3 46.h5 Re1+ 47.Kg2 Ne3+ 48.Kg3 Be5+ 49.Kh4 Rh1+ 50.Kg5 Rg1 51.Kg6 Rxg4+ 52.Bg5 Rb4 53.Bxe3 Kxe3 54.Re8 Rg4+ 55.Kh7 Re4 56.Ra7 d4 57.Rxa6 d3 58.Rg6 d2 59.Rg1 Kf2 60.Reg8 Re1 61.R1g2+ Ke3 62.Rxd2 Kxd2 63.Rc8 Bd4 64.Rb8 Re6 65.Rb7 Kc2 66.b4 c4 67.b5 c3 68.Rd7 Kd3 69.b6 c2 70.b7 c1=Q 0-1

WCCC 1992
WCCC 1992: Richard Lang, Ossi Weiner, Jan Louwman, Ed Schröder, Rob Kemper Round 4, Chess Genius - ChessMachine WK [Event "7th World Computer Chess Championship"] [Site "Madrid, Spain"] [Date "1992.11.26"] [Round "4"] [White "Chess Genius"] [Black "ChessMachine WK"] [Result "0-1"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.g3 e6 3.c4 d5 4.Bg2 Be7 5.Nf3 O-O 6.O-O dxc4 7.Qc2 a6 8.Qxc4 b5 9.Qc2 Bb7 10.Bd2 Be4 11.Qc1 Bb7 12.Rd1 Nc6 13.Bf4 Nd5 14.Bg5 f6 15.Bd2 Nb6 16.e3 Qe8 17.Qc2 Bd6 18.Nh4 Nc4 19.Bc3 g5 20.Nf3 b4 21.Be1 N4a5 22.Nbd2 g4 23.Nh4 f5 24.a3 Kh8 25.Nf1 Ne7 26.Bxb4 Bxb4 27.axb4 Nac6 28.Qc4 Qd7 29.b5 axb5 30.Qxb5 Rfb8 31.Rxa8 Bxa8 32.Qa4 Ne5 33.Qa7 N5c6 34.Qa3 Bb7 35.Rc1 Ra8 36.Qc5 Ra5 37.Qc4 Nd5 38.Nd2 Ncb4 39.Nb3 Ba6 40.Nc5 Bxc4 41.Nxd7 Ba6 42.Bxd5 Nxd5 43.Nc5 Bc8 44.Nd3 Ba6 45.Nf4 Nxf4 46.gxf4 Bb7 47.f3 gxf3 48.Rxc7 Be4 49.Rc8+ Kg7 50.Rb8 Ra1+ 51.Kf2 Rc1 52.Nxf3 Rc2+ 53.Kg3 Bd5 54.Rb6 h6 55.h4 Re2 56.Ne5 h5 57.e4 fxe4 58.f5 exf5 59.Rg6+ Kh7 60.Rg5 Be6 61.Rxh5+ Kg7 62.Rg5+ Kf6 63.b4 Re3+ 64.Kf4 Rh3 65.Rg6+ Ke7 66.Rh6 e3 67.Nc6+ Kd7 68.Ne5+ Ke7 69.Ng6+ Kd8 70.Rh8+ Kc7 71.Re8 Kd6 72.Ra8 Bc4 73.Ne5 Bb5 74.Nf7+ Ke7 75.Nh6 Rxh4+ 76.Kg5 Rxh6 77.Kxh6 e2 78.Ra5 e1=Q 79.Rxb5 0-1 View this game on Lichess.org

Rebel vs Anand July 1998
Rebel vs Viswanathan Anand, Ischia, July 1998

=Associated People=
 * Ed Schröder - Engine developer
 * Jan Louwman - early support and operator
 * Rob Kemper - developer of the MS-DOS graphical user interface
 * Jeroen Noomen - Book author
 * Lex Loep - Lokasoft continues Rebel 12 distribution, developer of the ChessPartner graphical user interface

