Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 09:39:23 03/27/00
Go up one level in this thread
On March 27, 2000 at 06:28:09, Robert Smith wrote: >On March 27, 2000 at 00:25:32, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >>On March 26, 2000 at 18:44:49, John Coffey wrote: >> >>>Microsoft Entertainment Pack has a chess program called Zigurrat. I set it to 1 >>>second per move and beat it at speed chess on the Expert level of difficulty. >>>(I am rated 1978.) Anybody know the strength of this program? >>> >>>This would be a nice program except for the small chess board. >>> >>>John Coffey >> >>Ziggurat was written by a fellow named David Norris. Those "entertainment >>packs" contained a few things that Microsoft had to pay real money to get, but >>mostly they were done on the cheap with software contributed by employees, which >>was the case here. >> >>Ziggurat is extremely weak and has a lot of bugs. It is probably the weakest >>program you'll find from a company that is still in business and makes a profit, >>bar none. >> >>Which makes it an interesting program, in a way. My 6 year-old plays against it >>and he has a lot of fun. >> >>bruce > >I'll say it has bugs. Once it checked me, declared checkmate and wouldn't let >me move my king out of check. I don't think the stupid thing is over 1600 >strength, and I don't think getting a faster processor would help. I was playing white and checkmated it, and several pieces, including my king, turned black, and it said it had checkmated me. I swear I'm not making that up. Back when it came out we were all running Windows 3.1, so it is possible it has Windows '95-98 compatibility issues, since I don't remember it having such bad bugs at that time. On the machines of the day it was extremely easy to beat. I don't know how much stronger it has gotten on modern machines. bruce
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.