Exciting Houdini News

       The Cruxis Website has some exciting news about the new release (Version 2.0) scheduled for release sometime between September and December 2011.  Besides a number of minor bug fixes, and the ability to adjust its strength from beginner to full strength it will have some features that will aid the serious analyst.       
      Houdini 2.0 will focus on features that improve position analysis. One welcome feature will be the ability to save the complete hash table to a file and reload it later.  This means you can stop the analysis and save it then reload it at a later time and start from the point where you stopped. 
       A "Never Clear Hash" option will also be available. The "Position Learning" mode will automatically save analysis in a “learning database” that will be reused in future analysis.
       Houdini 2.0 will support Chess960(Fischer Random Chess). To speed up solving deep mates, you can fix a limit on the search depth during the mate search.  A Houdini version will be available to support the next generation of CPUs with 16 to 32 cores.
       The developers are not saying how many elo points the improvements will add to its strength, so we will just have to wait and see.