Fake Houdini 4 Engine

 

    A couple of days ago I ran into an old chessplaying friend at the local mall and he told me he runs Arena and had recently downloaded an illegal copy of Houdini 4 and was happy with it.  I warned him about the dangers of getting a virus doing that, but he stated he had scanned the program with antivirus software and everything was OK.

     I expressed some doubt about it being the real Houdini 4 and he agreed to e-mail me a copy.  I scanned it with Webroot and it looked OK so I installed in my Fritz 12 GUI and it worked fine.  I decided to run a G5 engine match with Houdini 2 vs Houdini 4 and went off to do something else.  When I returned I discovered 13 games had been played and Houdini 2 had scored +10 -1 =2.  Conclusion:  I don’t know what engine that the “Houdini 4” is, but clearly it’s not the real thing.  Watch those illegal downloads!!