Born November 1942, educated at Manchester Grammar School. He passed the entrance exams as a 10-year-old, his admitted laziness as a teenager, and a preference for sporting pursuits, meant that he was something of an under-achiever. Eric's first career was in insurance. He managed to pass exams there but, after becoming an 'inspector' and also doing some University lecturing on insurance, left to be involved in full-time Christian Ministry.
Eric
is married to Christine (Chrispy). The couple have no children, but have always
had a German Shepherd. Their present one is Sky, now five years old, whom they
obtained from a German Shepherd Rescue Centre. Sky is a blonde bombshell!
In the early 1980's Eric started teaching himself about computers, particularly in the field of chess-playing machines. Those were the early days when the best you could get were computers like the old Fidelity Sensory8 or Morphy Encore, for which the advertised strength claims were well over the top. "Sometimes I think the gradings we show in 1999 remain a little optimistic," he says, "but I think we're nearer the 2500-2600 figures claimed today than we were to the 1800 figures claimed back then!"
Eric published the first issue of his computer chess magazine Selective search in 1985.
The
cooperation with Mark
Uniacke and the Hiarcs program led to a remarkable openings book produced
by Eric Hallsworth for the British program. The Hiarcs book is carefully optimised
for the playing style and strength of the program.
The openings book on the Hiarcs8 CD was generated by merging the original tournament
book of Eric Hallsworth with a big collection of historic and modern master
games. This broad book is great for training and fun. However the master games
contain and enable many inferior lines which Hiarcs should not play according
to its tournament book.
To get optimum playing strength out of Hiarcs8 you should always use the pure
tournament book, which consists entirely of variations compiled by Eric Hallsworth.
This book is available at the ChessBase
download section.
This is how to install the book:
1. Create an empty openings book by calling Menu File -> New -> Openings
book.
2. Call Menu Edit -> Book -> Import old book and select "H8.hbk".
The importing process will take a few minutes at most.
