Hiarcs Paderborn 2007

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Topic The Rybka Lounge / Computer Chess / Hiarcs Paderborn 2007

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-18 23:57

Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 is still one of my favorite engines because of its aggressive playing style. I know it can't compete with today's top engines in the strength department, but what about playing style? Are there any current engines that are as much fun to play against?

By TheHug

Date 2011-06-19 00:53

Thinker was one of my favorites. Rybka Dynamic with higher contempt (around 30 would be good enough) Junior, Critter .70, and Pro Deo (I forget the personally that was mention. I think it was Tal or Q3)

By Uly

Date 2011-06-19 01:27

(Thinker's best style is version 5.3B)

> and Pro Deo (I forget the personally that was mention. I think it was Tal or Q3)

Well, he can use my ready to install DrunkenMaster Suite:

http://rybkaforum.net/mwf/rybkaattach/86/284286/ProDeo16DM.zip

I know installing ProDeo personalities is a 7 steps hassle that includes editing text files, so I've attached (^Link above) a DrunkenMaster package ready to install, just unzip it and install the rebeluci.exe file as UCI engine, (this personality plays 1.b3 by itself), afterwards you can use other personalities by choosing them on the dropdown box of the options.

Another engines worth mentioning (in bold):

Frenzee.

Deep Fritz 10.1

Rybka Winfinder 2.2

Zappa Mexico II - Dissident Aggressor personality.
[OPTIONS]
Enable Mate Extensions=true
Aggressive Futility Pruning=true
Eval Passed Pawn Scoring=125
Eval Pawn Scoring=135
Eval Minor Scoring=70
Eval Major Scoring=70
Eval Kingsafety Scoring=500
Hide Fail Highs=false
Print PV Tips=true

Komodo KingHunter:

#Kinghunter personality for Komodo 1.0

# dynamic features
# -------------------------
pmob 48 125
nmob 64    56
bmob 64    65
rmob 25    48
ropen    205   180
rhalf    55    75
qmob 25    35
blockedopen -60 -84
kppdist 0    33
ntabm    30    12
btabm    14    14
rtabm    16    12
qtabm    14    14
ktabm    12    12
luftp    -108   -180
ksarea 15 0
ksdefm 13 0
ksattm 13 0
pthreat    79 127
outpost    35    36
minorbehind    38 0
rook7th    60 160

# static features
# -------------------------
pval    850   1150
nval 3200   3800
bval 3200   3800
rval 4900   6400
qval    10100 12100
bpair 333 666
rpair    -125   -175
qpair -80   -120
pdoubled    -50 -80
predundant 10    10
islands -30 -60
isoh    -35 -35
isoo -140   -170
duofended    20 0
pbkwd -35 -45
passed 14    23
ppinc 100 160
ptabm    10    10
nwp    25    25
bwp    20    20
rwp -25 -25
hmb    90    20

Toga II 3.1.2SE Chekov
[OPTIONS]
Verification Reduction=6
Futility Margin=125
Extended Futility Margin=325
Delta Margin=55
Quiescence Check Plies=2
Material=102
Piece Activity=103
King Safety=125
Pawn Structure=105
Passed Pawns=105
Toga Lazy Eval Margin=245
Toga Extended History Pruning=true

ChessMaster 9000 Tribute Personality (The King 3.23)

[OPTIONS]
Program="theking.exe"
InitString=cm_parm default\ncm_parm
;HashCommand=cm_parm tts=%i065536
HashCommand=cm_parm tts=67108864 ttu=7
;ShowThinkingMove=true
;Logfile=true
Visible=Ponder,Hash,ShowThinkingMove,Logfile,Extras

