When / how was chess first "solved" by a software program?

Haha, well I promise I wasn't trolling, although I'll admit that I'm pretty unfamiliar with the whole Deep Blue event, beyond the basics which I already explained (and which could potentially suggest cheating).  Of course, blaming his accusations on his ego, would explain it away...  

Re:  Chess programs on PC being in the 2200's in the early 90's:  I didn't know such specifics, so I'm glad to know.  OK so then it definitely makes no sense to slam all chess software in the 90's.  

It makes me wonder if my friend might have been slamming chess video games specifically (and not PC software)?  Even so, I would have thought that the Chessmaster series (and probably others) would have offered a proper challenge in the mid- to late-90's...?   

OK fair explanations of the whole thing, although I still think it seems potentially suspicious lol.  

Re: that Deep Blue was always going to be only a one-time thing:  

OK, but it seems a shame that the supercomputer didn't even get a place in a museum somewhere.  Why dismantle it?  It's not like IBM needed spare wires or circuits or something lol.  Better to have become a museum exhibit, than spare parts, I think...  Not necessarily suspicious; It might just be a shame how it happened. 

In case anyone is curious what old chess videogames I like:

 

I was a little curious about the chess games you'd played.

I never really connected with the "animated sequence" games like Battlechess and Starwars Chess. It just takes forever for the animations to play out, and they become repetitive and boring after a while. I prefer to just focus on the moves on a regular 2-D board.

The Chess (by Sega) looks like a more traditional chess program. I'm assuming it was only released in the Sega format. Does it say anywhere in the program credits or documentation what the engine actually is or who designed it?

The chess video game Virtual Chess 64 on the Nintendo 64 was released pre-2000 and was tough.  I don't know its strength, but I don't recall ever achieving any more than a draw on its hardest setting, and I was maybe 1700 USCF or so at that time.  I would guess that it was NM or FM strength.

I doubt the Software Toolworks Star Wars Chess on Sega is that good.  I had a program by that name in the 1990s on the PC and have beaten it on its hardest setting several times.

I'm glad a couple people wanted to talk about these old games lol.  

Re:  Star Wars Chess:  Its AI might not be "that good," but I haven't played it for a couple years, and back then, I wasn't good enough to get to the point of finding it insufficient.  

But I have read complaints that the AI wasn't good enough lol.  Which might make sense in a way, that developers were probably less concerned with offering a top-notch chess engine, and were more focused on the Star Wars gimmick. 

Completely aside from AI, any chess videogame can also be used 2-player with a friend.  :D  This is probably the best use of Star Wars Chess, especially if the animated clips are something new for those playing.   

 

Re:  the playablility of chess videogames with animated sequences:  

I can understand if some people could never connect with such games.  Animations do take a while and they certainly do break up the game constantly.  And sure they become repetitive and boring, after they have all been seen a few times.  (It is best appreciated after not playing it for a long time, so the animations seem more fresh and new.)

Such inherent issues (of any chess videogame with animations) are balanced out in Star Wars Chess, because thankfully, options allow animations to be turned off.  

Also there is an alternate 2D traditional chessboard, which can be switched to, anytime.  If animations are off and the 2D board is used, then it is exactly normal traditional chess.  :)

Here's the classic 2D view:

And here is the default 3D Star Wars view, which actually can make the game much more confusing:

 

(I'll post later to answer your questions about the other game, "Chess.") 

Where do you get that Mega Drive chess game? To play chess on my Mega Drive, I play Sega Chess for the Master System.

If your friend is rated 1300 on this site, then I recommend Chessmaster 2100, which I bought in 1989 for a box with 1 MB of RAM. It can kick his butt. Chessmaster 3000 for Windows 3.1 (c. 1994) was vastly stronger. Fritz 5.32, as noted already, runs the newer 32 bit systems and laughs at Chessmaster.

I was still going to post again to explain the Genesis / Megadrive game "Chess."  It actually has a confusing, murky history.  

To answer your question of where to buy it:  The best way is to have someone create a repro of the game and mail it to you.  The game was never realeased officially, ever!  

As far as I know, Chess started out as a game only available on Sega Channel, and thus it was never sold in any kind of physical form.  Also it was called "Chessmaster" on Sega Channel, although it is apparently the same exact game as "Chess."  

(I'm in the process of trying to figure out who exactly made the game originally!  Sega's "Chessmaster" looks entirely different from the Super Nintendo game of the same name, so I doubt Sega's Chessmaster was made by that series!  Rather, the series' name was slapped onto it, I believe.)

Later, in '98, Russian developers apparently translated that Sega Channel game into Russian and produced unlicensed cartridges in '99, and it was apparently a popular game that sold well.   

I guess it was then re-translated back to English for the ROM that now can be made into a nice repro cartridge.  

At any rate, Chess has a very solid chess engine as far as I can tell.  I would highly recommend it for anyone who wants a great chess game for Sega Genesis / Megadrive.  The repro's tend to look great also in my opinion.

