Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 14:16:02 04/02/04
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On April 02, 2004 at 15:09:58, John Merlino wrote: [snip] >You're assuming that, for most people, the most important part of a chess >program is the strength of the chess engine. The reality is that, for many MANY >people, this is not as important as the overall feature set, tutorial content, >UI quality and (in Chessmaster's case) reputation of the program. The vast >majority of "typical computer chess software users" couldn't care less if the >engine was Super-GM strength or GM strength...or even IM strength! I am guessing that most of them don't even know what an IM is. >Even if there were a hundred free Winboard engines stronger than The King, >people would still buy Chessmaster because of the incredible value of the entire >software package. If they were 200 Elo stronger it would cause problems, I think. But what would happen is that a stronger engine would be used instead. >Additionally, people typically don't find out about the existence of free >engines without first delving into computer chess via a commercial package. I >don't know how many people download Crafty each year, but I would suspect that >each one of them has bought a commercial program first. I used free engines before I even knew that there were commercial packages. I am not even sure that commercial packages existed back then. Most of them were not very strong (I used EdChess before anything else around 1990 or so, I think). I used GnuChess, Crafty, and Arasan before I ever used a commercial package, even though I knew of commercial systems by that time. For me, your description was upside down. I used the free stuff, and that got me interested in the better, commercial stuff. So there is at least one exception to your rule.
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