Playing games against the computer
HIARCS Chess Explorer has a special mode for playing games against the computer.
You can access this mode by clicking the Play game
toolbar icon or from the Play->New game...
menu item.
To read more about how to start a game against the computer and configure the type of game you wish to
play please read the Play game section.
Play Realism
HIARCS chess engines use new play realism capabilities which give a much more realistic human like feel
to the play of the weaker set Elo opponents in the HIARCS chess engine. In particular it tries to produce the
same sorts of mistakes and common moves that weaker players are prone to. This enables you to get
genuinely useful practice against our handicap opponents as they will challenge you very much like a
human player of that strength while making similar mistakes to players of that strength. In addition it
matches the opening book moves to the playing strength and even forgets its book moves or mixes up move
orders to simulate real play.
View previous games played against computer
HIARCS Chess Explorer saves all the games you play against the computer unless you explicitly tell it to
abandon a game and not save it. You can access all the games you have played in the special
PlayedGames database simply by selecting the Play->View played games menu item:
This will automatically open a new database tab for the PlayedGames PGN database and display all the
games played in the Games Explorer pane at the bottom of the window.
Creating a database
A PGN database represents a collection of games. You can use a PGN database to organise games.
Please see the section on creating a PGN database for details.
It is beneficial to organise games into databases so you can utilise the powerful features of HIARCS Chess
Explorer.
Managing my games
To manage your games we recommend you maintain a PGN database of your games - don't store the
games of other players in this database. This will enable you to use the Opening Explorer feature on this
database to give you a live opening repertoire tree of your games. This is a powerful way to view your
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