HIARCS

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HIARCS is a commercial computer chess program developed by Mark Uniacke. Its name is an acronym stands for Higher Intelligence Auto Response Chess System.

1 Overview
2 Availability
3 Performances and benchmarks
4 In the news
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Overview

The first version of the program was released in 1980. Version 11, the first version to support multiprocessing, was released in December 2006. The current version, version 12, was released in April 2008.

The strength of the program comes more from its positional algorithms than from its search speed.^[1]

[edit] Availability

HIARCS is available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and (since 2004) ARM-based Palm OS operating systems. It is one of the few top-level chess programs which are available for Mac OS X.

[edit] Performances and benchmarks

HIARCS won the 1993 World Microcomputer Chess Championship.

In January 2003 HIARCS played a four game match of chess against grandmaster Evgeny Bareev, the world's number 8 at the time. All the four games were draws, resulting in a tied match.

Since 2005, it has been tested to be the strongest chess program available on a handheld device. It is the top handheld on the SSDF rating list, and was considered the strongest engine in a comprehensive review of 63 handheld chess programs.^[2]

HIARCS 10 with the "Hypermodern" setting enabled placed second on the SSDF rating list for June 8, 2006, with a rating of 2856.^[3]

Hiarcs has maintained a top 5 rating in the SSDF rating list for longer than any other Chess engine.^{[citation needed]}

HIARCS won the 17th International Paderborn Computer Chess Championship, in December 2007.^[4]^[5]

[edit] In the news

HIARCS 10 appears to have been the program used by the accomplices of Indian chess player Umakant Sharma, who was expelled from competitive chess for allegedly having the engine's moves illegally communicated to him via a Bluetooth device implemented in his headwear.^[6]