confusion on first world dedicated computer chess champion

[ricard60]

On this link you can see that the fidelity chess challenger had as cpu (hardware) the Z-80A but the champion had the 6502 cpu.


http://www.schachcomputer.info/forum/f1 ... -1988.html

Confused regards
Ricardo

[LWSteve]

On this link you can see that the fidelity chess challenger had as cpu (hardware) the Z-80A but the champion had the 6502 cpu.


http://www.schachcomputer.info/forum/f1 ... -1988.html

Confused regards
Ricardo

I clicked on the link above and it said...

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /forum/f11/1980-world-micro-computer-chess-championship-revisited-1988.html on this server.

Does anybody know what this means?

LW

[ricard60]

Here is a screenshot of that link:



As you can see on place 1 was chess challenger and on the hardware is a Z80A.
But if you go down you can read Chess ChallengerX (Fidelity Champion Chess Challenger Sensory Voice).

The Champion did not had a Z80A it uses a 6502.

Confused regards
Ricardo

[IanO]

On this link you can see that the fidelity chess challenger had as cpu (hardware) the Z-80A but the champion had the 6502 cpu.


http://www.schachcomputer.info/forum/f1 ... -1988.html

Confused regards
Ricardo

The Chess Challenger entry at the 1st WMCC was indeed the Spracklens' Sargon program on a 6502, the first prototype made for Fidelity!

Quoting from the report in Personal Computer World:

Fidelity Electronics' representatives were rather coy about the Spracklens' involvement with the Chess Challenger program. However, there were three major give-aways: Fidelity's entry for the World Computer Championship in Linz listed the five programmers who I have listed in brackets on the results table [Dan & Kathe Spracklen, Ron Nelson, Frank Duason & Ed English], the program's playing style bore an uncanny resemblance to Sargon 3.0 which, in the Auto Response Board, won last year's PCW tournament, and the third point seems a clincher. All previous Challenger programs, including the brand new Sensory Voice, have used a Z80 or Z80A processor while the Championship winning program, although playing in a Sensory Voice housing used a 6502 processor, just like all the Spracklen's other recent chess programs.

So it appears that both your link and that of the ICGA at http://www.grappa.univ-lille3.fr/icga/event.php?id=23 have the wrong processor. This championship program went into the following year's Fidelity's Champion Sensory Chess Challenger.

[ricard60]

But on the back of the box of the champion it is wirtten that it has an even better program that the one from the 1st WCCC?

http://spacious-mind.com/html/champion_ ... enger.html

still confused regards
Ricardo

[Gerd Isenberg]

But on the back of the box of the champion it is wirtten that it has an even better program that the one from the 1st WCCC?

http://spacious-mind.com/html/champion_ ... enger.html

still confused regards
Ricardo

As far as I understand, Fidelity made misleading claims in advertising their Z80 models after the WMCCC 1980 - apparently with Ron Nelson/Ed English programs "declared" as world champions.

see also:
Ben Mittman, Ken Thompson (1981). Second World Microcomputer Chess Championship, Travemünde and Hamburg, West Germany. ICCA Newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 2

"The published rules provided for participation in an open and commercial category. The organizers had hoped that by sponsoring a purely commercial section, they could provide the computer chess buying public with a clear indication of which is the strongest commercially available chess machine. In doing this, however, they wanted to avoid what had happened after previous microcomputer chess tournaments when misleading advertising claims were made by manufacturers or by their representatives"

and German ad:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10261668@N ... otostream/
https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com ... CCC%201980

[ricard60]

There is one way to clear this confusión:

getting all the games that the fidelity sensory voice played in that 1st WCCC and try to replay it either with the champion or with the chess challenger from Ron Nelson with the Z80A. If neither machines reproduce this games probably the 1st WCCC program was never released for sale.

Where is the 1st WCCC program regards
Ricardo