Hiarcs Chess Explorer Pro - Coming Soon! (Now Released)

[Damir]

Thanks Eduard.

[Ozymandias]

Who needs a single core engine nowadays? The Pro version is only 32 cores, which is also not up-to-date and too expensive at 150 euros.

(19% VAT is added)

I am not a rich men.

I'd rather take the fish and buy ChessBase GUI. Which I did too.

... and prefer to donate a few euros to new open source projects.

Engine tournaments are still run on one core when using cutechess and concurrency. Also, IDeA doesn't benefit from multiple cores since... Rybka version 3?

I don't think core support or price is the real issue, but performance. It says there than it's more than 200 Elo stronger than HIARCS 14 WCSC, which puts it around Deep Shredder 13.

I wasn't sure what his business model was, back then, but I guess he found a niche market in the relatively uncontested MacOS environment.

[Eduard]

And the testers should pay (lot of money) for only a simple 1 core test engine? Bravo! I call this a rip-off, sorry. The other players need better.

[matejst]

I really don't understand why such a rant about a product one does not intend to buy. I could understand writing about bugs, bad customer service, etc. of a product one has already bought, otoh.

Reading the announced capabilities of HCE and the level of Hiarcs 15, I think it is excellent for the market it is intended for -- chess players who need a tool to train or amateurs that simply want to enjoy chess [offline]. HCE is somewhere between Fritz and Chess Assistant from what I saw, and it seems to be a very nice GUI. There seems to be advanced publishing options, and it is something important too. Hiarcs 15 is marketed as 200 Elos stronger than H14 on one page, and as a 3300+ Elos engine on another. I think that it is quite enough for any need a player might have. Is it too expensive? I don't think so: it is in Fritz and Komodo range, +/- a dozen euros.

What it is probably not: a software and an engine for [online] eng-eng tournaments or "testing". We already have Arena and BSG for this, and they are niche applications, for a really tiny market.

[Eduard]

I always see myself as a potential buyer. And honestly feel ripped off. 150 euros plus VAT for an engine is simply bold. We live in the Corona era, many businesses are ruined, but everything is astronomically expensive in the chess market. It's like the next Windows version suddenly costs 500 euros. H15 doesn't even have NNUE and is not competitive.

Every normal measure has been lost, fans (who will buy any price) are ripped off.

[matejst]

I always see myself as a potential buyer. And honestly feel ripped off. 150 euros plus VAT for an engine is simply bold. We live in the Corona era, many businesses are ruined, but everything is astronomically expensive in the chess market. It's like the next Windows version suddenly costs 500 euros. H15 doesn't even have NNUE and is not competitive.

Every normal measure has been lost, fans (who will buy any price) are ripped off.

Eduard, just don't buy it. I did not buy any CB product for 15 years because I thought it was worth it. I also did not buy HCE because it reminded me too much of ChessX. Then, I spent years away from chess, I have not needed anything chess related. The software I use is old, I tried the free versions before I bought it, and it suits me. With the range of free existing engines, I do not need another one. I can use Zahak, Wasp, Shashchess, and older version of Sugar for my need. I recently rediscovered Rebel Century and Mephisto Gideon UCI, and I prefer by far to spend money on chess books. Real books, paper. I cannot lose them when my disc crashes.

[Eduard]

Yes. But It still hurts me. I've known Hiarcs since DOS times. But I don't live in the past anymore. If people want to spend that much money on nostalgia, fine too.

One in another forum wrote: Now all that's missing is a new shredder, a new junior and a new MChess.

And what for?

For me, what counts today is the performance you pay for a product.

The one with its own style of play, is nonsense! If an engine with its own style plays very well, that's great. If the engine with its own style plays 300 Elo weaker than the best engine, there is something wrong with the style, what should I do with it?

Many studies and theoretical openings are refuted by Stockfish and need to be redefined. What was good 30 years ago was 30 years ago. Today is today! I hope to see H15 on the Server, we will see then how strong it plays.

[herO]

I always see myself as a potential buyer. And honestly feel ripped off. 150 euros plus VAT for an engine is simply bold. We live in the Corona era, many businesses are ruined, but everything is astronomically expensive in the chess market. It's like the next Windows version suddenly costs 500 euros. H15 doesn't even have NNUE and is not competitive.

Every normal measure has been lost, fans (who will buy any price) are ripped off.

I don't understand why you're still writing about the engine here. Hiarcs Chess Explorer has never been about a chess engine! Customers appreciated the ease of use and wide range of functionality available in Hiarcs Chess Explorer. Hiarcs Chess Explorer offers a huge range of new features that every chess player who wants to improve will appreciate. There is no better chess program in Mac OS than Hiarcs Chess Explorer.

On the other hand, the Hiarcs engine has the advantage of being one of the engines that simulate human chess very well. I'm sorry, but Komodo NNUE absolutely doesn't play human chess at all, even if I setup lower SkillLevel or UCI_ELO in the latest version.

I've played over 3000 games against engines since 2012 and I can say that Hiarcs 14, Shredder 12, Rodent simulating the best human chess. Shredder 13 plays terribly at lower ELO because Stefan didn't optimize the engine on lower levels, for example Shredder 13 1500 ELO plays like 2000 ELO player. Mark also worked on improving the human chess simulation in the new engine. If someone is interested in preparing and playing against the computer, Hiarcs will provide an interesting opponent for training. Mark also promised to optimize the engine so that the low-level Hiarcs 15 doesn't play several hundred ELOs better. He tried to make the simulation at lower levels even better! Stefan made this mistake in his Shredder 13 engine, where the main goal was to improve the chess engine, but he did no work at all in simulating human chess. I recommend an older version of Shredder 12 to simulate human chess.

That is why people use this engine. The Hiarcs engine is also a good analysis tool when analyzing chess games played by chess players! I emphasize the word chess players, because most people here on the forum do not play chess at all. You only do one thing. You watch the numbers and results in the table all day as the chess engine plays against another chess engine and try to find some specific engine configuration to make sure your LC0 or Stockfish plays better (really boring, no real chess player wants that). It's admirable that you like to test chess engines, but Hiarcs Chess Explorer is a software that serves mostly people who want to improve and PLAY chess. This software is not suitable for a small circle of people from talkchess who are only interested in engines and small advances in ELO and NNUE technology. If you want to test the engines, use the Arena and BanksiaGUI programs instead, but both of these software are definitely not intuitive compared to Hiarcs Chess Explorer and are only suitable for advanced players who are only interested in computer chess and most of the time they do not play chess themselves.

Hiarcs Chess Explorer is definitely not expensive software. The price consists mainly of the database functionality of the software. I know you'd rather appreciate a standalone engine, but Mark sells the overall product, including the chess engine. I definitely don't think the price is high. The price is high for you because you are not a chess player and you do not play chess. You do not need to analyze your chess games, browse the games of the grandmasters, do CUSTOM analysis of games, work with several databases, export DB to PDF, ePUB, etc. I understand that you are disappointed because you are not interested in these functionalities. You're only interested in testing the engine and that's it. I have to disappoint you here. If you are interested in the chess engine and its power, then download chess engines that are free and will better serve your purpose.

[Eduard]

There are people who would only like to have the engine (to test) and still have to buy everything completely. Why is that not possible with pure engine?

How do you know I don't play chess?

[KLc]

And honestly feel ripped off.

You can only feel ripped off if you actually bought it.

H15 doesn't even have NNUE and is not competitive.

Ridiculous. Compete with who? If you want maximal ELO, use Stockfish. If you want to play a decent game at a, say 1800 ELO level, play against HIARCS.