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Hydra displays its power and range against the best
Hydra, the computer chess programme from the UAE, showed its power and range to win the first ever man-versus-machine tournament in Bilbao, Spain, from October 6-10.
- By Yasir Abbasher, Staff Reporter
- Published: 00:00 October 21, 2004
Hydra, the computer chess programme from the UAE, showed its power and range to win the first ever man-versus-machine tournament in Bilbao, Spain, from October 6-10.
Hydra collected 3.5 points out of four.
The tournament was staged as a team contest with the human team featuring three of the best chess Grandmasters in the world, namely Ukrainian GM Ruslan Ponomariov, his countryman GM Sergey Karjakin, who became the youngest ever GM at the age of 12, and Bulgarian GM Veslin Topalov.
The Hydra team included UAE's GM Talib Moussa, who helped in the opening positions and tests new versions, Dr Chrily Donninger, the main programmer of Hydra, Dr Ulf Lorenz, who deals with the testing and helps in programming, Christopher Lutz, who is Hydra's chess consultant, and project manager Mohammad Nasir Ali.
Hydra was introduced by the Pal Group of Companies, a UAE national company in Abu Dhabi.
Announcing Hydra's success at a briefing on Tuesday at the Abu Dhabi Health and Fitness Club were Abdullah Mattar, the member of the club, Hussain Abdullah Khory, the vice-chairman of the UAE Chess Federation, Dahi Al Suwaidi, the vice-chairman of Abu Dhabi Chess and Culture Club, GM Talib Moussa, Syed Basar Shueb, the general manager of Pal, and Mohammad Nasir.
The speakers lauded Hydra's success in a short time. Two months ago, Hydra had defeated five-time world electronic chess champion 'Shredder', at the Abu Dhabi Chess Festival.
The officials called for spreading the use of the programme in all UAE chess clubs in order to help the local players improve their skills.
"Hydra's capacity is 44 million moves in a second against only 2 million moves to Shredder," Moussa told the conference.
"It is unique because it not just thinks of the next move, but also on the strategy of the match and how to win it."
Hydra had won against Ponomariov and tied with Topalov.
It then defeated Karjakin and Ponomariov again to collect 3.5 points.
"We are working to upgrade the machine by the end of this year so we are not going to play any other tournament before that," Shueb told the conference.
"We are really grateful for Pal for their efforts in helping develop Hydra," said Abdullah Mattar in his concluding comments.
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