Chess System Tal DOS Tournament

[Martin Hertz]

Chess System Tal vs. older DOS programs (1985-1995):

Pentium M Dothan @ 2.0 GHz
Real DOS
30 sec/mov
Ponder on

Code: Select all

 1. M-Chess Pro 5.0     35.5/44

 2. Chess Genius 3.0    33.5/44  637,25

 3. Gideon Pro 1.0      33.5/44  613,50

 4. Socrates 3.0        29.0/44

 5. M-Chess 1.70        26.5/44

 6. Chess System Tal    25.5/44

 7. Fritz 2.51          24.0/44

 8. RexChess 2.30       21.0/44

 9. Psion 2.13          13.5/44

10. Colossus X          10.5/44

11. Chess Player 2150    8.5/44

12. Turbo Chess          3.0/44

Test of the relative speed using M-Chess:

8088 @ 4.77 MHz: ~50 pos/sec

80286 @ 12 MHz: ~500 pos/sec

80486 @ 50 MHz: ~5000 pos/sec

Pentium II @ 400 MHz: ~50000 pos/sec

Pentium M @ 2.0 GHz: ~500000 pos/sec

[mloftus955]

Hi Martin,

Interesting tournament, I like the oldies.
The best I can do for Dos programs is DosBox, but its a real big loss in speed.

Gideon Pro did well to finish even with Genius 3. Genius 3 was a great program in its time, after that program Lang wasn't in contention for the championships he once owned, but I liked those days when Lang's programs did so well.

I thought Psion 2 would do better, I thought that was about 2300 rating.
I'm not familiar with Turbo Chess.

Mark Loftus
Savannah, GA

[Martin Hertz]

Hello Mark,

yes, for maximum speed and hash size for all programs it's necessary to use real DOS.

From the ChessProgrammngWiki:"Turbo Chess, an didactic chess program by Kaare Danielsen, written in Turbo Pascal and published as source
code in 1985 on disk along with the book Turbo GameWorks by Borland International."

It seems to me that the more selective programs like Gideon, Socrates and Rex are the profiteers of the much higher speed compared to the
80486 results of that time.

[Martin Hertz]

I've added WChess to the tournament:

Code: Select all

                         MC5   Gid   CG3   WCh   Soc   MC1   CST   Fr2   Rex   Psi   Col   CPl   Tur

 1. M-Chess Pro 5.0       *    2.0   2.5   2.5   4.0   3.0   3.0   3.5   2.5   4.0   3.5   3.5   4.0     38.0/48

 2. Gideon Pro 1.0       2.0    *    2.0   2.5   2.0   2.5   2.5   3.0   3.5   4.0   4.0   4.0   4.0     36.0/48

 3. Chess Genius 3.0     1.5   2.0    *    2.0   3.0   3.0   3.0   3.0   4.0   3.0   3.0   4.0   4.0     35.5/48

 4. WChess 1.05          1.5   1.5   2.0    *    3.5   2.0   1.5   2.5   3.0   3.0   3.0   4.0   4.0     31.5/48

 5. Socrates 3.0         0.0   2.0   1.0   0.5    *    2.5   2.5   3.5   4.0   3.0   3.0   3.5   4.0     29.5/48

 6. M-Chess 1.70         1.0   1.5   1.0   2.0   1.5    *    3.0   1.5   2.0   4.0   4.0   3.0   4.0     28.5/48

 7. Chess System Tal     1.0   1.5   1.0   2.5   1.5   1.0    *    2.5   2.0   4.0   4.0   3.5   3.5     28.0/48

 8. Fritz 2.51           0.5   1.0   1.0   1.5   0.5   2.5   1.5    *    3.0   3.0   3.5   3.5   4.0     25.5/48

 9. RexChess 2.30        1.5   0.5   0.0   1.0   0.0   2.0   2.0   1.0    *    4.0   3.0   4.0   3.0     22.0/48

10. Psion 2.13           0.0   0.0   1.0   1.0   1.0   0.0   0.0   1.0   0.0    *    3.0   3.5   4.0     14.5/48

11. Colossus X           0.5   0.0   1.0   1.0   1.0   0.0   0.0   0.5   1.0   1.0    *    2.0   3.5     11.5/48

12. Chess Player 2150    0.5   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.5   1.0   0.5   0.5   0.0   0.5   2.0    *    3.0      8.5/48

13. Turbo Chess          0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.5   0.0   1.0   0.0   0.5   1.0    *       3.0/48