Good Old Days

Oh, I remember having some device like that.

I remember when you made a bad move (like giving up your queen for nothing) the computer voice would say:

"Are you a salesman? Because only a salesman would make a dumb move like that."

Which I thought was really weird thing to have it say heh.

The only Chessmaster program I had was CM2000, a DOS program with absolutely no personality. It did, however, come with a huge database of 100 games.

For a time I had a program called Power Chess. This featured the Chess Queen.  The Queen would talk to you -I think as little or a much as you allowed- explaining moves and telling you why you lost. It was voiced by voice actress Natacha LaFerriere.  She had the most soothing and appealing voice. You can hear her here.

Hah, neat.

I also played the old program called battlechess.

To prevent people from making copies and giving it away for free, it came with this code system. When you started the program it would give you a prompt, you'd use that to look up the right code to enter as a response.

I guess its main appeal was there was a different animation for every capture.

I've used Battle Chess. I found it too distracting for my limited mind. 

I did had a shareware prog called K-Chess. It was very basic but had decent graphics and played stronger than me. It had one peculiar aspect -- its use, or over-use, of Knights. It moved a Knight to attack, retreat, or 'just because' every chance it had. But for some reason, it was pretty effective.  It made me Knight-paranoid.

 

Earliest electronic/computer chess I remember was on a NES bootleg cartridge in the 90s in Ukraine. It was a heavy cartridge with a number of additional chips soldered in. I and my friends were excited to play it but then the game either froze or we couldn’t figure out what the options were. I don’t remember what it called. Maybe chessmaster.

Then I purchased Chessmaster 2000 at some point, but I was busy with Hugh school and didn’t really play it. It was still much better than the modern Fritz software as far as options and appearance and I remember the face of the old bearded man on the cover.

Yahoo! Chess was pretty good too. I remember playing it a few times.

Then I acquired an aversion to chess at some point and didn’t play it for more than 10 years.

That was the cell phone thingy?

I have nothing to say about early internet chess, but as a child I owned https://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/index.php/Novag_Chess_Champion_MK_I.

English site: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Chess_Champion_MK_I

That was some crap.

I wonder if anyone ever bought this item from USCF (advertised in Feb. 1990 for the 50th anniversary -which would have been 1989):

Other Anniversary items:

Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too!

I'm sure that was a fun meeting.

"What can we do to increase revenue?"

"How about a 50 year anniversery sale"

"Sounds good, when will it be 50 years?"

"Let me check... umm, looks like that happened last year"

"Well it's a good idea and I'm not going to waste it, well just fudge the numbers"

Well, the cake was but 1 of 9 presented to the players of the 1989 U.S. Amateur Team Championship East.   

the USCF was all about revenue.  The items were on sale throughout 1989, into 1990. I guess they sold out or were pilfered out. (the Fischer Space Pen image came from 1990, the rest from 1989.)

Just like *****.com

Thats the way the world works

It takes money to operate, whatever the business.

Speaking of which...back in 1977 when I first joined the USCF, I entertained buying a life membership. But all the inside dopesters of the chess world were saying that the USCF would be broke and out of business in six months. So I didn't bother.  43 years later, I look back and wonder how much in membership fees I would have saved had I not listened to the know-it-alls.

Haha, yeah. A guy I know has a lifetime membership. It cost him a few hundred dollars I think, but it's obviously more than paid for itself by now.

Life membership was $100 when I first joined.  It went to $600 sometime after that the next time I bothered to check.

😅 yes. That's about as much as I can contribute to this thread. All these stories seemed so fun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_chess_server

Go to the above and read the history of ICC

A bit of confusion about the date. It came into being in 1992 in 1995 it went commercial it is still there

When it went commercial they started calling it ICC before that just chess club.

I moved on to ChessMaster later, of course.  Sargon II was pretty bad.

was born in 2004, but it`s interesting to hear your thoughts

A few years ago, I read this book, perhaps someone may call it a chronicle or a report or..., which is set in the "(late) ICC Era of Chess": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85265.The_Chess_Artist