STILL GOING STRONG (1 june 2008)
In yesterday's weblog you could read how a renowned
Dutch chess computer returned from Italy to the Netherlands.
Tasc Chess System
The Tasc
chess computer is sometimes referred to as the king. This has partly
to do with the name of the programmer Johan de Koning (Dutch for
the King). But it also reflects on the fact that it is such a mighty chess
player.
Match against Fritz
As you may know, the stronger
chess computers of the Overtom Museum are tested by pitting them against Fritz-five-ply.
The Tasc is defintely a strong computer, so it first had to play six games
against Fritz-five-ply.
Tasc won 4 games out of 6; 2 were
drawn. You can see four games if you
click here.
Match against Milano Pro
Milano Pro made by Mephisto/Saitek is generally considered to be a very
strong computer. I organized a little match of 8 games, 7 of which were
were won by Tasc; 1was drawn.
Mephisto Milano Pro
An interesting
game was the eighth. Milano sacrificed two pawns and did not only saddle
Tasc with an exposed king, but had a pair of strong passed pawn as well.
Many human players would have given up after seventeen moves. Tasc, however,
did not only defend itself adroitly, it even managed to win the game.
White: Mephisto Milano Pro (1 minute / move)
Black: Tasc R30 (1
minute / move)
An animation of the game can be seen if you have Java installed.
A funny ending could be seen in the following game. After
fifty moves, Milano seems to be materially superior ... but is mated within
a few moves:
White: Mephisto Milano Pro (1 minute / move)
Black: Tasc R30 (1 minute / move)
An animation of the game can be seen if you
have Java installed.
Match against Sapphire 2
As the connoisseurs will
know, another very strong computer is Sapphire II.
Novag Sapphire II
I thought It might be a good idea to pit this small
but powerful machine against Tasc. These two computers also played 8 games.
One was won by Sapphire, 6 were won by Tasc and 1 was drawn.
Here
are two games. The first the game was lost by Tasc. The losing move was 27.
Be7, which allows black to demolish the white king position. White should probably
have played 27. Qb5.
White: Tasc R30 (1 minute / move)
Black:
Novag Sapphire II (1 minute / move)
An animation of the game can
be seen if you have Java installed.
But as you may gather from the result of the match, Tasc was
clearly the superior computer. In the sixth game, Sapphire went wrong when
it played 25. f4, underestimating the danger of its pinned rook on d4.
Black: Novag Sapphire II (1 minute / move)
White: Tasc R30 (1 minute
/ move)
An animation of the game can be seen if you have
Java installed.
At the time (1993) Tasc was the strongest computer on the market.
Now after fifteen years it will still outplay almost any other dedicated chess
computer.
