General Information
The Match
The Chess Events Maastricht Foundation is proud to announce the Man vs Machine Match between Evgeny Bareev and Hiarcs X. The four-game match will be played from 28.-31. January 2003 in the Centre Céramique in Maastricht, The Netherlands with classical time control. The match is sponsored by Centre Céramique, ChessBase, DGT Projects, Duwell and Paradigit Computers.
The Man
Russian Top-GM Evgeny Bareev, born 21-11-1966, is currently playing in the Corus Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee. The number 8 of the world with 2729 ELO-rating combines sound strategic thinking with an excellent technique, but he is also able to play exciting attacking games. Bareev won the 2002 Corus Chess Tournament in excellent style and was semi-finalist at Dortmund 2002. He was second in the individual rankings of Moscow´s 2002 Match of the Century with a TPR of 2770. The World Champion under 16 of 1982 has been playing chess on a very high level for more than 20 years and has many good years to come!
The Program
The program HIARCS X, written by Mark Uniacke from England, has been one of the world's top Programs ever since it won the microcomputer world chess championship in 1993. HIARCS stands for "Higher Intelligence Auto Response Chess System". And indeed the distinguishing feature is that the author, like no other, uses a maximum of chess knowledge to increase the playing strength of his program. The new version of HIARCS has been improved and enhanced in a number of areas, especially in its search algorithms and the implementation of concrete chess knowledge. The search tree has been further optimised and results in an increase in search depth in the middle game. This leads to substantially increased tactical power while at the same time the program maintains its active positional playing style. Chess knowledge has always been the program's main strength. The improved search algorithms made it possible to implement even more advanced positional functions, especially in the areas of "typical pawn structures" and "dynamic evaluation of the centre". HIARCS 8 evaluates important factors like weak squares, king's safety, piece exchanges, initiative and king attack much more reliably than the predecessor versions. Mark Uniacke, who will come to Maastricht to operate his program himself, has made an improved version for the match, which is called HIARSC X. Hiarcs´ 8 rating on the January SSDF list: 2679.
The Machine
The Machine with an Athlon 2400+/1.8G and 1024 MB RAM was provided by Maurice Monfrance from Paradigit Maastricht. The available time was 40 moves in 2 hours and 20 moves in 1 hour. Thereafter, 30 seconds per move. HiarcsX plays with endgame-CDs.