A FOUR-YEAR-OLD NIECE (30 september 2007)
In March 1982, Dutch grandmaster Donner played a game of chess against Belle, one of the strongest chess programs at the time). After the game was played, Donner is reputed to have said something like "Even my four-year-old niece plays better."
J.H. Donner
It can be doubted if the computer really played as poorly as Donner's words suggest. If you want to see for yourself, here is the game:
Delft, 5 March 1982
White: J.H. Donner
Black: Belle
With Java installed on your computer, you can see this game move by move.
... and white wins.
* * *
I had to think of Donner's words when I was playing games for the Overtom Chess Computer Museum .
Recently, a new feature was introduced to the Museum: I'm trying
to present one example game with each of the computers. Since the collection
consists of 320 computers, they'll have to play more than three hundred
games -- and I am the one who has to do all the physical work 
Please don't think I'm complaining. Some of the games are quite enjoyable! For instance, yesterday I got the Scisys Executive (1981) out of its box in order to play a game against Fritz-one-ply.
The two computers played the following game (with black):
White: Fritz-one-ply
Black: Scisys Executive (10 seconds / move
With Java installed on your computer, you can see this game move by move.
Isn't that brilliantly stupid?
You can imagine the compulsive thought that entered my mind when I witnessed this game: would Donner be right after all?
