PART 2 • Your chess quests
To get more information about a quest, roll the mouse cursor
over the quest's button and look at the description panel near
the lower left corner of the screen. For example, you see this
when you roll the cursor over the box for the very first quest:
• We see that the quest involves playing with the White Queen and a pair
of Rooks against the opponent's Black King. The quest hasn't been
played before, so there are no statistics for a prior attempt (instead it
just reads “None”).
• There's also an approximate rating (given in Elo points, which we'll
learn more about later), letting you know about how tough it'll be to beat
your computer opponent, Houdini 4. In this case we see that the rating
is “100”, which isn't very tough at all. (As an approximate gauge, any
rating under 1200 is considered to be beginner level, a rating of 1500
or so is considered an average player, a rating of 2200 indicates chess
mastery, and chess grandmasters are rated 2500 and higher. Only a
handful of players have topped the 2800 level; the highest official chess
rating ever recorded [as of this writing] was 2851, achieved by Garry
Kasparov.)
A PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN: It's very important to point out that
in Quest Mode, Houdini 4 will always play at full strength! The Elo value
shown in the description panel is based on the material advantage
which you'll enjoy against Houdini, not on some internal “handicap”
mechanism which “dumbs down” Houdini's chess playing skills. This
isn't terribly crucial when playing lower level quests; for example,
games in which Houdini only has a King aren't able to be won by the
computer anyway. But in higher level quests (as early as Level 10 or
12, depending on the player), you'll find that a quest you initially think
is “easy” when you first see the starting position turns out to be far
tougher than you thought!
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