As for naming developers:  I can only name those listed in the English version I'm familiar with:  BS Comp Ltd. and Padis Ltd. 1998.  

(I still want to find out who made it in the first place!  If I find out more info I will post.)

But blood, that chessboard (the one with the red pieces) from "Chess", looks exactly as one of the chessboards from Chessmaster 3000.

I have a Novag Chess computer sitting around here that I think I bought in the late 80s. It doesn't have to be set at a high level to beat me, and you describe your friend as being similarly weak

That reminds me of the time I sat down and wrote a very simple brute strength password cracker that printed its output to the screen.  In order to make it run faster, I redirected the output to a text file on my disk.  I forgot about the program, and just a few minutes later, my multi-gigabyte hard disk was full.

That really surprised me at first, and then I thought about the math.  Riiiight.  What was I thinking?

Trying to turn that on chess and consider the size of THAT data set makes my head ache.  I don't know where you get the idea that there aren't enough molecules on earth, but you could be right.  It's a very, very large number.

Thanks. But who? And where? You may have seen on Sega-16 (I haven't been on there in a little while though, but that doesn't mean I've deserted the place ) that I have repros of Tetris, Super Bubble Bobble, Sonic Eraser, and Sonic The Lost Worlds, which I got from Ebay, but apparantly repros aren't allowed on Ebay .

Honestly I just know the one guy who created a repro for me, here in America.  You're in England so you might want to find someone closer who makes repro's, I'm guessing?

You can still private-message me if you'd like his info, or if you'd like me to try to help find a repro seller closer to you.  

When I wanted a repro of Chess, I just used a thread at Sega-16 that asked WHO could make me one.  :)  That same thread is actually revived currently (Genesis section of the forums) as I was trying to find out more info for THIS thread.  lol  (So if you check out THAT thread, there might be a couple more contacts, or you could even make a post that asks who could make you one in England.)

Well check out that Sega-16 thread or private-message me on here or Sega-16.   

And if you are interested, then I hope you do get a copy because Chess is very solid as far as I can tell. 

Yes, I am interested in acquiring Chess for the Mega Drive.  But, as luck has it, I'm about to go away for a week, and there's no guarantee I'll have internet. I'll seek out the thread and PM you about it after I get back.

Thanks again.

OK fair explanations of the whole thing, although I still think it seems potentially suspicious lol.  

Re: that Deep Blue was always going to be only a one-time thing:  

OK, but it seems a shame that the supercomputer didn't even get a place in a museum somewhere.  Why dismantle it?  It's not like IBM needed spare wires or circuits or something lol.  Better to have become a museum exhibit, than spare parts, I think...  Not necessarily suspicious; It might just be a shame how it happened. 

Kasparov cast his aspersions, but hindsight is 20/20...within a few more years chess engines were wrecking GMs everywhere, so, it's highly unlikely Deep Blue needed "assistance" beyond some value tweaks between games.

As for dismantling, this was an IBM supercomputer, not some souped-up desktop or something ;)...the hardware was expensive, and was repurposed.  Here's a press release excerpt from 2007 that might give you some perspective:

"IBM ratcheted the world of supercomputing up a few notches in June with the Blue Gene/P, a system nearly three times as fast as its predecessor at a cost of US$1.3 million per rack."

Recently I have been experimenting with this "Sega Chess" thing published by Padis Ltd. From what I can gather, the game is not Chessmaster. I'm not certain about the Sega Channel version, but this "Chess" game plays differently from the original Chessmaster releases, such as Chessmaster 2000/2100 (including the SNES version), 3000, 4000, and subsequent versions. However, the graphics are an exact copy of the chessboard and piece representations (2D/3D) available in Chessmaster 4000 to 6000.

At its highest level (level 12), the program can provide a decent chess game based on your experience, but it takes a few minutes to make a move (typically 4-5 minutes). In reality, it searches 4-5 ply deep at level 12. Sega emulators are capable of accelerating the computation speed ten times faster. By reverse engineering the program, I managed to modify the maximum time allocated for each move. Through hacking, it can spend hundreds of hours contemplating each move (reaching higher search depths like 9-10 ply in the middle game), but it sometimes crashes after a few hours. By examining the RAM dump, one can identify the maximum available time, maximum allowed search depth, current search time, current search depth, nodes count, and evaluation score.

Based on this information (search depth, evaluation, nodes count and move choices), I can infer that this Sega "Chess" program is likely based on the open-source chess program GNU Chess 2/3, which was released between 1988 and 1990. Considering that "Chess for Sega" was released ten years later (in 1998), it was somewhat outdated for its time. Developing a chess program from scratch is not a simple task. However, it was relatively easy for Russian programmers to adapt GNU Chess for the 16-bit Motorola 68000, which is why they chose GNU Chess for the Sega Genesis.