Hiarcs
Authors
| Person | Role | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Mark Uniacke | engine programmer | |
| Harvey Williamson | book author | |
| Eric Hallsworth | book author | |
| Sebastian Böhme | book author | tournament book |
Participations
| Version | Tournament | Title | Participants | Score | Games |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chess, 2009, Pamplona | 10 | 6.0 | 9 | ||
| Chess (Blitz), 2009, Pamplona | 9 | 5.0 | 8 | ||
| Chess, 2008, Beijing | 10 | 7.0 | 9 | ||
| Chess (Blitz), 2008, Beijing | 10 | 6.0 | 9 | ||
| Chess, 1999, Paderborn | 30 | 4.0 | 7 | ||
| Hiarcs X | Chess, 1995, Paderborn | 34 | 7.0 | 11 | |
| Chess, 1993, Munich | World Microcomputer Chess Champion | 28 | 7.5 | 9 | |
| Chess, 1992, Madrid | 22 | 2.5 | 5 | ||
| Hiarcs 6.72 | Chess, 1992, London | Gold medal | 7 | 5.0 | 7 |
| Chess, 1991, Vancouver | 15 | 4.0 | 7 | ||
| Chess, 1990, London | 11 | 2.0 | 7 | ||
| Hiarcs 4.1 | Chess, 1989, London | 9 | 3.0 | 8 |
Descriptions
- Description given in 2009:
HIARCS is one of the few original PC chess programs still competing in top level chess competition. It has been in development for over twenty years and since 1991 has always been among the top chess programs in the world. In this time it has led world rating lists and won World Championship titles. It was the first PC chess program to defeat a FIDE International Master in a match and has been a favourite of a number of World Chess Champions. So much so that Garry Kasparov said towards the end of his match with Deep Blue2 that "HIARCS is much better positionally than Deep Blue". HIARCS is available on a number of platforms including PC, Macintosh, Palm, Pocket PC and iPhone handheld devices. The handheld Palm and Pocket PC versions have won multiple matches against GMs and have even won two GM/IM tournaments in the Philippines and Argentina.
HIARCS' playing style is now very aggressive with a distinctive liking for attacking the opponent's king. This often leads to dynamic exciting games which are often played on a knife-edge.
HIARCS is now capable of taking advantage of multi-processors/cores to improve its chess performance making it a very dangerous opponent.
A tournament opening book with latest theory is used together with up to 6 man Nalimov tablebases.
Hiarcs Hardware is the YOYOTech Chaturanga kindly supplied by www.yoyotech.co.uk.
- Description given in 2008:
HIARCS is one of the few original PC chess programs still competing in top level chess competition. It has been in development over the last twenty years and since 1991 has always been among the top chess programs in the world. In this time it has led world computer rating lists and won World Championship titles. It was the first PC chess program to defeat a FIDE International Master in a match and has been a favourite of a number of World Chess Champions. So much so that Garry Kasparov said towards the end of his match with Deep Blue2 that "HIARCS is much better positionally than Deep Blue". HIARCS is available on a number of platforms including PC, Macintosh and handheld devices. The handheld Palm version has won multiple matches against GMs and even won a GM/IM tournament in the Philippines. HIARCS' playing style is now very aggressive with a distinctive liking for attacking the opponent's king. This often leads to dynamic exciting games which are often played on a knife-edge. HIARCS is now capable of taking advantage of multi-processors/cores to improve its chess performance making it a very dangerous opponent.
- Description given in 1999:
HIARCS is written entirely in 'C' on a very spare time basis.
HIARCS searches around an order of magnitude less positions per second (av. 18,000) than most of its competitors. However, it makes up for this apparent slow speed by clever searching and accurate evaluation. HIARCS uses many selective search extension heuristics to guide the search and incorporates a sophisticated tapered search to resolve tactical uncertainties while finding positionally beneficial lines.
HIARCS won the title of World Microcomputer Chess Software Champion in 1993 in Munich, Germany and has won numerous other computer and human tournaments. HIARCS 7.0 is currently the top rated chess program on the SSDF and Selective Search rating lists.
In April 1997, HIARCS 6.0 became the first PC chess program to win a match played at tournament time controls over a FIDE International Master. This great achievement was further built on when HIARCS won the Godesberg Open ahead of Grandmasters and International Masters.
The version competing in this tournament is a new experimental version. The program will be a 32bit windows version of Hiarcs and will support tablebases. It is expected that all 4 piece and most 5 piece endgame tablebases will be available.