=History= Rebel's development started in 1980 as a program written in Basic and running on a TRS-80 with a 1.77 MHz Z80 Processor, and was later rewritten in 6502 assembly to run on Apple II home-computers. Rebel's first tournament in 1982 was already a big success, becoming third at the 2nd Dutch Computer Championship, which was noticed by Jan Louwman, the pioneer of Dutch computer chess with commercial relations to Hegener & Glaser and other manufacturers of dedicated chess computers. With Jan's support, Rebel was commercially brought to market as Mephisto Rebell and about 20 subsequent dedicated models, sold in the period from 1985 until 1995 by Hegener & Glaser, Saitek and TASC. At the dramatic Cologne WCCC 1986 showdown, Rebel, running on an Apple II, nearly became champion when it was almost winning from Bebe, but finally underestimated a dangerous passer and lost. Rebel on 6502 further played the ACM 1986 (Rebel Recom), the ACM 1989 and WCCC 1989, and won the First Computer Olympiad 1989.

The ARM2 RISC version of Rebel, developed in the early 90s, running on a TASC ISA card for an IBM PC, and called ChessMachine Gideon, won the WMCCC 1991 in Vancouver and the WCCC 1992 in Madrid. Subsequent x86 PC-versions of Rebel run under MS-DOS with its own proprietary but sophisticated graphical user interface developed by Rob Kemper, while Jeroen Noomen was responsible for the opening book. =How Rebel plays Chess= When Ed Schröder retired from competition in 2003, he made almost all his knowledge about the internals of Rebel public in his Programmer Corner summarized in How Rebel Plays Chess, elaborating on:
 * Move Ordering
 * Search Techniques
 * Futility Pruning
 * Reductions
 * Extensions
 * Null Move Pruning
 * Quiescence Search
 * Evaluation
 * Lazy Evaluation
 * King Safety
 * Mobility
 * Pawn Endgame
 * NNUE (Rebel 14)

=Descriptions=

1989
from the WCCC 1989 booklet :

The Mephisto Rebel has to be defined in between a Shannon A and a Shannon B type of chess program. To all brute force calculations a fixed ply depth quiescence search is added. Capturing moves and checks are extended more deeply. The evaluation function integrated much chess-knowledge, so the program also finds good positional moves.

1999
given from the ICGA-site : REBEL BV is a Dutch chess software developing company completely devoted to chess since 1985. In that remarkable year (1985) our first commercial chess program named REBEL 5.0 was released by Mephisto Hegener & Glaser, Munich, Germany in a stand-alone (dedicated) chess computer.

Since 1994 we produce top chess software for PC distributed by a worldwide dealer network in more than 30 countries.

What is Rebel?

=Release Dates=
 * Rebel (8 bits versions) : 1980's
 * Rebel Gideon : 1991
 * Rebel 6.0 : 1994
 * Rebel 7.0 : 1995
 * Rebel 8.0 : 1996-08
 * Rebel 9.0 : 1998
 * Rebel 10 : 1998-11
 * Rebel Decade : 1999
 * Rebel 11 : 2000-11
 * Rebel Century 2.0 2000
 * Rebel Century 3.0 : 2001-01
 * Rebel Century 4.0 : 2001-02
 * Rebel XP: 2002
 * Rebel 12 : 2003 (Windows)
 * Rebel 12 : 2004-01 (DOS)
 * Rebel ProDeo : 2004
 * Rebel 13: 2015-10
 * Rebel 14: 2022-01 (Windows)

=See also=
 * ChessMachine
 * ChessPartner
 * Fruit
 * Gideon
 * Hegener & Glaser
 * Knowledge | Search versus Evaluation
 * Lokasoft
 * Mephisto MM IV
 * Mephisto MM V
 * Mephisto Polgar
 * Mephisto Rebell
 * Mephisto RISC
 * ProDeo

=Publications=
 * Jeroen Noomen, Ed Schröder (1998). Anand versus Rebel 10 exp. ICCA Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3
 * Jan van Reek, Jos Uiterwijk (2001). The Match Van der Wiel vs. REBEL CENTURY 3.0. ICGA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1
 * Ed Schröder (2004). How Rebel Plays Chess. pdf

=Reviews=
 * Rebel reviews hosted by Ed Schröder
 * REBEL10 review by Claudio Bollini
 * REBEL 11.0 review by Sune Larsson
 * Rebel Century review by Claudio Bollini

=Forum Posts=

1995 ...

