Pour Monsieur Plasqtique...

[Fernando]

Do you have, by chance, the sheer plastic thing called "Ivan the CONQUEROR"?
It is one of those chess comps that nobody value too much, a creation of Excalibur with a program by Ron Nelson and nevertheless....play lot stronger than you can think.
If I do not pay full attention, I mean FULL attention, it can beat me and in fact he has beaten me several times.
It is even capable of launching counterattack and not just try to parry yours. In my last defeat, as I was preparing a slow attack against is his queen side, he stormed me in my King side.
Of course I committed mistakes, but the point is he did that, to search for something extra. He has initiative, the bloody monster...


Losing even to Nelson regards
Fern

[Monsieur Plastique]

Hi Fern,

I recall I briefly had an Ivan the Conqueror (as a gift from my brother) but was not impressed with it. I recall it had a lot of serious bugs (this was one of the reasons it was gifted to me). I ended up giving it away to the son of a friend of the family who just wanted an electronic chess set to play with.

I would not be surprised at all if the Ivan the Conqueror you are playing is quite different to the one I remember. It seems that Excalibur often updated the software in their machines even under the same model name.

These days the only Excalibur I have is the Alexandra. I did buy a Grandmaster right near the end of the production run, but the international delivery (eBay USA purchase) did no favours to the machine and it had a faultly reed switch upon delivery. Trying to replace a reed switch in a Grandmaster is almost impossible - it is easy enough to replace it, but putting the unit back together again is a nightmare - even the factory appeared to have problems building them brand new, as is evidenced by cracks in the masonite baseboards on stock fresh from the factory.

In a nutshell, when it came to Excalibur, my experience has been that the programs are very buggy (though less so as time went on) or otherwise the build quality / design of the units is very poor. The Grandmaster, for example, has all the structural integrity of a pizza box.

It's for that reason that I stuck with the smaller plastic tabletops, and by the time my Grandmaster became useless after an attempted repair, the Alexandra was the only new unit Excalibur were selling, apart from the Phantom which I understand had the same program anyway.

I notice that the chess store of which I have been a customer for several decades still has brand new Ivan II machines sitting on the shelves. I am told that these are extremely buggy as well, unfortunately.

[IA]

Hi Fernando, I think the program you need is a play game style more positional, with these programs you will more easily be able to make approaches to attack, to do nothing better than machines ( Ed Schröder And July Kaplan ) What machine of Frans Morsch, D Kittinger and Johan de Koning They're too strong tactically and Richard Lang went really penalize the minimum tactical error, in case you'd get a machine with a processor slower than Risc and me to play very well to positional level as machine of Ed Schroder, a machine like Mephisto Milano or the Mephisto Super Mondial II (Academy) would be great.

If seeking fun and blood on the chessboard the Novag Turquoise (Emerald Classic Plus ...) are perfect but too tactical.

Regards.

[Fernando]

Hi Fern,

I recall I briefly had an Ivan the Conqueror (as a gift from my brother) but was not impressed with it. I recall it had a lot of serious bugs (this was one of the reasons it was gifted to me). I ended up giving it away to the son of a friend of the family who just wanted an electronic chess set to play with.

I would not be surprised at all if the Ivan the Conqueror you are playing is quite different to the one I remember. It seems that Excalibur often updated the software in their machines even under the same model name.

These days the only Excalibur I have is the Alexandra. I did buy a Grandmaster right near the end of the production run, but the international delivery (eBay USA purchase) did no favours to the machine and it had a faultly reed switch upon delivery. Trying to replace a reed switch in a Grandmaster is almost impossible - it is easy enough to replace it, but putting the unit back together again is a nightmare - even the factory appeared to have problems building them brand new, as is evidenced by cracks in the masonite baseboards on stock fresh from the factory.

In a nutshell, when it came to Excalibur, my experience has been that the programs are very buggy (though less so as time went on) or otherwise the build quality / design of the units is very poor. The Grandmaster, for example, has all the structural integrity of a pizza box.

It's for that reason that I stuck with the smaller plastic tabletops, and by the time my Grandmaster became useless after an attempted repair, the Alexandra was the only new unit Excalibur were selling, apart from the Phantom which I understand had the same program anyway.

I notice that the chess store of which I have been a customer for several decades still has brand new Ivan II machines sitting on the shelves. I am told that these are extremely buggy as well, unfortunately.

I have been lucky. Never a computer ogf any brand has given me problems.
The Ivan I have is the Ivan II, also named Conqueror. No bugs in his game, very strong.
Probably I got one of the best bash.

Fern

[Fernando]

Hi Fernando, I think the program you need is a play game style more positional, with these programs you will more easily be able to make approaches to attack, to do nothing better than machines ( Ed Schröder And July Kaplan ) What machine of Frans Morsch, D Kittinger and Johan de Koning They're too strong tactically and Richard Lang went really penalize the minimum tactical error, in case you'd get a machine with a processor slower than Risc and me to play very well to positional level as machine of Ed Schroder, a machine like Mephisto Milano or the Mephisto Super Mondial II (Academy) would be great.

If seeking fun and blood on the chessboard the Novag Turquoise (Emerald Classic Plus ...) are perfect but too tactical.

Regards.

Well, I have no problems with being defeated, provided the game was exiting. So I play all kinds of them.
Last night I played a long long gamer with Ivan until move 73, which I lost as much I was really tired and I lose a pawn and all was over in spite of my swindles to rec0ver.
I enjoyed it a lot.

Fern

[Monsieur Plastique]

The Ivan I have is the Ivan II, also named Conqueror. No bugs in his game, very strong.
Probably I got one of the best bash.

Fern

There is definitely a big difference between the original Ivan and Ivan II. I also suspect that there were numerous software revisions of the program during each new production run (I suspect this to be the case with many Excalibur machines). That would certainly explain why your machine is a "good" one.

The problem is that no one can really be sure if they go to buy one which versions they will actually end up with. It seems that people cannot agree with what hardware is under the bonnet of these things as well (different sources quote different clock speeds of the same Excalibur model), meaning there were probably subtle hardware and software revisions as time went on.

[Fernando]

The Ivan I have is the Ivan II, also named Conqueror. No bugs in his game, very strong.
Probably I got one of the best bash.

Fern

There is definitely a big difference between the original Ivan and Ivan II. I also suspect that there were numerous software revisions of the program during each new production run (I suspect this to be the case with many Excalibur machines). That would certainly explain why your machine is a "good" one.

The problem is that no one can really be sure if they go to buy one which versions they will actually end up with. It seems that people cannot agree with what hardware is under the bonnet of these things as well (different sources quote different clock speeds of the same Excalibur model), meaning there were probably subtle hardware and software revisions as time went on.

If you are interest in getting a good one, I can send you all the specifications that appears in my unit, in ticket in the backside.