Millenium King Performance availability

I ordered the KP around Thanksgiving and have been anxiously waiting for the backorder to come through.  Have others received one yet in the last few days?

Well it is available to purchase at the Chess & Bridge shop. It is a bit more pricy than I was expecting.

https://shop.chess.co.uk/Millennium-King-Performance-Chess-Computer-p/cb07714.htm

That is a bit more pricey than I paid (by almost $200).  I bought mine with a 20% Black Friday sale.

I'm looking forward to playing both the system itself and also connected to Hiarcs on my ipad.

I researched a bit and it came down to KP or the Centaur.  Having connectivity to other engines, programs, and eventually online was led me to KP, so I'm hoping I made the right choice.

If you are going to use the options the King Performance offers then you have definitely made the right choice.

The Centaur suits someone who just wants to play chess with a chess computer and hardly ever bothers with the options that chess computers usually coms with.

I have posted the link for the manual (which is not hard to find anyway) on a couple of other threads. From the manual one can tell that the King Performance is all about the ability to customise the internal engine in ways usually only achievable on PC based engines. For example, I have not seen a setting on any of my standalone chess computers to adjust whether the computer plays away or towards a draw situation before.

As for the price, I have found it cheaper at another online retailer though the KP does seem to be more expensive in the UK.

Were the flaws cosmetic or did any of them interfere with the functionality of the unit?

Thanks I found it and am looking through it before my set gets here.  USCF says it won't get the sets until the end of next week -- first it was 12/8, then 12/13, so I'm not feeling good.

As someone that is a moderate player (1100 - 1400), I'm looking forward to some games against a lower skilled opponent but do want to play against Hiarcs occassionally too.

A little tip for when you do get the King Performance - you can use way less pressure if you roll the edge of the piece base over the square rather than pushing down on the piece while it is stood flat on the square.

I do this will all my pressure switch boards and find it works really well.

Great tip...and it seems like it would be easier on the wear & tear of the board.

Anybody knows its estimated ELO and the board square size ? 

Also, as the King Performance price is similar to that of the Centaur, which one of them do you think would be the best choice, pros/cons, etc...?

One thing that has not been mentioned yet is that the King Performance has no internal battery. The Centaur does have an internal battery.

Chess House (in their quick review video) mentions a gadget called “Chess Volt” which I assume is something similar to a battery pack/mobile charger thing so that the King Performance does not have to be tethered to an AC power outlet.

If price point were not part of the equation in terms of program functionality, is the King Performance not a closer rival to the DGT Pi and smart board comb than the Centaur?

I think even if online play is taken out of the equation, the King Performance and the DGT Pi Smart board combo target customers who want to customise how their machine plays.

I think it is good for the industry that each computer (including the current Square Off) is aimed at a different chess playing demographic.

Centaur may be the outlier with the choices DGT made but I think the computer does have a place in the market.

I am just not so sure that people should be weighing up the Centaur and King Performance on price point alone because, as discussed, they are actually very different in terms of their intended audience.

I realise that sometimes budgetary restraints force us to make unequal comparisons.

And for anyone in the market right now, USCF has a 20% discount on KP whereas they list Centaur as back ordered so aren't allowing you to order with the discount (at least today).  That's a really good discount that I haven't seen that low of a price point anywhere else.

How about the King Performance square size ? It looks somewhat smaller than that of  the Millenium Chess Genius Performance, which is supposed to be 4cm per side.

Using the chess link accessory with this device, is it possible to use it to play games either on this site or at ICC?

Yes, it's also supposed to work with Hiarcs on ios, windows, android, and mac.  They have a published toolkit too, so hopefully some adventurous coders can implement to chess.com and other sites too.

Very exciting.  Anything that is different from what you expected?  Have you played a game yet?

nvm, I see you started another thread about this.

I created a post on the Site Feedback forum requesting Chess.com create a protocol for the ChessLink to allow Millenium Exclusive and Millenium King Performance boards to play OTB with Chess.com.  If you'd like to add your voices of support, here's the link:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/site-feedback/chess-com-support-for-millenium-exclusive-and-king-performance-via-chesslink