Crafty
chess software
Crafty is a chess program written by UAB professor Robert Hyatt, with development and assistance from Michael Byrne, Tracy Riegle, and Peter Skinner. It is derived from Cray Blitz, winner of the 1983 and 1986 World Computer Chess Championships. Tord Romstad, co-author of Stockfish, described Crafty as "arguably the most important and influential chess program ever".
Crafty finished in second place in the 2010 Fifth Annual ACCA Americas' Computer Chess Championships. Crafty lost only one game, to the first-place winner, Thinker.
Crafty also finished in second place in the 2010 World Computer Rapid Chess Championships. Crafty won seven out of nine games, finishing behind the first-place winner Rybka by ½ point.
In the World Computer Chess Championships 2004, running on slightly faster hardware than all other programs, Crafty took fourth place with the same number of points as the third-place finisher, Fritz 8. On the November 2007 SSDF ratings list, Crafty was 34th with an estimated Elo rating of 2608.
Crafty uses the Chess Engine Communication Protocol and can run under the chess interfaces XBoard and Winboard.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1138485. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 1986, 2010 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crafty” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.