Developers:
The winner of 2006 Computer Chess World Championship, Junior is a chess program, which has been developed by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky, two renowned Israeli software engineers. They were assisted by Boris Alterman, a Grandmaster, who helped them with the opening book. The creators of Junior have not developed it for beating other chess programs. They claim to have done it for better understanding of the game as they went ahead to say, “Junior is an instrument that enables human beings to gain new insights and understanding in the game of chess”.
Features:
Junior is unique in many ways especially the way it counts its moves. It has come to the limelight for its search strategies and evaluation function. The program counts a conventional move as two moves and an interesting one as a single move. It plays the moves very meticulously and does so against the weaknesses of the opponents. Its dynamic play has impressed chess lovers all over the world. Its attacking style of playing has introduced the chess world to new quality of computer chess. The later version of Junior was Deep Junior, which was known to be the most challenging programs of its time. It was the world’s first commercial program, which launched for machines with two or more processors. Deep Junior is known for its ability to divide its task efficiently as with increase in the number of processors, speed of the software increases.
Participation:
Junior was introduced to the chess world in the year 1995 world championship, which it tied with Frenchchess and Deep Blue prototype for the third place. It also has won the World Micro Computer Championship title in the year 1997 on November, which was held in Paris. It again won the World Micro Computer Championship in the year 2001. It also won the World Computer Chess Championship in the year 2002, 2004, and 2006. Deep Junior won the Microcomputer World Championship in the year 1997. It also won the Cadaques 2000 tournament to become the world’s leading program. |
