SUDDEN DEATH (1 september 2005)
As you may have gathered from earlier weblogs, the path of a collector of chess computers is not always strewn with roses, (click , click, click, click).
A few days ago, I spent half a day on the train to pick up a chess computer that was more than twenty years old -- which is antique in the world of chess computers.
Novag Constellation (1983)
Of course, I wanted to know how strong this "new" computer was. So I organized a mini match between this Novag computer and another newbie to the collection, which bore the name Mephisto Mystery, but was in fact a model designed by Saitek, a manufacturer that took over the Mephisto company a few years ago.
Mephisto Mystery
Mystery turned out to be a formidable opponent. It is said that you rarely see spectacular games with players of equal strength. See for yourself if this adage applies to the following two games:
The losing move is probably black's 16th move, where he should have played 16. Nx5. Now white could remove pawn f7 and get his queen to g6 with devastating consequences for black.
Game 1:
white: Mephisto Mystery (15 minutes / game)
black: Novag Constellation (30 seconds / game)
Game 2:
white: Mephisto Mystery (15 minutes / game)
black: Novag Constellation (30 seconds / game)
It should be realized that playing the moves of two chess computers is hard work. Apart from making notes, you also have to make the actual moves on both computers. So at black's 41st move, I took the black queen, pressed square c1 and then pressed square c2. No lights went on or beeps were heard ...
I repeatedly pressed square c2. But however hard I tried, the Constellation computer wouldn't respond ...
So now I have another non-functioning chess computer :(
And from now on when you visit http://chesscomp.overtom.nl, you should realize that not all the computers you see there are working specimens.
As I said at the beginning, the path of a collector of chess computers is not always strewn with roses.
