Houdini vs Houdini Pro ? Suggestions?

[ncsmn]

Hello, I'm new to this forum.

back in 2002 I used to play around with yahoo and chess programs. Only for competing against other engines... I used to really enjoy tweaking settings to try and out perform other engines, while in play.

In the last 3 months I started playing a lot of chess again. (using just my own brain!) Periodically I see some people who have stuck bots on there to run at will. The urge to kill their massive winning streaks has got me interested again.

I downloaded the free Houdini 1.5 and have been drawing 3 games out of 10 with this one guy.. would like to up my strength and allow for changing of setting throughout the game.

Should I go for houdini 2.0 .... or the Pro Version?? cost really isnt' an issue... but if I am going to spend some money on this, prefer to get the most bang for my buck.

I've own an IT company, so have lots of hardware, semi-old servers sitting around, so could get something hooked up that has plenty of computational power!

Any suggestions??

*Hardware info at moment. Just running Houdini 1.5 from a desktop 40 gig pc that is 75% full on memory. Its a 4 year old Intel Pentium 4. I do have a handful of dual core PC's banging about also.. Plus a couple of HP Proliant ML115 servers which also are redundant....

thanks in advance.

[ncsmn]

oh yes.... I remember having to running chessbase back in 2003 (opening books) or so on top of the core chess engine... currently I'm not running anything but the free houdini 1.5 game.. manually moving pieces to play the bot.. the only setting I've touched is giving it 4 seconds to think about each move.

Should I be adding a database to this ?? and if so will that increase it's strenght significantly? or if I buy the 39 or 50 euro Houidini's.... do they come with all the chess base stuff?

tia.

[matematiko]

Hello ncsm,

First of all, if you are playing in Yahoo or POGO, you do not need to move manually, visit http://www.autochess.com/forum and look at YaY and YaYp sections.

Concerning the engine, Houdini 2.0 it is to supposed to be a little stronger but I can not tell how much (30 to 50 ELO perhaps ?).

The good news for you is that Houdini 2 (Pro Only)it is supposed to take advantage of multiple socket architecture, so, if hardware is not an issue and if I was you, then I will build me a dual socket Opteron with 8 cores each or whatever the possibilities are, or perhaps some sort of skull trail.

Regards,

[ncsmn]

OK.. spoke to my support guy... I have a ProLiant DL360 G5 box with 4 x 2.66GHz Intel cores... that is about 3 years old sitting in the store room, currently not being used.... imagine this provide some "kick some butt" computing power.

I'm still playing 98% of the time as per normal with my own little brain in 1/0, 1/1, and 1/3 games... (I'm about a 1650 - 1700 player on yAHOO)..

but do see these automated Bots on tables from time to time... and when I do, I try and beat them with Houdini 1.5
I still haven't found a simple link for connecting to YAY... so am manually playing them, when I do. (i.e. with two screens open)

***Interestingly... I've learned a great little new black opening from the program ..

would like to switch the program onto "auto play" and destroy their cunning little plan with my Bot-Killer... have them come back to the screen and see 50 Losses!! ... I do realise that this a sad, little waste of my valuable time and innovative Mind... but we all have our vice's in life, eh.

Biggest Last Question is... What Program should I buy.. I am liking the sound of the Houdini Pro-Version. But to be honest... I know very little about this domain

[Olivia]

Very interesting... I wish you the best of luck with your en devour!

[Olivier Deville]

Very interesting... I wish you the best of luck with your en devour!

Lovely name for a troll

Olivier