[EXTRAS]
Opponents Pawn (opp)=cm_parm opp=%i|spin|110|0|4500
Opponents Knight (opn)=cm_parm opn=%i|spin|117|0|1500
Opponents Bishop (opb)=cm_parm opb=%i|spin|121|0|1500
Opponents Rook (opr)=cm_parm opr=%i|spin|110|0|900
Opponents Queen (opq)=cm_parm opq=%i|spin|119|0|498
Kings Pawn (myp)=cm_parm myp=%i|spin|110|0|4500
Kings Knight (myn)=cm_parm myn=%i|spin|117|0|1500
Kings Bishop (myb)=cm_parm myb=%i|spin|121|0|1500
Kings Rook (myr)=cm_parm myr=%i|spin|110|0|900
Kings Queen (myq)=cm_parm myq=%i|spin|119|0|498
Contempt (cfd)=cm_parm cfd=%i|spin|0|-500|500
Strength (sop)=cm_parm sop=%i|spin|100|0|100
Attack Defend (avd)=cm_parm avd=%i|spin|0|-100|100
Randomness (rnd)=cm_parm rnd=%i|spin|0|0|100
Selective Search (sel)=cm_parm sel=%i|spin|12|0|16
Max Depth (md)=cm_parm md=%i|spin|99|0|999
My Centre Control (mycc)=cm_parm mycc=%i|spin|110|0|600
My Mobility (mymob)=cm_parm mymob=%i|spin|115|0|600
My King Safety (myks)=cm_parm myks=%i|spin|160|0|600
My Passed Pawn (mypp)=cm_parm mypp=%i|spin|115|0|600
My Pawn Weakness (mypw)=cm_parm mypw=%i|spin|110|0|600
Opponent's Centre Control (opcc)=cm_parm opcc=%i|spin|110|0|600
Opponent's Mobility (opmob)=cm_parm opmob=%i|spin|115|0|600
Opponent's King Safety (opks)=cm_parm opks=%i|spin|160|0|600
Opponent's Passed Pawn (oppp)=cm_parm oppp=%i|spin|115|0|600
Opponent's Weakness (oppw)=cm_parm oppw=%i|spin|110|0|600

Yeah, that should cover the top of chess engine style up to my knowledge (I haven't really checked new engines for style in 2 or 3 years).

By Werewolf (*****)

Date 2011-06-19 03:44

The King
by Johan de Koning

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-19 15:11

Do you still do tactical testing? What place would Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 be in on your current list?

By Werewolf (*****)

Date 2011-06-19 15:15

Give me a couple of weeks and I'll let you know - I'm actually testing The King atm and the new Junior 12.5 but I'll do HIARCS Paderborn 2007 if you like afterwards.

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-19 16:00

> Give me a couple of weeks and I'll let you know - I'm actually testing The King atm and the new Junior 12.5 but I'll do HIARCS Paderborn 2007 if you like afterwards.

Thanks. It would be interesting to see how Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 holds up against today's best engines. So you are testing The King now. I don't know much about it. Is it a UCI engine?

By Vempele (Silver)

Date 2011-06-19 16:11

It's better known as ChessMaster. It's a Winboard engine.

By BigBen

Date 2011-06-20 05:32

>I'm actually testing The King atm and the new Junior 12.5

Junior 12.5 no longer seems to play 10...Bxh2+ as it did against Kasparov way back, I wonder is this due to todays hardware or program evaluation\parameters

rnbqr1k1/pp3ppp/2pb1n2/3p4/3P4/P1NBP3/1PQ1NPPP/R1B2RK1 b - - 0 10

Regards

By Banned for Life (Gold)

Date 2011-06-20 08:42

The only advertising this engine ever had was: Junior 7, the program that shocked Garry Kasparov with its famous Bishop sacrifice on h2. Now you've ruined everything!!!

By Werewolf (*****)

Date 2011-06-20 09:19

I've never seen a commercial version that plays Bh2+.

