Author: Mark R. Anderson
Date: 08:32:31 02/10/06
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On February 10, 2006 at 10:47:48, Sarah Reynolds wrote: >This program to me seems stronger then Rykba, it plays a mean game of chess and >doesn't give the human player any chances at all, great program i think. Sarah, I agree that Hiarcs 10 is a very strong engine, that it plays a mean game and doesn't give the human play any chances, and that it's a great program. Having said that, I must disagree with your other statement .... as much as I love Hiarcs and its very nice style and capabilities, Rybka is most definitely stronger. All of our testing and also inspection of the games between the engines confirms this many times. Hiarcs is a wonderful analysis engine ... it is very strong tactically (one of the top 4 or 5), plays very good speed chess, has a very good positional game, a very human-like style that is also very active and agressive, and also has good PV evaluation numbers. It also has a good endgame, but not as good as Shredder. I use it more than Fritz, Shredder, Fruit and Junior for analysis generally. However, I have been extremely impressed by Rybka's play and results (haven't we all?) and when using it to help analyze top human GM games, I find that it finds the "human" line of play better than other engines, and it finds these moves rather quickly also, which is impressive. Also, it is positionally without peer, IMHO. The present version (1.01 Beta 13b) is a real beast, but when the final verizon comes out with improved search and also endgame heuristics, it will be a true monster. Oh, one more thing ... I agree with another poster here that Rybka "spots" and frustrates attempts to use closed positions and other "anti-computer" strategies to get draws or occasional wins. Recently, my girlfriend was really impressed when she saw me get a draw in a game with Tiger 15 at Game/20. I said, "Thanks, I think I played pretty well, but this one will bring me down to earth." I then played a similar game with Rybka, and it basically turned my game into ground hamburger ... not a pretty sight. She just said, "Oh, that must be the really strong one you talk about." I said, "Yes, there's no fooling the Monster." (What's Russian for "Big Monster?" "Little Fish" doesn't seem to do justice to this one.) Mark Anderson
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