Ikarus

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Ikarus, a chess engine by Munjong and Muntsin Kolss, written in Delphi. The development started in January 1997, and in May 2000 Ikarus was released as Young Talent by ChessBase, and is now a private engine. Ikarus is the German spelling of Icarus from Greek mythology, with his attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father, Daedalus, constructed from feathers and wax. However, the chess engine Ikarus is not related with the internet chess client Icarus by Random Software.

=Tournament Play= Ikarus played three World Computer Chess Championships, the WCCC 1999 in Paderborn, the WCCC 2002 in Maastricht, and the WCCC 2006 in Turin, where Ikarus managed to win the Blitz tournament, awarded by the title of World Computer Speed-Chess Champion. Able to play Chess960, Ikarus participated at the two open Livingston Chess960 Computer World Championships, fifth place in 2005 and even third in 2006, and was qualified to play the Chess960CWC 2009 where only four engines competed in the final. Ikarus regularly played the International Paderborn Computer Chess Championships. The debut in 1999 with a shared second place was already promising. Further, Ikarus played various CCT Tournaments, and except one occasion at CCT6 with severe internet access problems due to a dying router, it most often played for the top rankings.

=Description= given in 1999 from the ICGA tournament site : Development of Ikarus started in January 1997 when our previous program, named "BasicChess", reached the 64kb memory limit of Borland Pascal 7.0 and its source code had grown completely cryptic. The 32-bit language Borland Delphi 2.0 allowed us to finally use hash tables and the next year or so saw us implement a graphical user interface and most of the usual standard search heuristics (null move pruning, history heuristic, search extensions etc.) as well as some advanced data structures such as a pawn-king hash table.

From March 1998 on a Winboard-compatible version has been autoplaying a variety of computer opponents. Ikarus also got a new hand-crafted opening book. Over Christmas 1998 we added support for the endgame databases created by Eugene Nalimov; so our program contains a port of the probing code provided by the author.

=Photos & Games=

IPCCC 2002
IPCCC 2002: Munjong Kolss, Muntsin Kolss and Gerd Isenberg in Ikarus vs. IsiChess, Ulf Lorenz far left [Event "IPCCC 2002"] [Site "Paderborn GER"] [Date "2002.03.03"] [Round "07"] [White "Ikarus"] [Black "IsiChess"] [Result "1/2-1/2"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2 e6 7.f4 Be7 8.O-O O-O 9.Be3 Nc6 10.Kh1 Qc7 11.a4 Re8 12.Bd3 Nb4 13.a5 Bd7 14.Nf3 Rac8 15.Bb6 Qb8 16.e5 dxe5 17.fxe5 Nfd5 18.Nxd5 exd5 19.Re1 h6 20.c3 Nxd3 21.Qxd3 Bc5 22.Qxd5 Be6 23.Qd2 Bxb6 24.axb6 Rc6 25.Ra4 Rxb6 26.Rd4 Qc7 27.Rd1 Bb3 28.Rd7 Qc4 29.Ra1 Qb5 30.Re1 Rbe6 31.Rd6 Rxd6 32.Qxd6 Bc4 33.Qd2 Bd5 34.Nd4 Qd7 35.Re2 Qg4 36.Qe3 Qg6 37.h3 a5 38.Kh2 b6 39.Qf2 Qg5 40.Nf5 f6 41.h4 Qh5 42.Qg3 g6 43.Ng7 Qxe2 44.Nxe8 Kf7 45.Nc7 Bc6 46.e6+ Ke7 47.Qxg6 Kd8 48.Qg7 Kc8 49.e7 Qe5+ 50.Kg1 Qe1+ 51.Kh2 Qxh4+ 52.Kg1 Qe1+ 53.Kh2 Qe5+ 54.Kh1 Qxc7 55.Qf8+ Kb7 56.e8=Q Bxe8 57.Qxe8 Qh7 58.Qe6 Qb1+ 59.Kh2 Qxb2 60.Qd7+ Kb8 61.Qd8+ Ka7 62.Qd7+ 1/2-1/2

IPCCC 2005 b
IPCCC 2005 b, Round 7, Ikarus - Rybka [Event "15th IPCCC 2005"] [Site "Paderborn GER"] [Date "2005.12.30"] [Round "7"] [White "Ikarus"] [Black "Rybka"] [Result "0-1"]

1.e4 Nc6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Nf3 e6 5.Bd3 Nge7 6.Bg5 Be4 7.c3 h6 8.Bxe7 Bxe7 9.Bxe4 dxe4 10.Nfd2 Qd7 11.Nxe4 O-O-O 12.Qe2 f6 13.f4 f5 14.Nf2 g5 15.O-O Rhg8 16.Kh1 g4 17.Nd1 h5 18.Nd2 h4 19.Ne3 h3 20.gxh3 gxh3 21.Rf3 Rh8 22.Qf1 Bf8 23.Rxh3 Bh6 24.Qf3 Ne7 25.Rg1 Kb8 26.Rg2 Qa4 27.Rh5 Qxa2 28.Qh3 Ng8 29.Ndf1 c6 30.Rg6 Re8 31.Rgxh6 Nxh6 32.Rxh6 Rhg8 33.Qh5 Qxb2 34.Qf7 Qxc3 35.Rxe6 Ref8 36.Qe7 Qxd4 37.Qd6+ Qxd6 38.Rxd6 a5 39.Ng3 Rd8 40.Ngxf5 a4 41.Nc2 Kc7 42.Rxd8 Rxd8 43.Nd6 Ra8 44.Kg2 a3 45.h3 a2 46.f5 Ra5 47.f6 Kd7 48.f7 Ke7 49.e6 Re5 50.Kf3 b5 51.Ne4 b4 52.Na1 Rxe6 53.Kf4 Rg6 54.Nb3 Rh6 55.Nec5 Rh5 56.Nd3 c5 57.Nf2 c4 0-1

WCCC 2006
WCCC 2006: Jaap van den Herik awards the Blitz trophy to Munjong Kolss of Ikarus

=Forum Posts=
 * Re: Ikarus in CCT6 by Munjong Kolss, CCC, February 07, 2005
 * Ikarus at CCT7 by Munjong Kolss, CCC, February 14, 2005
 * Re: Ikarus, FastMM4 and Delphi 2005? by Munjong Kolss, CCC, November 22, 2005

=External Links=

Engine

 * Ikarus (chess) from Wikipedia
 * Ikarus' ICGA Tournaments
 * The chess games of Ikarus from chessgames.com
 * Young Talents from Support - ChessBase, May 28, 2000 (dead link)
 * Chess software - IKARUS from ChessBase Shop (dead link)
 * Young Talents by Schachversand Niggemann (out of production)

Misc

 * Ikarus – Wikipedia.de (German)
 * Icarus from Wikipedia
 * Icarus (disambiguation) from Wikipedia

=References= Up one Level