I remember when J7 was released a lot of people said it wouldn't play Bh2 & with all my versions I've never seen one that does. I think they made the Kasparov version very speculative. I've also noticed that the tournament version of Junior seems to play better than the commercial version...but that might just be becuase of big hardware + good book

By Dr.Wael Deeb (***)

Date 2011-06-20 11:52

Most probably a special tuned version of Junior to play risky chess so that it confuses the human opponent....
My vision is such a version won't stand a chance in the computer chess rating lists playing the big guns....
Dr.D

By Werewolf (*****)

Date 2011-06-20 15:13

> My vision is such a version won't stand a chance in the computer chess rating lists playing the big guns....

Yep, they must have realised that too and toned the commercial version down a bit.

The tournament version of Junior is interesting though (the one that plays in the WCCC)

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-20 17:04

Can you post the latest version of your tactical rating list?

By Werewolf (*****)

Date 2011-06-20 17:28

Yes I am working on it but it will take a couple of days. I'm testing HIARCS Paderborn, The King and HIARCS 12.1 right now.

Unfortunately my testsuite is 100 positions and the King needs them entered manually because the (buggy) Chessmaster interface can't process a testsuite in one go.

By Werewolf (*****)

Date 2011-06-23 10:10

My list has no been updated and posted for you!

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-23 16:34

> My list has no been updated and posted for you!

Thanks for posting the updated list! I expected Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 to do a little better, but it still turned in a respectable performance. I will post some addtional comments in your new thread.

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-19 04:08

> Yeah, that should cover the top of chess engine style up to my knowledge (I haven't really checked new engines for style in 2 or 3 years).

Why did you stop checking new engines for style? For me, style is as important as strength. If I could play some casual games with any player in history I would choose Morphy because of his style, even though many stronger players came after him. I'm guessing that Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 on decent hardware would beat Morphy in a match. That's strong enough for me.

By Uly

Date 2011-06-19 19:43 Edited 2011-06-19 19:48

Note that I don't play against Chess engines, back then, I'd just enjoy watching them play against one another.

>Why did you stop checking new engines for style?

My correspondence chess games ate all of my time. The rest of the free time I use to play OTB Chess, but that's also rare nowadays. Curiously, I've still gotten better without much practice, I guess it's osmosis.

I used to care about engine's style, but the games played by those engines aren't really useful.

At that point I cared more about engine's originality, that is, finding engines that have original ideas that other engines don't come up with, ideas that work (e.g. getting Stockfish to always suggest the 4th best move is going to produce something "original", but it's going to lose every time on recaptures).

I think style and originality are related, the main difference is that style is flashy, you see it on a game and you recognize it. Originality is harder, you've got to compare the move choice of the engine with that of other engines, to know what moves are the favorites and which ones are suggested only by the original engine. Sometimes style goes contrary to originality, like when all engines like to play a knight sacrifice, and the original engine wants to delay it one move, and it turns out delaying it is better, in these cases style (in the sense of wanting to play a sacrifice ASAP) is hurtful.

Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 had both style and originality, but the idea of having original engines is that one of them will suggest the best move, so you don't need to check dozen of engines, so space is restricted. And so, when Critter 0.70 appeared and turned out to be another engine with both style and originality, but much stronger so that its ideas worked much more frequently, it clearly displaced Hiarcs in that respect and now I use Hiarcs very rarely.

>For me, style is as important as strength.

For me, originality is more important than style, and originality requires strength, as engines that always suggest an original move but it never works (engines that suggest original moves that rarely work, like Spark) aren't really of much use.

>I'm guessing that Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 on decent hardware would beat Morphy in a match. That's strong enough for me.

Well, play against the engines that have been suggested in this thread and tell your opinion. By the way, if "strong enough" is your paradigm, then I suggest you fire up Rybka 3 Dynamic to Contempt Play=160, perhaps it will have more style than any other chess entity. At some point, so much contempt would lead it to pick 1.f3 as the best move, that's highest "originality".

