Author: Melvin S. Schwartz
Date: 16:55:57 07/22/99
As you requested I am giving you a few examples of what I call bad play by Hiarcs 7.32. White: Hiarcs 7.32 Black: Schwartz Time Control: 40/2 Place: Schwartz's Den Date: Who cares? White to move. Position: White: Kg1, Ne4, Rb5, Pawns at g3 and h2. Black: Kh8, Rc2, Pawns at a5, b4, g7, h6. Hiarcs played 1.h4 (a bad move in my opinion - Nc5 would have been better). The score was Hiarcs up about a pawn. 1...a4 2.Rxb4...a3 3.Rb1...a2 4.Ra1...Rb2 5.Nc3...Rb3 6.Rxp...RxN. The score now is about even! Both Fritz 5.32 and Rebel 10 selected Nc5 instead of Hiarcs h4. The move by Hiarcs h4 as you can follow the sequence with the exchange of pawn for knight leads to a dead draw. Nc5 gives White excellent chances for a win. Now, example Number 2. White: Hiarcs 7.32 Black: Schwartz Time Control: 40/2 Date and Place not important. :) This is the famous Bishop's opening I posted a while back with only the first 8 moves or so and stated that Hiarcs had played badly but I was refuted by people I shall leave nameless. This Bishop's opening transposes into Petrov's Defence. The move list follows with some important notations by me. Important? Ehh... 1.e4...e5 2.Bc4...Nf6 3.Nf3...Nxe4 4.Nc3...Nxc3 5.dxc3...f6 6.Nh4...g6 7.f4...c6 8.f5...d5 9.fxg6...Bg7 10.Bd3...e4 11.Be2...Qb6! 12.Bh5...Kd8 13.Now here Hiarcs originally played a4 and after making the move its score went way down to a minus. Nice guy that I am, I allowed Hiarcs to replay the move to see if it would again choose a4. Next time around it played Rf1 with a better score. I decided to let Hiarcs replay it again to see what it would do. It again selected Rf1 which I would certainly say is better than a4 and allowed Hiarcs to keep a better score at this point. However, a4 was indeed a bad move! There's more to see - let's continue. 13.Rf1...Na6 14.Rb1...Nc7 15.h3...Be6 16.Bf4...Bd7 17.Be2...Ne6 18.Bg3...hxg6 19.Nxg6...Re8 20.Qd2? (what kind of move is this?)...e3 21.Qc1...Ng5 22.Bf4 (Hiarcs had around a +0.50 at this move)...c5 23.Nh4 and after making this move very quickly the score went to a minus -0.48 for Hiarcs. Now, Hiarcs was claiming a plus score the whole game while when I checked the evaluation score on Fritz 5.32 and Rebel 10, they both had me with a plus score. I used those programs to evaluate because I could not see where Hiarcs should have had a plus score at all. You can look at this position and decide for yourself if Hiarcs is as strong as all the hype. I am not saying it's worse than Fritz or better than Fritz - all I'm saying is I don't think it's the kind of program that I and some others expected. I hope I'm not misunderstood here. I believe that yes Hiarcs 7.32 is a good program...but great it is not, sad to say. The hardware used for Hiarcs 7.32 is an AMD K6 400 MHz processor with 192 MB of RAM, and I gave Hiarcs 7.32 64 megs of RAM as you once suggested to me. The hardware for Schwartz was a loaded shotgun. :) Regards, Mel
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