Mirage

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Mirage, a chess program by Vladimir Rybinkin and Yuri Shpeer written in 8086 Assembly to run under MS-DOS on PCs, famous for its at times discontinuous, possibly fractional depth increments in iterative deepening. During the mid 90s, Mirage was some years commercial, and later became freeware. In the late 90s some code units from Mirage were incorporated into Centaur by Victor Vikhrev and Alexey Manjakhin, which further evolved to the Dragon analysis engine of Convekta's Chess Assistant database. Mirage was further incorporated inside a Russian dedicated chess computer Debut-M with K1810BM86 processor.

=Tournament Play= Mirage was quite active in the 90s, and played the WCCC 1992, the WMCCC 1993 and the WMCCC 1995, further Don Beal's UPCCC 1993 and UPCCC 1994, and four Aegon Tournaments from 1994 to 1997.

=Screenshot= Mirage 2.07 under DOSBox

=Selected Games=

WMCCC 1993
WMCCC 1993, round 7, Mirage - Ulysses [Event "WMCCC 1993"] [Site "Munich, Germany"] [Date "1993.11.05"] [Round "7"] [White "Mirage"] [Black "Ulysses"] [Result "1-0"]

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg4 Qc7 8.Qxg7 Rg8 9.Qxh7 cxd4 10.Ne2 Nbc6 11.f4 Bd7 12.Qd3 dxc3 13.Ng3 O-O-O 14.Be2 Nf5 15.Nxf5 exf5 16.O-O d4 17.Bf3 Be6 18.Rb1 Ba2 19.Qxf5+ Kb8 20.Ra1 Ne7 21.Qe4 Bd5 22.Qe1 Bxf3 23.Rxf3 Qb6 24.Rd3 Rg7 25.a4 Rdg8 26.g3 Nf5 27.Qe4 Qe6 28.Ba3 Rc8 29.a5 Rc6 30.Rb1 Qd7 31.Bb4 Rgg6 32.a6 Rxa6 33.Bxc3 Ra3 34.Rbd1 Rc6 35.Bxd4 Rxd3 36.Rxd3 Qc8 37.c3 Rc4 38.Rd1 Nxd4 39.cxd4 Rc2 40.d5 Qc5+ 41.Qd4 Qxd4+ 42.Rxd4 Rc1+ 43.Kg2 Rc2+ 44.Kh3 Kc7 45.f5 Rf2 46.g4 Rf3+ 47.Kh4 Kd8 48.e6 Ke8 49.Kg5 fxe6 50.dxe6 Re3 51.Kf6 b5 52.g5 1-0

Aegon 1997
Aegon 1997 round 1, Mirage operated by Vladimir Rybinkin vs. Sofia Polgar before 28... Nxe5 [Event "Aegon 1997"] [Site "The Hague NED"] [Date "1997.04.16"] [Round "01"] [White "Mirage"] [Black "Sofia Polgar"] [Result "0-1"]

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Bc5 5.Be3 Qf6 6.c3 Nge7 7.Bc4 Ne5 8.Be2 Qg6 9.O-O O-O 10.Nd2 d5 11.Kh1 Ng4 12.Bxg4 Bxg4 13.f3 Bxd4 14.cxd4 Be6 15.Qa4 a5 16.Qb5 b6 17.Rfc1 Rac8 18.Bf4 Qf6 19.Be5 Qh6 20.Qe2 dxe4 21.fxe4 c6 22.Rc3 Ng6 23.Nf3 Rfe8 24.Qc2 Bd7 25.Qb3 b5 26.a4 bxa4 27.Rxa4 c5 28.Rxa5 Nxe5 29.dxe5 Be6 30.Qc2 c4 31.Rca3 Red8 32.Ra6 Qf4 33.g3 Qg4 34.Rd6 Rxd6 35.exd6 c3 36.Nd4 cxb2 37.Nxe6 Qxe6 38.Qxb2 Qxe4+ 39.Kg1 Qe1+ 40.Kg2 Qe4+ 41.Kg1 Qd5 42.Ra1 Qxd6 43.Re1 Qc5+ 44.Qf2 Qd5 45.Qc2 Qd4+ 46.Kh1 Qd7 47.Qe4 h5 48.Qf3 g6 49.Kg2 Kg7 50.h3 Rc6 51.Qe3 Qd5+ 52.Kh2 Kh7 53.Re2 Rf6 54.Qe4 Qd1 55.Qg2 h4 56.gxh4 Rf1 57.Qe4 Rf5 58.Qg2 Qd4 59.Qe4 Qd6+ 60.Kg2 Rf4 61.Qe7 Qd5+ 62.Kh2 Rf3 63.Qg5 Qd3 64.Qg2 Qd6+ 65.Kh1 Qd1+ 66.Kh2 Qd6+ 67.Kh1 Rg3 68.Qf1 Qc6+ 69.Kh2 Qc7 70.Re7 Rxh3+ 71.Kxh3 Qxe7 72.Qd3 Qe6+ 73.Kg3 Qe5+ 74.Kg2 Qf4 75.Qd8 Kg7 76.Qe7 Kh6 77.Kh3 Qf3+ 78.Kh2 Kg7 79.Kg1 Qg3+ 80.Kf1 Qf3+ 81.Kg1 Qf6 82.Qb4 Kh6 83.Kg2 Kh5 84.Qc4 Qe6 85.Qxe6 fxe6 0-1 ... and Sofia Polgar smiling after Mirage "offered" the Queen with 45.Qc2

=Dedicated Namesakes=
 * Mephisto Mirage by Thomas Nitsche & Elmar Henne from Schachcomputer.info Wiki (German) » Mephisto (H)
 * Mephisto Mirage Modular Board Electronic Chess Computer from The Spacious Mind
 * Mephisto Module Mirage from The Spacious Mind
 * Excalibur Mirage by Ron Nelson, from Schachcomputer.info Wiki (German)
 * Excalibur Mirage from ChessComputers.org

=Forum Posts=
 * Mirage is worth a game or two...or more by Fernando Villegas, CCC, September 14, 1998
 * New Mirage by Đorđe Vidanović, CCC, January 13, 2000
 * What happened to the russian program Mirage ? by Côme, CCC, June 06, 2002
 * Mirage chess by Yuri Shpeer & Vladimir Rybinkin by ludicrous, CCC, January 23, 2003

=External Links=

Chess Engine

 * Mirage's ICGA Tournaments
 * The chess games of Mirage (Computer) from chessgames.com

Misc

 * Mirage (disambiguation) from Wikipedia
 * Mirage from Wikipedia
 * Fata Morgana (mirage) from Wikipedia
 * Fata Morgana | A Library Of Wonders And Curiosities Found In Nature And Art, Science And Literature
 * Mirage (comics) from Wikipedia
 * Mirage (Transformers) from Wikipedia
 * Mirage (aircraft) from Wikipedia
 * Mirage Portable Chess Set by Pengtao Yu » Yanko Design
 * The Billy Cobham Band - Mirage, 606 Club, BBC2, early 90s, YouTube Video
 * feat.: Randy Brecker, Gary Husband, Carl Orr, Stefan Rademacher

=References= Up one level