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-19 21:26

> I think style and originality are related, the main difference is that style is flashy, you see it on a game and you recognize it. Originality is harder, you've got to compare the move choice of the engine with that of other engines, to know what moves are the favorites and which ones are suggested only by the original engine. Sometimes style goes contrary to originality, like when all engines like to play a knight sacrifice, and the original engine wants to delay it one move, and it turns out delaying it is better, in these cases style (in the sense of wanting to play a sacrifice ASAP) is hurtful.
>
> Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 had both style and originality, but the idea of having original engines is that one of them will suggest the best move, so you don't need to check dozen of engines, so space is restricted. And so, when Critter 0.70 appeared and turned out to be another engine with both style and originality, but much stronger so that its ideas worked much more frequently, it clearly displaced Hiarcs in that respect and now I use Hiarcs very rarely.
>

I see your point that style and originality are related but different. I'm mostly interested in an engine's style of play. I didn't realize that Critter had some of the Paderborn magic. I thought it was one of those boring-to-play-against engines.

> Well, play against the engines that have been suggested in this thread and tell your opinion. By the way, if "strong enough" is your paradigm, then I suggest you fire up Rybka 3 Dynamic to Contempt Play=160, perhaps it will have more style than any other chess entity. At some point, so much contempt would lead it to pick 1.f3 as the best move, that's highest "originality".

In all seriousness, what is the highest contempt setting you would use for Rybka 3 Dynamic to make it play more agressive but not bizarre? Is 160 really usable?

By TheHug

Date 2011-06-19 21:30

> In all seriousness, what is the highest contempt setting you would use for Rybka 3 Dynamic to make it play more agressive but not bizarre? Is 160 really usable?

30-50

By Uly

Date 2011-06-19 21:53

> Is 160 really usable?

To play against it, yes.

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-28 23:38

> Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 had both style and originality, but the idea of having original engines is that one of them will suggest the best move, so you don't need to check dozen of engines, so space is restricted. And so, when Critter 0.70 appeared and turned out to be another engine with both style and originality, but much stronger so that its ideas worked much more frequently, it clearly displaced Hiarcs in that respect and now I use Hiarcs very rarely.
>

How does Critter 1.2 compare to Critter 0.70 in terms of style and originality? Does Critter 1.2 also displace Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 in both respects?

By Uly

Date 2011-06-29 10:46

I have not checked Critter 1.2 that much because it has been recently released, so it would be unfair to comment.

As for Critter 1.0, the thing that happened was an unexpected phenomenon. As I said, the idea of an original engine, is that sometimes it finds the best move that no other engine finds, so you keep using it to find those instances. With Critter, as the versions advanced, those moments were more and more common, until it advanced to position three of my main engine list (That's: Rybka 3 Persistent Hash, Rybka 4.1, Critter 1.0, the rest).

So I'm no longer using Critter for its originality, I'm now using it for its strength, and that means that now other engines have to prove original by suggesting ideas Critter misses and make Critter agree with them, which is becoming rarer as versions advance. The roles have been reversed (think like, Critter being "the new Rybka").

If style can be defined by deviating from the best move to play an offbeat idea, but now the offbeat ideas of Critter are the best moves, was style lost?

I guess my problem was defining style depending on how engines had a different opinion from Rybka, because Rybka was coming up with the best moves most of the time. The common scenario was:

Rybka suggests move A
Engine B suggests move A <-- Redundancy
Engine C suggests move C, but after interaction it agrees A is better <-- Style
Engine D suggests move D, and after interaction Rybka agrees D is better <-- Original engine!

Nowadays it's common that Rybka is making poor choices, so it's difficult to say if the better alternatives provided by the other engines count as style or strength. The common scenario now is:

Critter suggests move A
Rybka suggests move B but after interaction it agrees A is better
Engine B suggests move B but after interaction it agrees A is better
Engine C suggests move C but after interation it agrees A is better

There's redundancy with Rybka and engine B but otherwise I can't tell the difference between style/weak moves, or originality (Critter was still the only engine suggesting move A, but originality now should be another engine suggesting a move that is better than A).

The lines have been blurred, I can only say that Critter 1.0 is still an engine that offers very different ideas and evaluations from other engines, in that sense it's still over Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 in both aspects.

