ZChess

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ZChess, a WinBoard compatible chess engine by Franck Zibi, written in C++, in April 2001 renamed to Pharaon. ZChess evolved from a C port of HpChess incorporating object oriented paradigms, and using a bitboard board representation and in particular rotated bitboards to generate sliding piece attacks. ZChess applies PVS with iterative deepening and aspiration windows, using a transposition table with multiple probes, pawn- and king safety hash tables, SEE for move ordering and pruning, adaptive null move pruning with R = 2, 3, and heavily prunes not only in quiescence search. Move ordering considers hash-table move, winning captures by SEE, killer heuristic, counter move heuristic, and history heuristic.

=Tournaments= ZChess had its debut at the FCCC 1997 and became runner up behind Chess Wizard at the FCCC 1998. It further participated at the WMCCC 2000 in London, the IPCCC 2001 and CCT2 online tournament, before it was renamed to Pharaon. Against humans, ZChess 1.2 played the 1999 Aubervilliers Tournament, scoring 9½/12 (one loss) with a TPR of 2300 Elo.

=Selected Games=

FCCC 1998
FCCC 1998, round 10, ZChess - Chess Guru [Event "6th French CCC"] [Site "Clichy, FRA"] [Date "1998.09.27"] [Round "10"] [White "ZChess"] [Black "Chess Guru"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "B81"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.g4 h6 7.Rg1 Be7 8.Be3 Nc6 9.Qf3 Bd7 10.O-O-O Nxd4 11.Rxd4 Qa5 12.Rd1 Bc6 13.g5 hxg5 14.Rxg5 d5 15.Rxg7 dxe4 16.Qf4 Kf8 17.Rg2 Nh5 18.Qg4 Bb4 19.Nb1 Nf6 20.Qg7+ Ke7 21.Rg5 Bd5 22.Rg6 Nh7 23.Rh6 Rag8 24.Bg5+ Ke8 25.Qe5 f6 26.Bxf6 Nxf6 27.Rxf6 Ke7 28.a3 Bc4 29.Qf4 Qh5 30.axb4 e5 31.Qxe4 Kxf6 32.Bxc4 Rd8 33.Nd2 Rd7 34.f4 Ke7 35.Bb5 Rdd8 36.Qxb7+ Kf8 37.Qc7 Qh4 38.fxe5 Rh7 39.Qc5+ Kg8 40.Rg1+ Kh8 41.e6 Qf6 42.Ne4 Qf4+ 43.Kb1 Qxe4 44.Qc3+ Qd4 45.Rd1 1-0

WMCCC 2000
WMCCC 2000, round 6, Junior - ZChess [Event "WMCCC 2000"] [Site "London, UK"] [Date "2000.08.24"] [Round "6"] [White "Junior"] [Black "ZChess"] [Result "1/2-1/2"]

1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Ng5 Ngf6 6.Bd3 e6 7.N1f3 Bd6 8.Qe2 h6 9.Ne4 Nxe4 10.Qxe4 Qc7 11.Qg4 Kf8 12.O-O c5 13.Re1 b6 14.c3 Bb7 15.h4 Rd8 16.Qh3 Bf4 17.a4 Bxc1 18.Raxc1 Qf4 19.Qg3 Qxg3 20.fxg3 Ke7 21.Bb5 a5 22.Rcd1 g5 23.d5 Nf6 24.c4 Rhg8 25.Rd2 Rd6 26.b3 Rg7 27.Rde2 Ng4 28.Nd2 Nf6 29.hxg5 hxg5 30.Nf3 Ng4 31.Re4 Nh6 32.g4 Kd8 33.R4e2 Rg6 34.Ne5 Rf6 35.Re3 exd5 36.cxd5 Rxd5 37.Nc4 Kc8 38.Re8+ Rd8 39.Rxd8+ Kxd8 40.Rd1+ Kc7 41.Rd7+ Kb8 42.Rd8+ Kc7 43.Rd7+ Kb8 1/2-1/2

=See also=
 * Pharaon
 * Z-Chess

=Forum Posts=
 * ANN : ZChess 2.0 (London) Released by Franck Zibi, CCC, September 02, 2000
 * ZChess 2.0 running the gauntlet by CLiebert, CCC, September 02, 2000
 * ZChess getting much stronger... by CLiebert, Winboard Forum, November 10, 2000
 * ZChess 2.00 (London) in concerto ! by Ruxy Sylwyka, CCC, November 17, 2012

=External Links=
 * ZChess' ICGA Tournaments (includes Pharaon)
 * Pharaon History
 * ZChess at the 1999 Aubervilliers Tournament » Aubervilliers Rapid Open 1999
 * Meet the Authors by Ed Schröder
 * Comp ZChess 1.2 chess games - 365Chess.com

=References= Up one level