Virtual Chess
Authors
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Marc-François Baudot | engine programmer |
| Jean-Christophe Weill | engine programmer |
Participations
| Version | Tournament | Title | Participants | Score | Games |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual Chess X | Chess, 1999, Paderborn | 30 | 4.0 | 7 | |
| Virtual Chess 2 | Chess, 1997, Paris | Professional World Microcomputer Chess Champion | 34 | 8.0 | 11 |
| Chess (Blitz), 1997, Paris | 22 | 5.0 | |||
| Virtual Chess 2 | Chess, 1996, Jakarta | Professional World Microcomputer Chess Champion | 27 | 6.5 | 11 |
| Chess (Blitz), 1996, Jakarta | 5 | ||||
| Chess, 1995, Paderborn | 34 | 7.5 | 11 | ||
| VirtuaChess | Chess, 1995, Shatin | 24 | 2.5 | 5 |
Descriptions
- Description given in 1999:
Virtual Chess is the commercial version of the Ecume and Cumulus 2 chess programs. It holds the title of World Professional Computer Chess Program '97. Its most recent result : a 1.5/2 match win against GMI Etienne Bacrot at the Cap d'Agde tournament. It finished first (tied with Vaisser and Chernin) of the 1996 rapid Aubervilliers tournament.
The chess engine is written in C and 32 bits assembly. It is based on PVS, uses null move pruning and includes dynamic evaluation of king safety and pawn structure. The evaluation function attempts to build plans whenever it recognizes important features in a position. It runs on a PC with Windows (95, 98 or NT), with a splendid graphical interface written by the French firm Titus Interactive.
- Description given in 1995:
VirtuaChess is the commercial version of the Ecume and Cumulus 2 chess programs (which finished second in the blitz tournament in Munich and which tied 2nd/3rd in the 7th World Championships in Madrid). It runs on a PC with MSDOS and can use all of the available memory for its hash tables. It has a splendid graphical interface written by the French firm Titus. Most of the chess engine is written in 32 bit assembler, and the program includes dynamic evaluation of king safety and pawn structure. It is based on PVS and uses null-move pruning. The program has perfect knowledge of KPK endgames. The evaluation function attempts to build plans whenever it recognizes important features in a position. VirtuaChess runs at 20,000 nodes per second on a Pentium 90.