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-30 04:04

> The lines have been blurred, I can only say that Critter 1.0 is still an engine that offers very different ideas and evaluations from other engines, in that sense it's still over Hiarcs Paderborn 2007 in both aspects.

I'm supprised at how small the Critter_1.2_64bit_SSE4 file is. The one I downloaded is only 336 KB. Is that right?

By Uly

Date 2011-06-30 10:03

Mine is 338KB (346,112 bytes).

By SummerKnight (**)

Date 2011-06-30 16:42

It amazes me that Critter is 1/2 or even 1/3 the size of other top engines, yet it is so strong.

By Werewolf (*****)

Date 2011-06-29 11:27

> Thinker's best style is version 5.3B)

which one? active, passive, inert..?

By Uly

Date 2011-06-29 12:39

Inert.

It was curious, what happened is that Lance had just one Thinker, and people complained that its playing style was too dull, so he made two versions, the Passive one, and the Active one. The Active one would sacrifice strength to maximize style, but it got so weak (think, weak human level or something) that I wouldn't recommend the Active versions to anyone unless you like playing against engines.

Later on, Thinker got an incredible playing style, without sacrificing strength, so that ironically, the "Passive" version was the one with the style and strength (Active would be the engine you'd like to play against if that's what you liked).

Then, Lance maximized strength, but he was afraid that the style of the engine would get dull again, so he kept the Passive (strength not maximized) and Active (strength sacrificed) versions, and added a new one, the "Inert" version, that would not care for anything but strength.

And again, ironically, it was also the personality with the most style (at 5.3B). I think that it was the version that made Thinker most famous for its playing style, though it was already famous for that. At this point I thought the Passive version had no reason to exist.

However, future versions added strength to the Inert version, and style went down, so that for those versions, the style of the Passive versions was better than for their Inert versions, but not up to the style of the 5.3B Inert version. In the hands of Kerwin, the engine never improved in the style aspect, so that 5.3B Inert was its peak.

So, on recap, if what you want is the strongest version (since Thinker's style is crazy-amazing, anyway), you want the latest public version, Thinker 5.4D Inert. If you want the most stylistic version, you want Thinker 5.3B Inert, and if you like playing against engines, you want to play against Thinker 5.4D Active.

All of them can be downloaded from:

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=2991af457de54bf0&sc=documents&id=2991AF457DE54BF0!111

For short, the incredible style of 5.3B Inert was a fluke, the Passive versions that tried to preserve Thinker's style became unnecessary, as, say, 5.4D Passive has a better style than 5.4D Inert (that's why it's on that package), but if style is your thing, you'd rather ignore its existence and go back to 5.3B Inert.

Disclaimer: Thinker does not support Infinite Analysis or output, and requires the WBUCI adapter or Arena to show move scores.

By Werewolf (*****)

Date 2011-06-29 13:37

wow! thank you, lots of info. I take it the Thinker project is no more..?

By Dr.Wael Deeb (***)

Date 2011-06-29 15:02

Unfortunately,the current authors of Thinker had choosen the stupid way of making it a super ultra private engine much like the current author of Fruit....
Dr.D

By Nelson Hernandez (Silver)

Date 2011-06-29 17:08

I wouldn't interpret their behavior that way. Kerwin is, by nature, extremely laconic. For every 100 words I might write he might write in response one or two words. This isn't a matter of secrecy, it is a matter of personality.

The last time I communicated with him (several months ago) he indicated that the then-current (private) version of Thinker was at roughly the Stockfish level and that improvements were ongoing. No indication as to when or if the latest engine will be released. Have you heard, definitively, that they are deliberately holding the engine back? If so, what's your reference?

By Dr.Wael Deeb (***)

Date 2011-06-29 20:13

I am much more speculating,I don't have any specific backround information....

At the level of Stockfish you say!?
Well,I think it's good enough to be released considering the different playing style....

Anyway,thanks Nelson for the info you provided....
Dr.D

By Nelson Hernandez (Silver)