DGT Centaur chess computer brief review

I play my Centaur when I feel my head isn’t in the right place for a competent game.

I like that I can have sound turned on and the Centaur only makes a sound if there is a problem.

I also like that it is easy to copy a finished game to a score book as the Centaur shows a number of moves at once on the screen. Additionally, the fact it shows a 2D representation of the board means that as I scroll through a game, I sometimes spot better moves I missed.

I especially like the lighting system and the fact it is easy to slide the pieces on the board - I often slide a pawns forward. On this latter point as well as being happy with the stock pieces, I think I am an outlier.

I would have liked the Centaur to have given a game score of how well I played as something to measure against. I think it is hard to tell if I played above or below par which, as I have said earlier, is the reason I prefer the old fashioned level system.

I think it is a shame the Centaur cannot received firmware updates.

I have a theory the Centaur resets its strength if I take back a move. Has anyone else noticed this?

Thanks Rubicon re firmware a Q I had😀

I believe the “friendly” mode would be there most inconsistent with regards to play strength as you try multiple variations. Setting the computer to play in a set “tournament” level/strength should give you more consistent plays. You’ll just miss out on the whole “machine learning” novelty of the Centaur. 

Any word on new version of centaur with wooden pieces? rather not put metal foils on plastic pieces.

It’s dead easy to do yourself, thanks to whoever recommended Demon Tweeks as their 25mm foil discs fitted an old wood set of mine perfectly

 

Nice setup, I thought dgt was bringing out a new centaur model with wooden pieces and maybe new firmware, read it somewhere last year 

 

No, they don't work on the Centaur.

I played the Centaur against one of my retro chess computers and found that the Centaur played a consistent game and did not make any strange moves such as placing a bishop in font one of my pawns.  I suspect that the ability of the Kasparov Astral to play consistently too meant that while the Centaur still won, it did not have to make any drastic adjustments to balance out the positional and material scores.

I therefore conclude that the more consistent the player, the more natural game one will experience from the Centaur even in "friendly" mode.

Does this machine come with a fairly comprehensive library of book openings? Very tempted to buy one. I resurrected a Conchess Escorter I bought back in the mid 80s a month or so back, but it appears to have given up the ghost now, sadly.

The computer does not tell you what opening it is using where as the Millennium King Performance does and provides some other information about the opening.

I would have thought for the Centaur to be as strong as it is on its strongest mode, it would need to have a comprehensive opening book as well as solid end-game theory.

It certainly knows how to draw a position if it is losing and that should be one of its USPs.

Pros:

1) Excellent chess computer

2) Adaptive playing strength

3) Slick design

4) Easy user interface

5) Natural movement of pieces

6) Soft lighting and e-paper display

Cons:

1) Fairly expensive

2) Postage and packaging is not cheap

3) There is also 'import tax' if you get it shipped to the UK, which costed me an extra £80, which is a bit steep and also wasn't made clear on the DGT website at point of purchase (perhaps getting off amazon is better).

4) It doesn't store your games there

5) It can't connect to other devices

 

On the whole, if you can afford it, it is a very snazzy bit of kit that should give you loads of quality practice games in comfortable conditions.

 

3) That's Brexit for you. Would have been zero if the UK had remained in the EU. Silly to expect DGT to inform you on this. That's the job of your government.

5) I would have expected some one to have modified their Centaur by now, since the internals are based on a Pi motherboard. Shouldn't be that hard to mod it so it can be connected to a PC.

Centaur was delivered yesterday. I played a couple of games Centaur Vs Stockfish on my laptop and then Dragon 4.6, both times with Centaur in Expert mode. it did well against Dragon but struggled a bit against Stockfish (20090216_x64_ssse on my laptop if that means anything to anyone). Few things I noticed:

It seems that when playing untimed in Expert mode it seems to make nearly all moves in about ten seconds, which is counterintuitive. It was beaten badly by stockfish on my laptop on this setting, but performed much better when the game was set to 90 minutes. Weird.

It doesn't seem to recognise draw by 3 fold repetition.

Lastly, and this concerns me, during one of the games it got confused with the colour of one of the queens ie it tried to take a white rook with the white queen. I couldn't play past that point (hadn't studied setup in the manual at that time) so I abandoned the game. Has anyone else experienced an issue like that?

 

 

 

Congratulations on your new Centaur. Check the manual for settings on accepting draws.

When the Queen takes Rook happened, you saw on the e-paper screen that it was a white queen taking a white rook?

The manual doesn't mention 3 fold repitition, but it is one of the rules of chess so I'm surprised it's been missed. It mentions what the display shows in the event of a draw, but doesn't specify what a draw is.

No I didn't look at the epaper display. The light was flashing under the white queen and white rook on the board, so I didn't need to. If the epaper display said otherwise then it was wrong. This happened after I'd been playing the match for some time, certainly in excess of an hour, and it had been fine up until then. Hasn't happened since though

I saw that Pico chess with the Claudia engine did not recognize Draw by Repetition as well. It could be possible that DGT incorporated an engine for their Centaur that suffers from the same shortcoming.

https://picochess.com/picochess-v0-81-kurt/

As mentioned previously, the Centaur is based on a traditional chess computer and I agree that opportunities to modernise were missed.

Traditional chess computers only understand move by repetition three as consecutive moves. If a different piece is moved or the same piece is moved to a different square then the repetition three counter is reset.

I think DougG26 would have been happier with the DGT smart board as it has piece recognition and the chess engine will alert the user immediately if they accidentally thumb up a move or try to correct an earlier mistake by randomly moving a piece to match a board position elsewhere. Additionally, modern chess engines should recognise repetition three as per tournament chess rules.

According to other forum users, modern chess engines allow en passant and castling to be performed in reverse order. Non of the things listed above are possible on the Centaur.

All mine know the computer chess variant of repetition three (consecutive moves) though I think it is fair to say the Centaur should have been able to track three move repetition even if they do not occur consecutively.

Not being able to offer draw or resignation was another missed opportunity and all could have been added if the Centaur had been given update capability.

The thing that irks me the most is the take back procedure on the Centaur. Really is the worst I have ever used.

Still, on the while, I like the computer.

It doesn't even recognise repetition on three consecutive moves, which was the position when I became aware of it - I was playing it against stockfish on my laptop from a setup position where stockfish was behind, and after a while stockfish appeared to (successfully) play for the draw which of course Centaur didn't defend against. Not good. I know the situation won't arise that often, if at all, but it concerns me that it's not there. 

And as you say, the take back procedure is a joke - almost useless.

What's the alternative in a similar price range, assuming there is one?