Blunt force trauma ... Cruelty to old silicon

[royb]

I remember playing my Saitek Kasparov RISC 2500 dedicated unit back in the day (early 1990s). It beat me badly as I'm not a strong player. I never thought I would win a game against it, and I didn't.

I thought today I'd dust it off and see if it still worked -- and it did. For grins, I played Stockfish 1.4 at 1.67 GHz against it (single CPU used only, Stockfish not allowed to think on opponent's time). The game was effectively over at move 14. It is amazing to see how easily the RISC 2500 was outplayed by Stockfish:

[Event "Computer chess game"]
[Site "Ubuntu-9.04"]
[Date "2009.08.14"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Saitek Kasparov RISC 2500"]
[Black "Stockfish_14_ja"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "A40"]
[Opening "Queen's Pawn"]
[Time "12:38:06"]
[Variation "Bozo-Indian Defence, Four Pawns Attack"]
[WhiteElo "2400"]
[TimeControl "900"]
[Termination "normal"]
[PlyCount "54"]
[WhiteType "program"]
[BlackType "program"]

1. e4 c5 2. c3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. cxd4 e6 5. d5 exd5 6. exd5 Ne5 7. Nc3 Bb4 8. f4 Ng6 9. Ne2 Nf6 10. a3 Bc5 11. b4 Bb6 12. d6 O-O 13. Qd3 Re8 14. Bd2 Ng4 15. Nd1 Qf6 16. Bc3 Nxf4 17. Qd2 Qf5 18. Qa2 Qd3 19. Qd2 Qe4 20. Qa2 Bd8 21. h4 Nxg2+ 22. Kd2 Nxh4 23. Rxh4 Bg5+ 24. Ne3 Bxe3+ 25. Ke1 Bf2+ 26. Kd2 Bxh4 27. Qb2 Bg5+ 28. ... {White resigns} 0-1

I wonder if in 15-20 years from now, Rybka-3 will be losing to the program/hardware of the day like RISC 2500 lost here.

Roy

[Steve B]

I remember playing my Saitek Kasparov RISC 2500 dedicated unit back in the day (early 1990s). It beat me badly as I'm not a strong player. I never thought I would win a game against it, and I didn't.

I thought today I'd dust it off and see if it still worked -- and it did. For grins, I played Stockfish 1.4 at 1.67 GHz against it (single CPU used only, Stockfish not allowed to think on opponent's time). The game was effectively over at move 14. It is amazing to see how easily the RISC 2500 was outplayed by Stockfish:

Hi Roy
well to be fair..
the Risc 2500 is running on an Arm2 Processor at a blistering 14 Mhz
perhaps 100x slower then your PC if not more
now if we could pump up the 2500 to match the speed of your processor..why i bet it would eat Stockfish's lunch

Defending the oldies regards
Steve