PART 1 • Some highlights of home computer chess through 1998
1998: Chessmaster 6000 took a huge leap forward in “user friendliness”
by lifting a page from the proverbial book of competing programs like
Power Chess and Hoyle Board Games when it offered a bevy of “characters” to play against. But unlike the other programs which offered a dozen
or so characters (including “over the top” personalities like dinosaurs and
robots), CM 6000 offered sixty different characters as opponents, each
with a photo, short biography, approximate rating, and capsule description of his/her chess preferences and tendencies. It was very much like
having a large “virtual chess club” on your computer, as the players' ratings ranged from complete beginners to grandmaster levels.
The software-buying public seemed to have an insatiable appetite for
chess programs throughout the 1990's. It was more a matter of fact than
a matter of faith that if a computer user owned one chess program, he
or she would own several. In addition to dozens of “mass market” programs, sold in software stores and department stores, there were numerous “specialty” chess programs marketed to the “serious” (e.g. club and
tournament) chess player. While light on the tutorial features of mass-market software, these high-end programs were laden with features geared
toward everyone from the weekend warrior tournament player to professional masters and grandmasters: these included opening book editors,
database features, analysis and annotation tools, and “modular” engines
(which allowed multiple engines to simultaneously analyze positions). The
programs were correspondingly more expensive: software like Chess Genius, Fritz, Hiarcs, and Zarkov typically cost over a hundred dollars each
(compared to the mass market offerings which typically sported price
tags in the $15 to $20 range).
As I said earlier, the toughest chore for a potential buyer of a chess
program was choosing one. That would change in a few short years after
a couple of new developments at the top levels...
HUMANS MEET THEIR MATCH
Although chess engines running on high end home computer hardware
had been able to defeat all but the world's top echelon of chess players
for a couple of years by the start of 1996 (and, even on average hardware,
had been able to defeat club players for even longer), many human
players held it as an article of faith that a computer program would never
be able to defeat a world champion.
Early in 1996, Garry Kasparov once again met his silicon nemesis, now
rechristened Deep Blue (since “Big Blue” [IBM] was now sponsoring the
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