My machines and I are patzers (Chessbase told me so)

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Steve B
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Re: My machines and I are patzers (Chessbase told me so)

Post by Steve B »

Monsieur Plastique wrote:
Well you were probably hoping against hope there Steve :lol: I thought you might instead break out some killer hardware. This position is clearly not as simple as it might seem. My machines remain perplexed even two half moves into the "win"!
OK
Lets feed this Position to the Mephisto WunderMachine
that should meet the description of "Killer Hardware"

As with Martins Van 68020
Langs Chess Genius 5 will play 37.Qg4
this is after 3 Minutes and a 9/21 search scoring the position +3.06
anticipated line of play...
37.Qg4 Qb6
38.Qf3 Qg6
39.Rxf7 Qxf7
40.Nh6+

Interestingly..
Lang's Chess Genius 2 will play 37.Qf1 after 3 minutes and a 9/21 search
it scores the position +2.09
anticipated line of play
37.Qf1 b5
38.Qf2 Nd6
39.Rh6 Qxg5
40.Nxd6 Qxg7

Natural Born Killers Regards
Steve
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Post by Wardy »

OK first up from my childhood is Colossus 4.0 on the ZX Spectrum 48k 3.5mhz ....

Published across multiple formats in 1986 Colossus 4.0 was the nemesis of all chess programs before it. Implementing selective search elements and able to look at 170 positions per second in the middle game it was rated at a nominal 1850 elo........ though as Martin Bryant will admit this was somewhat inflated perhaps.....or kinder to say that was against the equivalent human rating if they had been out on the beer the night before.

Colossus had many features that were way before their time, these were also implemented in perhaps the most geeky user interface imaginable.....made all the worse by the Spectrums pallette of 8 colours.

At short time controls Colossus avoids d6..........basically as a result of not even perceiving the bait of the trap.

At longer time controls after 1min 58s it discovers d6 and sticks with it for the complete hour I let it run, never finding Qf1.

As this is on an emulator I can cheat a bit and have it run on the equivalent of a z80 clocked to a mind blowing 100mhz without affecting real time......

Set to it's infinite level, which uses a brute force approach, and wound up to the max Colossus still only wants to play d6 for up to the 30 mins I ran it.

Set to tournament controls and it's selective search approach using 100 mhz yields a deeper search but still sticks with d6 up to the 30 minute mark.

Bit disappointed really as I found Colossus really tough to beat as a teenager, I felt certain with the overclock boost the software would find the right move.

Nevermind...............next up is Richard Langs Cyrus II program.....and I think I'll treat myself to the Spectrum 128k version with almost usable 3D graphics.......in monochrome black/yellow......

1986 regards

Paul
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Post by Wardy »

Next in my trip down memory lane is Richard Langs Cyrus II, again published across multiple formats, and if memory serves me right again published in 1986 just after Colossus and certainly missing a head to head review in the Spectrum magazines of the day by a month.

Cyrus II came in two flavours for the Spectrum both 48k and 128k. Both had the same playing strength but the 128k version used the "vast" memory to store a 3D board that was actually playable on. Other than that Richards program lacked some of the fancy features but made up for it in ease of use and clarity of the graphics which made the best use of the Spectrum palette. This is a chess program you could fire up today without instructions and make full use of immediately having never seen it before.

Cyrus claimed to be the strongest available hence my first engine match between two Spectrums, 2 games each alternating colours with Colossus set to an an average response time equal to what was claimed as average for the Cyrus levels. The match was drawn but as I remember it Colossus dominated the faster levels and Cyrus the slower levels, though I also remember Cyrus using much more time than Colossus and taking liberties with the clock.

So to this position, set to the highest level 9 which I think was an average response time of 3m 30s from memory........ Cyrus promptly thought for 7mins straight before playing the winning move Qf1! I'd love to confirm that it had the winning line but the analysis features aren't as good as Colossus and the best line it was displaying wasn't the move it had actually played! Certainly the best line never showed d6 at any point up to this.

Pretty impressive stuff from the Lang stable.

Winding the emulator up to 100mhz and letting it think in infinite mode for 30 mins does actually result in Cyrus playing the bad d6 however.

8 bit forever regards

Paul
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Steve B
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Post by Steve B »

Wardy wrote:Next in my trip down memory lane is Richard Langs Cyrus II, again published across multiple formats, and if memory serves me right again published in 1986 just after Colossus and certainly missing a head to head review in the Spectrum magazines of the day by a month.
Hi Paul
although i dont usually follow posts dealing with non-dedicated chess computer material ...i must say your posts are quite interesting
now if you want to talk about Lang's Cyrus Program in a dedicated computer....
i rolled out the TBSIV La Regence which contains Lang's 1982 Cyrus engine running on an 8 bit Z80 processor

in the position ..after 3 Min. it will play the now infamous 37.d6
it is honored to join the ranks of all of the other dedicated computers released decades later ..on far superior hardware.. in being called a Patzer

Patzer Power Regards
Steve
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Post by Cyberchess »

Wardy wrote:Next in my trip down memory lane is Richard Langs Cyrus II, again published across multiple formats, and if memory serves me right again published in 1986 just after Colossus and certainly missing a head to head review in the Spectrum magazines of the day by a month.
Greetings Paul!

