NICE TO SEE (20 december 2004)
If you read this page regularly, it can hardly have escaped you that this site sports one of the largest online collections of chess computers ( click).
From time to time, new computers are added to the collection. Today, I added a small one, the Kasparov Cavalier.
Of course, I wanted to see how well it played, so I tried it, but it beat me. But then I'm not a very good chessplayer.
Cavalier
I decided to see how well it would play against one of its portable colleagues, the Mephisto Advanced Travel Chess.
The two computers appeared very different in character. Tactically, the Cavalier was quite strong. But the program appeared not to sense when its king was it risk.
Let us see how this worked out. First I gave the Mephisto computer the white pieces.
After five moves, Cavalier started a variation that gained him a few pawns, but did nothing to improve his position. After that, Cavalier seemed to be unaware of the buid-up of white pieces that were directed against his king.
White: Mephisto Advanced Traveller
Black: Kasparov Cavalier
(average of 30 seconds per move)
The second game also showed the Cavalier was tactically reasonably strong, but again Cavalier did not see his kingside was threatened.
White: Kasparov Cavalier
Black: Mephisto Advanced Traveller
Can you imagine organizing games between chess computers can be fun?
