Houdini 2 Aquarium is a revolutionary analysis, database and chess publishing tool, combined with the world’s strongest chess playing engine, Houdini 2.

Houdini 2: The World’s strongest chess program (current CCRL rating is 3347), which supports up to 6 cores and 4 GB of hash. You can connect Houdini 2 UCI engine to  Aquarium, Fritz, ChessBase, etc.

Houdini 2 Aquarium offers advanced analysis functions, game commenting, searching, powerful chess trees, playing against the computer, databases, advanced publishing features and much more.

Houdini 2 Aquarium includes 1 year membership at  Playing Zone 1 Year membership at  Playing Zone provides you with full membership rights, including tournament participation, lecture creation and shared analysis of games.

Short description:

Houdini 2 is rating lists leader. Houdini 2 can be also used in Fritz and other chess programs
Analyze and annotate your games with Aquarium's advanced analysis methods
The databases of 5.1 million games in total (before October 1, 2011) that can be updated each week with 2000 new games.
Powerful and fast chess trees
Playing against the computer
Publish your chess text: Print, word processor or web
Supports Chessbase/Fritz CBH format (read and convert), Chess Assistant CDP, PGN and EPD databases
One year of free membership at Playing Zone.
Full Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit) and Vista compatibility.
Language versions: English, German, Spanish, Italian and French versions are available.

System requirements: PC, 256 MB RAM, 4GB of free disk space, Windows 7/XP/Vista.

Aquarium is a modern graphical user interface (GUI) designed for Houdini with full support for its features, including randomizer matches, persistent hash and sampled search.

Analysis methods

• New Interactive Deep Analysis (IDeA) – a new and advanced approach to analysis:
  • Simultaneous analysis by multiple Rybka instances. Use 2, 4, 10, 20 or even 50 chess engines at the same time for faster results
  • Use the power of multiple computers for analysis at the same time and collect all the results automatically on your own computer
  • Use the computers on your home network or connect to computers over the internet to increase the analysis power
• Variable multi-variation analysis (evaluation limited)
• Infinite Analysis is more flexible than ever with analysis presets. Use many engines at the same time, all analyzing the same position or different games.
• Game Analysis
• Find Blunders
• Batch analysis of selected positions

Play against computer

• Play chess against the computer (any installed engine) from any position with flexible time controls
• Tournament or Fun mode with hints and drawbacks
• Automatic rating calculation
• Material handicaps and rating handicaps (ELO 700-2400) with rating based opening book
• Chess960/Fischerandom games
• Blindfold and semi-blindfold games

Openings books and trees

• State of the art chess trees (fast, powerful, compact)
• Advanced opening book creation and modification
• Fast and flexible move coloring system
• User defined move color priority (play only experimental moves where available etc.)
• Combine several trees into one tree configuration for unprecedented flexibility
• Use a discarded moves tree to mask certain moves or opening systems from being played
• Multiple, reusable discarded moves trees
• Add comments to trees – even visual annotations
• Build trees from a list of games

Databases

• A database with over 5,100,000 games
• Very fast searches.
• An opening book for chess engines
• A special rating handicap opening book for playing against the computer

Internet accessible data

• On-line access to Nalimov endgame tablebases (3-6 pieces)
• Free online play
• Free Internet chess server access
• Chess Resource Server
• A new approach to program and database updates
• Automatic program updates
• Automatic database updates
• Updates to other Aquarium related data

User data exchange

• iBooks
• A powerful system for publishing chess texts in print and on the web
• Suitable for short texts (e.g. for a blog entry) as well as books containing hundreds of pages
• Images, diagrams (both full and partial), visual annotations
• Full flexibility in arranging order of pages, sections etc. until the document is published
• Printing and web publishing
• Print one or more games with annotations
• Publish games on the web with JavaScript replay option
• Blog export with support for Blogger.com

Chess Engines

• Chess engine support: Universal Chess Interface (UCI) protocol, WinBoard protocol
• There are hundreds of free and commercial chess engines are available and can be easily managed within Aquarium
• Install all engines from a selected directory with the click of a button
• Various engine tournaments and matches capabilities:
  • Round robin and Swiss system tournaments
  • Blitz, Tournament, Time/move and fixed-depth time controls
  • Flexible opening book selection
  • User defined starting position in tournaments and matches
  • Optionally use EPD file with starting positions for matches

Compatibility

• Compatible with all recent Windows systems
• Compatible with single core/multi-core systems

See Screenshots >>>