PART 1 • The gorilla in the corner
game. A few months later, in August, Kasparov lost to another commercial program( called Chess Genius), again running on a Pentium computer, this time at a time control of game in twenty-five minutes, in an Intelsponsored tournament in London.
The writing seemed to be on the wall for Garry Kasparov, but these games spurred a huge public interest in computer chess. Programming teams rushed to get chess playing computer programs onto the commercial market.
SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF HOME COMPUTER CHESS THROUGH 1998
During the years 1995 through 1998 an amazing number of chess programs became available for purchase in software shops and“ big box” department stores. It wasn ' t hard for interested consumers to find a chess program; the toughest job was to pick one.
Here are some advances and highlights from the home computer chess scene in the 1980 ' s and 1990 ' s( adapted and edited from a CD I wrote about computer chess in 2002):
Early 1980 ' s: Interplay released Battle Chess, one of the most famous chess programs to ever hit the market. When one piece captured another an animated battle would occur between the two, with the captured piece as the loser. Battle Chess was immensely popular, as it was reminiscent of the Millenium Falcon ' s chess-like holographic Dejarik game featured in Star Wars Episode IV. The problem with Battle Chess was that it took an eternity to finish a game because of the animations. Regardless, it was a huge seller and is often the first thing many people mention when they hear the phrase“ computer chess”.
1991: Chessmaster 3000 introduced“ natural language advice” of a fairly rudimentary sort:“ If White takes on c2, Black replies with a capture on c2, and White replies with a check on g5, White will be ahead.” Although this was just computer generated analysis tarted up with a few stock phrases, the illusion of“ plain English” advice from a computer was impressive and drove quite a few sales.
1992: ChessBase University was a series of instructional chess courses which were not“ standalones” but were run as add-ons to ChessBase ' s Knightstalker / Fritz playing programs. The idea was to use the inherently
31 chessking. com