"Spike is the first Computerchess World Champion in Chess960 [aka FischerRandom Chess]!"

Spike homepage:

http://spike.lazypics.de/index_en.h...

Account of the Chess960 victory in Mainz (Aug 2005):

http://spike.lazypics.de/mainz2005_...

Download site for the different version of the Spike UCI engine (which you should be able to run in Shredder (Computer) , Fritz (Computer) (or any of the Chessbase interfaces), Chessmaster (Computer) , or Winboard. Simply see your program's "Help" listing for 'UCI engines');("Version 1.0a Mainz" of Spike was used in the Chess960 contest):

http://spike.lazypics.de/dl_index_e...

And clearly judging from the results above, Spike can hold its own in traditional Chess against many of the strongest engines!

Incidentally, here is our own Fischerandom Chess Generator .

Please also feel free to peruse my own curious Chess site, with many links on Computer Chess and many other Chess topics (simply scroll down in the rightmost column and start clicking!):

http://www.bbbbbb.org/

Incidentally, in the Charlie Brown / Peanuts comics, "Spike" was the name of "the loner brother of Snoopy that lives out in the desert near Needles, California."

http://home.att.net/~its.spike/spike/

Actually, the dog upon which the Snoopy character was based was Charles M. Schulz's childhood/family pet named "Spike":

http://schulzmuseum.org/timeline.html

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

Just look at the positional bind that Spike creates in the following diagram.

Position after 30 ... b6:

click for larger view

Exactly how is Black going to develop his heavy pieces off of the back rank, with the nearly permanent mate threat to d8? And look at the -monstrous- power of Spike's unopposed dark-squared f6-bishop!

Spike's positional bind is great, and more importantly Spike's -understanding- of this bind leads it to giving an evaluation of this position of +5.96. That is, although materially -down- a pawn for the exchange, Spike believes that it is winning by more than a whole rook!

A simply outstanding performance by Spike. Chess engines have come a long way from the days of pawn-grabbing when an engine evaluates a position with a slight material deficit as winning by more than a rook.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 Bc5 5. Be3 Qf6 6. c3 Nge7 7. Bc4 Ne5 8. Be2 d6 9. O-O Qg6 10. Re1 Bh3 11. Bf1 Bg4 12. Be2 O-O-O 13. Nd2 Bh3 14. Bf1 Bg4 15. Be2 Bh3 16. Bf1 Bg4 17. Be2 Game drawn by repetition 1/2-1/2

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 Bc5 5. Be3 Qf6 6. c3 Nge7 7. Bc4 Ne5 8. Be2 d6 9. O-O Qg6 10. Re1 Bh3 11. Bf1 Bg4 12. Be2 Bh3 13. Bf1 Bg4 14. Be2 Bh3 Game drawn by repetition 1/2-1/2