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

[Fulvio]

This is a very long thread, but there is hardly any information about the program!

There are some interesting features, such as:
"HCE database format offers huge databases only limited by memory - 1GB per 8 million games"

Can anyone who have it, confirm that it can open the latest lichess database (https://database.lichess.org/) with over 87 million games?
And how is the performance?
How long does it take to open the PGN?
How long does it take to find the Sicilian games 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 ?

[George Sobala]

This is a very long thread, but there is hardly any information about the program!

There are some interesting features, such as:
"HCE database format offers huge databases only limited by memory - 1GB per 8 million games"

Can anyone who have it, confirm that it can open the latest lichess database (https://database.lichess.org/) with over 87 million games?
And how is the performance?
How long does it take to open the PGN?
How long does it take to find the Sicilian games 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 ?

Well there is a Tree Explorer for every database you import. I have Lichess Elite (15.5M games) and it is pretty instant.

[George Sobala]

Do we have any sense of the strength of the new Hiarcs engine? Has any testing been done by any of the bigger ratings lists thus far?

Because - and I'm being frank here - that's more important to me than the features of HCE (or ChessX Pro, as I like to think of it). If it's reasonably competitive with some of the engines just below SF, LC0, and Komodo, I'll buy it. If not, I probably wont.

Weaker than Komodo 9, for sure. But I bought this as a database explorer, for which it is superb, Up until now, on a Mac, I have had to resort to ChessBase running in a VM - no longer. The visual horrors of the ChessBase GUI can now be consigned to a deep dark hole in my memory.

[KLc]

This is a very long thread, but there is hardly any information about the program!

There are some interesting features, such as:
"HCE database format offers huge databases only limited by memory - 1GB per 8 million games"

Can anyone who have it, confirm that it can open the latest lichess database (https://database.lichess.org/) with over 87 million games?
And how is the performance?
How long does it take to open the PGN?
How long does it take to find the Sicilian games 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 ?

Ok, I downloaded the latest Lichess database (Nov 2021). It's a 24GB bzipped file that extracts to a 187GB PGN database containing ~88 million games. I tried opening this in HCE and it took several minutes for the first segment of the progress bar to appear. I didn't have the patience but I'm sure (because of what comes next) that it'll work and I guess it would take several hours to open. Since I'm not interested in bullet and blitz games anyways, I used pgn-extract to extract the rapid games, and along the fly I removed all comments (with evaluations and clock values) and variations. This saves a lot of space. What I got (after several hours) was a 6.7GB PGN file with ~11 million games. I opened this in HCE and this took ~30 minutes, consuming something like 4GB of memory. I saved this into the new format which took ~45 minutes. This could be quicker IMHO. The new database file is 3.41GB. This could be smaller IMHO. Anyways, opening this file takes ~30 seconds. Search on players or filtering by rating range for example is basically instantaneous. The tree explorer (giving an overview of all moves within the database from a fixed position with the number of times it occurs and the performance) takes ~0.5 seconds to update on a move. I want to add that during all the loading/saving operations, HCE was fully responsible, i.e. you can still work on other databases. All in all, I think this is fantastic and by far the best chess database software right now. I would especially like to address this to that guy abusing this thread and complaining about stuff that's not relevant.

[Cornfed]

All in all, I think this is fantastic and by far the best chess database software right now. I would especially like to address this to that guy abusing this thread and complaining about stuff that's not relevant.

Thanks for the insight!

Best to...ignore the cranks - well, maybe address once in a while, but it's never good to let them keep pulling you back in with their irrelevant items. Energy vampires.

Also, do you by any chance use Explorer to store your opening repertoire? I was wondering because of all the things I have used to do so over the years, I actually prefer to use Chess Position Trainer. I like it better than Bookup/Chess Openings Wizard...and Chessbase.

[KLc]

Also, do you by any chance use Explorer to store your opening repertoire? I was wondering because of all the things I have used to do so over the years, I actually prefer to use Chess Position Trainer. I like it better than Bookup/Chess Openings Wizard...and Chessbase.

Yes. It's something I have long been thinking about and I'm by no means an expert. But after many attempts I'm keeping it really simple now. I just have a PGN database with my main openings as games and variations and annotations within. Then I use pgn-extract to split the variations into separate games, use the "random game" and "hide next move" feature of HCE to learn a bit, and also upload the repertoire to ChessTempo to learn a bit more. I do like ChessPositionTrainer but I don't like to use Windows, and I decided that a plain PGN database will be something I can still work with in 30 years. I do hope that one day the'll add some more learning features in HCE though.

Oh, and the good thing about working on the repertoire with the new HCE is the tree explorer that I can run on the large Lichess database as explained above (I can select a rating range that's more realistic for me than a super GM opening book) and that one can use multiple analysis windows. And the whole GUI is slick and responsive—unlike ChessBase.

[Cornfed]

the whole GUI is slick and responsive—unlike ChessBase.

I'm not sure how to quantify 'slick', but I keyed in a position 8 ply deep and ran it against Megabase 2022 (9Million+ games) in Chessbase 16 and it took probably less than 3 sec to give me all the games (I did not check for variations, just the main games themselves). That's pretty responsive in my world.

[Andrew]

Just bought the update, my first Hiarcs purchase in quite a few years! I started with Hiarcs 8 something many years ago as a physical disc purchase
almost certain from the chess shop near Central railway in Sydney, Australia. Since then have bought various versions of both Hiarcs, Junior and the opening book subscription, also a much earlier version of the Chess Explorer GUI.

Quick question, which folder does the UCI executable get stored in so I can also run Hiarcs in the Chessbase/Fritz GUI?

Big request, please keep updates coming as you work out fixes,improvements.
Also please consider a NNUE version of Hiarcs as a supplement to the regular version. Very intriguing to see what this could do!

Andrew

[Ozymandias]

The tree explorer (giving an overview of all moves within the database from a fixed position with the number of times it occurs and the performance) takes ~0.5 seconds to update on a move.

I'd like to see them posting a video where they work with the tree and a DB of about 16M games, which is the limit for Scid. The ones they've posted are with a "very large" DB of 35K. This kind of marketing gives me pause.

[KLc]

Quick question, which folder does the UCI executable get stored in so I can also run Hiarcs in the Chessbase/Fritz GUI?
Andrew

macOS or Windows? In macOS its in Documents/Hiarcs Chess/Engines. I assume it'll be similar under Windows.

Also please consider a NNUE version of Hiarcs as a supplement to the regular version. Very intriguing to see what this could do!

I hope they don't bother and keep focussing on the database software.