Zappa (chess)

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Zappa (Zap!Chess) is a chess engine written by Anthony Cozzie, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The program emphasizes sound search and a good use of multiple processors.

Zappa scored an upset victory at the World Computer Chess Championship in August, 2005, in Reykjavík, Iceland. Zappa won with a score of 10.5 out of 11, and beat both Deep Junior and Shredder, programs that had won the championship many times. In the speed chess portion of the tournament Zappa placed second, after Shredder. Zappa's other tournament successes include winning CCT7 on the Internet Chess Club (ICC) and defeating Grandmaster Jaan Ehlvest 3-1.

Earlier versions of Zappa are free (though not open-source software). The current version (2.0) is available via the ChessBase site that also sells many other leading chess programs including Deep Junior, Shredder and Fritz.

Zap!Chess is available online[1]