Rybka 3 Aquarium is now available. The June and July columns give a glimpse into some of the capabilities of this new software, and in April and May I interviewed the developers of both Rybka 3 and Rybka Aquarium. It’s still early in its release, but it’s already clear that Rybka 3 is a huge step forward from the previous version, both in playing strength and functionality.

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By Mark Donlan The beta version of the computer chess engine Rybka (which means “little fish” in Russian) was released in 2005 and it was quickly apparent that it would be a contender as the strongest chess engine in the world. By 2006 it had a rating of 3000, surpassing other engines by as many as 200 points, and in 2007 it became the 15th ICGA World Computer Chess Champion. Since then Rybka has had high-profile odds matches against a number of noted players. It won 4½-1½ against GM Jaan Ehlvest in 2007 and 6-2 against GM Joel Benjamin in a 2008 match in which Benjamin had white in every game and draws were counted as wins for him. Most recently, Rybka, ceding pawn and move in each game, scored 4-4 against GM Roman Dzindzichashvili.

Rybka 3 now has an estimated rating of 3150. All that Rybka lacked was an interface to call its own, but now a graphical user interface (GUI) has been designed for Rybka by developers Victor Zakharov and Pete Lupherenko. Rybka Aquarium is designed to take advantage of the full power of Rybka 3.

The interface is based on the Fluent design, which was first introduced by Microsoft in Office 2007. The first thing you will notice is that all menus and toolbars have been replaced with a single container that organizes Aquarium’s full feature set into a series of tabs. This container is known as the “Ribbon”.

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Chess Assistant 10 is a fast and powerful chess database that is equipped with an array of tools to assist active and improving players. This month I’ll look at some of the methods offered by Chess Assistant for infinite analysis and examine two of them in detail. Many readers probably think of infinite analysis as pushing a button and watching a chess engine search for the best line of play, but as you will see Chess Assistant has taken this simple concept and turned it into a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding a position.

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Last month we examined Interactive Deep Analysis (IDeA) in Rybka Aquarium. This month we’ll look at its infinite analysis function. Infinite analysis is perhaps the oldest and most widely used analysis method with chess software, and over the years many chess players have perfected their ways of utilizing it. You might think that with its long history and a multitude of different implementations there wasn’t much room for improvement. Well, the developers of Aquarium clearly thought otherwise, as you will see.

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We have heard from the developers of both Rybka 3 (see last month’s column) and Rybka Aquarium, the new Rybka user interface (see the April column). Now it’s time to get a sneak preview of what Aquarium is capable of. We’ll only examine one of it’s many interesting features, but it’s a feature that will be of great help for the serious chess player.

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In last month’s ChessOK Cafe I interviewed the developers of Rybka Aquarium, a new graphical user interface (GUI) for Rybka that is expected to be released soon. This month we’ll be talking to Vasik Rajlich and Larry Kaufman – the brains behind Rybka itself. They are currently working on a completely new version, Rybka 3, which has been in development for almost a year. Rybka has been by far the strongest chess playing engine ever since Vasik released the first beta version and distributed it for free in December 2005. Rybka 3 will not only offer increased playing strength greater chess knowledge compared to Rybka 2.3.2a, but also new features such as FischerRandom chess (Chess960) and “persistent hash”.

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Besides the constant flow of improved chess playing engines, there hasn’t been any really big news on the chess software front in recent years – but that is about to change.

The last major news was when Rybka burst onto the scene in December 2005 and since then she has outclassed all other chess engines. Nevertheless, there has been one piece missing from her otherwise perfect world – she hasn’t had her own place to live, so to speak. But now ChessOK (formerly known as Convekta) is preparing to release a new and modern chess GUI that is fit for a champion and will finally make Rybka feel at home, as we learn from an interview with two of the developers, Victor Zakharov and Pete Lupherenko.

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A modern cellular handset is much more than a telephone, and many of them are even powerful enough to play a good game of chess. Chess Champion for Symbian is a chess playing program for mobiles that also comes with game database functionality and allows you to play chess over a wireless Bluetooth connection. As the name of the program indicates, it requires a handset equipped with a Symbian OS (http://www.symbian.com) with Series 60 user interface. More specifically, you need a smartphone based on Series 60 3rd Edition (Symbian 9.x) or Series 60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 3 (Symbian 8.1). The screenshots in this article are from a Nokia 6120.

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