fantastic game!!!

A useless waste, eh?  Here! Take this free gift :P

I fear the day people start playing at a 3500 level..

Mindless, as well.  The OP posts to himself.  Go figure.

Chess in itself is useless, Go jump in a lake, pfren :P

Thanks, I enjoy these games a lot. 

As do I... seems that some people don't find a point to it, but what do they know. XD

the purpose of this game is the same reason why people study grandmaster games.. Are you saying that's useless also?

Not just one game... I've played approximately fifty for this topic! 

1.h4 2.Nh3, not Rh3

Ohh. Sorry about that one, I missed it! I'll get to that one, too.

Well, the Fried Liver was a match that, in my eyes, proves Houdini's not just a chess engine, but a brilliant one. It allows its opponent to strive for a material advantage, and then regains the material by almost tearing Black's King off the board. It looks a lot like what happened when the beast played through the Muzio Gambit, earlier in this forum post!

And, upon request, 1. h4 e5 2. Nh3.

Houdini starts looking for a kingside attack, and Dragon obligingly castles kingside... throwing itself happily into the flames! It rarely found the correct defenses, and played inferior moves that allowed the beast's attack to become even stronger. Dragon didn't help itself at all by exchanging its Queen for a Rook (which was captured later for free) and a Knight.........

Next up is Critter 1.4, which, strangely enough, is rated higher than Critter 1.6. The two opponents seem to play more cautiously than normal, forcing the game into quiet lines. This works to Black's advantage, and Critter, like Stockfish, obtained good results. Unfortunately, Critter did not possess the same spirit that Stockfish demonstrated, and settled for a draw after a boring midgame.

And, finally, a game against Komodo, Houdini's strongest competitor. Komodo is regarded as a very good positional player, and is currently rated at 2982. 

As for the game itself:
Komodo made a speculative sacrifice, a highly unusual idea for a chess program! At the time, both players had decided that the best outcome from it was a draw... but then Komodo saw that Houdini had apparently made a mistake in its defense! It played a variation that forced White to give back material, and both players' opinions changed back and forth, from drawn to lost for White to drawn . . . Houdini then gave the piece back for a perpetual check, and that finished matters. This is probably the strongest game played so far, in the entirety of this post.

              Houdini 1.5a (3017) vs. Komodo 3 (2982) 

Houdini has now played against several different chess engines using the King's Gambit, some of which were in the top 10 of the IPON rating list. It scored a win against everyone but its 3 best opponents, who scored two draws and a win against Houdini. Compared to Houdini's usual results, it is fairly safe to assume the opening is at fault -- but note that even then, it took some very strong playing to defeat the beast. 

what time control have you been giving them?

Six seconds per move. I've considered increasing it to thirty, though.

Try the Allgaier Gambit, a variation of the King's Gambit. It it supposedly  unsound but I would like to see if it really is.

Okay!

Engines do not play speculative sacrifices, period. They're all about calculating. More likely the sac appeared to be speculative to lower-rated human observers.