Wednesday, October 23, 2019

HIARCS

     I got a chance to tinker around with HIARCS the other day. It’s available from the USCF in two versions: HIARCS Chess Explorer ($69.95) and DEEP HIARCS Chess Explorer ($99.95). 
     As you probably know, HIARCS was developed by Mark Uniacke and it’s been around almost forever with the first version marketed by Chessbase and sold in the Fritz GUI back in 1996. From the beginning one of Uniacke’s goals has been for HIARCS to play in a more human-like fashion at different Elo ratings.
     HIARCS Chess Explorer is a database, analysis and playing program and is available for both Windows Macintosh computers. The first question is, what’s the difference between HIARCS and DEEP HIARCS? Is the difference worth the extra $30? That would be a personal decision, I guess. 


* Deep offers the multi-core/multi-processor version of HIARCS 14 whereas HIARCS has the single core version. Most engines these days automatically are multi-core/multi-processor, so this seems a little odd to me. 
* Deep has access to additional online content, including 1 Terrabyte of Chess Endgame and Opening Book Databases whereas HIARCS has access to standard online content only. 
* Databases include: 
Top Games – about 35,000 games between the world's top players, mostly from the last 20 years. 
Annotated Games – exactly what it says Fischer vs. Spassky - all the games played between these two. Not sure why you would want these because chess progress has moved on. 
Kasparov - Karpov - all the games played between these two. Same as Fischer-Spassky except the games are a lot more boring. 
Tactics - contains 300 tactical puzzles 
You can download a larger 200K+ database of master games. 

     HIARCS can use any UCI compatible chess engine, so depending what you want to use it for...practice against human-like play or to seek perfection...you can use the HIARCS engine or download Stockfish.
     The HIARCS engine is famous for its human-like and entertaining attacking playing style It does have a very nice interface that allows to to customize the pieces, board and layout. Navigation around the databases, games and players is pretty easy. User Manuel 
     The bottom line is that HIARCS looks to be a pretty good program that does just about everything all the other programs do, but for me, the deal breaker is you have to pay $30 extra for the multi-core/multi-processor version. Also, the database is pretty small. 
     I really can’t address HIARCS ability to play human-like chess and I couldn’t locate any recent games, so the following game against a human from 2012 will have to do. HIARCS smoothly defeated IM Jefferson Pelikian (born October 10, 1965) who was co-champion of Brazil in 1994. 
     The Mercosur Cup 2002 tournament was a 12-player affair that was held in Vicente Lopez, Argentina and was won by IM Bernardo Roselli who finished a half point ahead of Oscar Panno and Hiarcs 8. 


     Currently in the CCLR 40/40 rating list HIARCS 14 is rated number 43-44 with a 3054 rating and it gets crushed by Stockfish and Komodo. On the FastGMs Rating Lists (60 seconds / game + 0.6 seconds / move) it’s rated 2758 and is in 46th place. 
     Clearly HIARCS is not the best engine out there, so a lot depends on how well it meets the claim that it plays human-like chess. Can anybody attest to that claim?

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