 * REBEL 7 announcement by Ed Schröder, rgc, July 27, 1995
 * The Crafty-Rebel NPS challenge... by Ed Schröder, rgcc, February 26, 1997
 * The Crafty-Rebel NPS challenge started!!! by Ed Schröder, rgcc, March 07, 1997
 * Rebel-Crafty NPS Challenge by Amir Ban, rgcc, March 19, 1997
 * NPS challenge will end after game one... by Ed Schröder, rgcc, March 26, 1997
 * LCT II results of Reb9, F5, and H6 on K6/233 by Albert Silver, CCC, January 03, 1998 » LCT II, Fritz, HIARCS
 * Q. about Rebel extensions by Rémi Coulom, CCC, May 18, 1999 » Extensions

2000 ...

 * Chess Tiger and Rebel, the first programs to win against the Internet by Ed Schröder, CCC, May 28, 2001 » Chess Tiger
 * a question about the definition of winning capture in Rebel(diagrams) by Uri Blass, CCC, January 05, 2003
 * Evaluation in REBEL (hanging pieces) by Tony Werten, CCC, January 10, 2003 » Hanging Piece
 * wb2uci,eng w comments by Mike Byrne, CCC, July 16, 2003 » Wb2UCI
 * table-based SEE or "evaluation in rebel (hanging pieces)" by Martin Fierz, CCC, November 27, 2003 » Hanging Piece, Static Exchange Evaluation
 * hanging pieces in rebel by Bernward Klocke, CCC, January 15, 2004 » Hanging Piece
 * Rebel's long checks concept in QS by milix, CCC, January 23, 2004 » Check, Quiescence Search

2005 ...

 * Search or Evaluation? by Ed Schröder, Hiarcs Forum, October 05, 2007 » Search versus Evaluation

2010 ...

 * La máquina preservadora 3. Programas para PC by Luis a, Meca Foro, August 08, 2013 (Spanish)
 * Q to Ed Schröder-Gideon Pro = Rebel Decade ??? by Gustavo Mallada, CCC, January 28, 2014
 * Rebel TNG (version 1.0) approximately 2950... by Dr.Wael Deeb, CCC, March 30, 2014

2015 ...

 * Our first leaflet by Ed Schröder, CCC, April 04, 2015
 * (E)valuation (F)or (S)tarters by Ed Schroder, CCC, July 26, 2015 » Evaluation
 * Rebel 13 is released by Damir Desevac, CCC, October 13, 2015
 * REBEL | ProDeo book available in Polyglot format by Ed Schröder, CCC, March 05, 2016 » Opening Book, PolyGlot

2020 ...

 * Rebel 14 by Ed Schröder, CCC, January 12, 2022

=External Links=

Chess Program

 * Rebel 14 | Home of the Dutch Rebel
 * Rebel Pure Nostalgica
 * Playing strength results of REBEL, CHESS TIGER and GANDALF in 2001
 * Rebel 12 from Lokasoft
 * Rebel's ICGA Tournaments
 * REBEL (chess) from Wikipedia
 * Schröder, Ed from Schachcomputer.info - wiki (German)

Rebel

 * rebel - Wiktionary
 * Rebel - Wiktionary
 * Rebel, disambiguation page from Wikipedia
 * The Rebel (disambiguation) from Wikipedia
 * The Rebel (book) from Wikipedia
 * Rebellion from Wikipedia
 * Dutch Revolt from Wikipedia
 * David Bowie - Rebel Rebel, YouTube Video

=References=

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