Your mention of Cyrus II had me scratching my head, as I don’t recall Richard Lang writing a second version of this program. A check with Chess Programming Wiki Spaces revealed that Intelligent Software owned the Cyrus program written by Mr. Lang, and in 1983 primary programmer Mark Taylor modified Cyrus to be released as Cyrus II (68k). Meanwhile, Mr. Lang went on to write Psion for the Motorola 68000 platform . Later that year, Psion was ported over to the I.B.M. 8086 platform that I would use for my programming assignments in 1984. Prior to that, I had only worked with Apple PCs.

http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Richard+Lang

The Colossus chess program brought to mind an early ‘70s cold war film of the same name, and I was delighted to learn that the author, Martin Bryant, was inspired by this excellent thriller.

http://colossusgames.co.uk/chess/colossuschess.htm

Thanks for bringing this vintage gem to our attention!

John
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Post by Wardy »

Hi John,

Cyrus II and Cyrus II 68k are not the same.

http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Cyrus
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Post by Wardy »

Or rather Cyrus 68k is the modified non-Lang work and Cyrus II is the improved Lang work.
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Post by Cyberchess »

Ah yes, quite true. Apparently Mr. Lang developed Cyrus II in 1982, right between Cyrus I (1981) and Psion, which he began writing in ’83.

Being that Cyrus I, II, 2.5 were developed around the Timex, Commodore and Apple II architectures, I never had the opportunity to try them.

According to Richard Lang: “'It was written in such a hurry and the tournament came in the middle of its development period rather than at the end'. There were quite a few new ideas in the program, and he didn't have much time to test them before the tournament. The new ideas were a combination of running faster and implementing new chess knowledge, by getting it to recognize isolated and doubled pawns and the like [10]. Various programs derivate from Cyrus competed at the 4th European Microcomputer Chess Championship, September 1983. Cyrus 2.5 finished best (4th) of the home computer programs tied with White Knight 11 by Martin Bryant, behind Advance 3.0 and Chess 2001.”

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Post by Monsieur Plastique »

It would be nice to fully have legal, authorised and "official" versions of these golden-era programs available to use natively in Windows 7 and 8. By that I also mean in such a way that they work exactly the same way they did back then, without an actual emulator per se. I would love to run Cyrus II and Sargon IV, etc, but without worrying about adapting the original versions to run under emulations, etc. As part of the native Windows adaption, their processing power would be throttled accordingly.

Sometimes I wish we still had our family's very first PC. I think it was an OKI Model 20 or something. It pre-dated even DOS (CP/M), but it would have run these DOS program with all the power of say, a half speed Mephisto Europa! Even if I had kept a PC from the early 90s it would still be good to run these old programs.

It was always an interesting balance back in those days. Chess knowledge versus speed. I always got more of a kick out of the slow programs that still came up with good moves. The lower the node count, all other things being equal, the more impressed I am. That is one reason I still love my funny little Gameboy Colour running Chessmaster. It only calculates 120 positions a second.
Chess is like painting the Mona Lisa whilst walking through a minefield.
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Post by Cyberchess »

I’m also running Windows 7 (64 Bit version) on my primary PC, and I am deeply disappointed that I cannot run other than recently written programs, except through a recently written emulator. Never mind the Windows Compatibility Mode; the ‘80s/’90s/Y2K era programs are unable to operate with a 64 Bit O.S. :x

My secondary office PC is a real clunker running Windows XP. XP will run many (not all) of my vintage programs in Compatibility Mode. When installing Windows 7 or later Windows operating systems, it would be nice if a user selectable portion of the hard disc could be allocated and formatted for the O.S. to install and run older Windows and DOS apps.

Speaking of which, I will post one of my old favorites in a separate thread.

Stay tuned...

John
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Post by DarienSar »

One way I have dealt with this issue, Cyberchess, is by installing the free Virtual PC and creating a virtual machine with Windows 98 (Second Edition, IIRC).
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Post by Cyberchess »

Thanks for the info, DarienSar.

I’ve decided to go with VirtualBox upon recommendation from another Power Chess 98 user. Have you successfully run PC 98 with Virtual PC? Another user reported success with Virtual PC 2007, but warned that the recent version couldn’t run the program.
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