Hydra (chess)
![]() |
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2009) |
Hydra was a chess machine, designed by a team with
Hydra represented a potentially significant[
Hydra began competing in 2002 and played its last game in June 2006.[1] In June 2009, Christopher Lutz stated that "unfortunately the Hydra project is discontinued." The sponsors decided to end the project.
Architecture
The Hydra team originally planned to have Hydra appear in four versions: Orthus, Chimera, Scylla and then the final Hydra version – the strongest of them all. The original version of Hydra evolved from an earlier design called Brutus and works in a similar fashion to Deep Blue, utilising large numbers of purpose-designed chips (in this case implemented as a field-programmable gate array or FPGA). In Hydra, there are multiple computers, each with its own FPGA acting as a chess coprocessor. These co-processors enabled Hydra to search enormous numbers of positions per second, making each processor more than ten times faster than an unaided computer.
Hydra ran on a 32-node Intel
The Hydra computer was physically located in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, and was usually operated over a high speed optical fiber based network link.
Tournaments and matches
- In July 2002, Brutus finished third in the Deep Junior, included a rook sacrifice for very long term compensation, which the additional computing power of Brutus could not help it to understand.
- In November 2003, Brutus finished fourth in the World Computer Chess Championship in Graz, Austria. It won eight games, lost two games, and drew one, giving it a score of 8½ out of 11. This disappointing result left the team to find a new sponsor, which they found in the form of the PAL group.
- In February 2004, Hydra won the 13th IPCCC (International Paderborn Computer Chess Championship) tournament. Hydra scored 6½ out of 7, ahead of Fritz and Shredder.[3]
- In April 2004, Hydra finished second in the International CSVN Tournament in opening book.
- In August 2004, at the 14th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival, Hydra played an eight-game match against the computer program Shredder 8, a multiple-time world computer chess champion. Running on "just" 16 nodes Hydra defeated Shredder 5½ to 2½, winning three games and drawing the rest. In an informal match at the same tournament, Hydra took on Evgeny Vladimirovof Kazakhstan, and defeated him by a score of 3½ to ½.
- In October 2004, in a man vs. machine contest, Hydra defeated former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov in both of their games. Ponomariov had an Elo rating of 2710 at the time of the match.
- In February 2005, Hydra won the 14th IPCCC (International Paderborn Computer Chess Championships) tournament. Hydra scored 8 points out of 9 (seven wins and two draws), defeating chess program Shredder again in the process.
- Due to human handler errors and program errors, Hydra did not fare well in the June 2005 PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Tournament, an online tournament where players are allowed to access any and all resources to them, including computer engines, databases, as well as human grandmasters. Two versions of Hydra participated in the tournament: Hydra Chimera (without human intervention) scored 3½/8, and Hydra Scylla (with human intervention) scored 4/8. Neither version of Hydra qualified for the quarter-finals.
- From June 21 to June 27, 2005, Hydra played a six-game match against Michael Adams, the top British player and ranked seventh in the world. The prize fund was $145,000, paid out on a per game basis: a win netting $25,000, a draw $10,000 to both players. Hydra defeated Adams by a score of 5½ to ½; Adams lost each game except for game 2 which he drew. This version of Hydra was running on half power; only 32 out of 64 nodes were utilized. Adams played against the Scylla version of Hydra.
a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | ||
8 | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() | 8 | |||||||
7 | 7 | ||||||||
6 | 6 | ||||||||
5 | 5 | ||||||||
4 | 4 | ||||||||
3 | 3 | ||||||||
2 | 2 | ||||||||
1 | 1 | ||||||||
a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h |
- In November 2005, Hydra played 4 games: it beat Rustam Kasimdzhanov, drew with Alexander Khalifman, beat Ruslan Ponomariov and finally drew with Rustam Kasimdzhanov.
- In the April 2006 PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Tournament Hydra finished first with a score of 5½/7, a full point ahead of the field. This tournament allows for any human or computer aid including teams. All 64 of Hydra's nodes were utilized.
- In the June 2006 PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Main Tournament Hydra finished tied for fifth-sixteenth.
Hydra was not defeated by an unaided human player in
References
- ^ "In 2006 Hydra plays in Third PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Tournament". Chessbase.com. 5 July 2006. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
- ^ http://tournament.hydrachess.com/faq.php
- ^ Theo van der Storm. "13th IPCCC crosstable". Old.csvn.nl. Retrieved 2012-12-17.
External links
- ChessBase Inc., H. J. van den Herik, J. Nunn, D. Levy. Adams Outclassed by HYDRA. ICGA Journal, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 107-110, 2005.[1]
- U. Lorenz, C. Donninger, M. Ali, E. Günes, C. Lutz. Hydra: Report and technical overview. ICGA Journal. 42 (2-3), pp. 132 – 151, 2020.
- Hydra player profile and games at Chessgames.com
- C. Donninger, U. Lorenz. The Chess Monster Hydra. Proc. of 14th International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL), 2004, Antwerp – Belgium, LNCS 3203, pp. 927 – 932
- C. Donninger, A. Kure, U. Lorenz. Parallel Brutus: The First Distributed, FPGA Accelerated Chess Program. IPDPS 2004
- C. Donninger, U. Lorenz. Innovative Opening-Book Handling. ACG 2006: pp. 1-10
- Mickey Adams v Hydra. In Selective Search 120, The Computer Chess Magazine, pp. 6 - 13
- S. Moss. Beaten by a microchip. In The Guardian, 30 Jun 2005
- W. Ertel. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Second Edition, Springer, pp 120f
- game 3 against Arno Nickel (07/11/2005)
- Play through the games of the Adams vs Hydra 2005 Match
- Beginning of New Yorker article on Hydra, Your Move: Chrilly Donninger's Hydra, computer chess program by Tom Muelle, The New Yorker, December 12, 2005