Author: Lawrence S. Tamarkin
Date: 22:11:01 11/16/98
Hi all: As much as I love new chess programs for their strength, I have also recently become interested in other aspects of the various programs qualities, such as database, opening book, and especially mentor charactoristics. Also the stlye of play of the many programs is becoming more configurable in the top programs. I quote some of their page: Uniquely programmed to play speculative, sacrificial king attacks in the romantic, aggressive style of Michael Tal, Russian Grandmaster. Full knowledge and information displays - puts you in control. Chess System Tal is a knowledge based program, it displays its entire evaluation, including king attacks, pawn structure, mobility, etc., grouped into twelve component parameters. It allows you to increase or decrease its evaluation and search extension strategies and to build alternative styles of player, from passive, through aggressive to really wild. Inner Eye - fully animated, emotional inner eye head that grimaces and smiles in response to the game. Unique scoring displays - generates graphs of positional scores throughout the game history. Intelligent move list - displays broken-down score and primitive threat information for every possible legal move. Teaching displays for absolute beginners - starter options that warn you when you make mistakes and special beginner levels that are designed to be beaten ! Switchable graphical displays of legal moves and captures. Set the ELO playing strength of Chess System Tal, and play special 'strict mode ' tournaments against us to get an accurate value for your ELO. Quick ELO grading - improve and grade your play using over 6000 solved chess If there people here who have experience in actual use of CSTAL, my questions are these: 1. How do rate CSTAL, just in terms of how enjoyable it is to play, compared to other programs that you can configure as to King safty and other. Is its style so crazy/wild, (like Tal, if you like), that you 'perceive' a real difference when playing it. The advertizing makes me want to believe it would be like playing one of the good hustler's in Washington Square Park. 2. The Tutor funtions. I have a fare amount of fun and challenge using the 'rate my play' feature in Chess Master 6000, (which have not been improved over previous versions), & some enjoyment of the Waitzkin game playbacks, but the puzzles in CM6000 are said to have a lot of mistakes in them (by Komputer Korner). Also, I don't find this part of the CM6000 tutorial as usable as say, 'Chess Mentor', or the latest chesss Assistant programs. My question is how the various challenges in CSTAL compare to these. Does the advertising about '6000 solved chess puzzles', mean there are actually 6000 positons that I can test myself with, using this program? - And, how much fun are they? 3. As another of the group of user's who dislike Dos, I'd like to know if there is still going to be a version of CSTAL for Windows? Are they still working on it, or do we have to make some special appeal to Chris Whittington himself, to forget any grudges he has with us, and let us know what is up:) mrslug - the inkompetent chess software addict!
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