Author: Djordje Vidanovic
Date: 12:26:09 02/12/99
I read Larry Kaufman's review of AlexS on CCC, and I find it inaccurate to the same extent as the couple of lines posted as a "review" of Krash-Programs by KK at his homepage at gambitsoft.com. I found AlexS as spartan as L. Kaufman described it, however its playing strength and intelligence are simply not to be underestimated. I am quite sure that it is at least 2300 SSDF on a PII-300, it is fast, knows a lot both about the middlegame and the endgame, its opening-book is well chosen for its style of play. If you are one of those people who cannot live without extra-features and who care much more about little dinky things such as sound/no sound, changing of colour schemes, 3-D this or that, E.T.'s as Rooks, etc., then you should steer clear of AlexS. And yes, both KK and Larry Kaufman are right about it not having comfortably designed levels or properly set time controls and about it not caring much about preset time in general. There is no clock actually! But I tried it, first calibrating its strength by letting it solve the WAC epd suite. (Forgot to mention, it has a very clear and nice board.) When I found out that at two seconds per move it should play at 2100 (I think it was 2100 but am not quite sure) on my PII-350, then I tried playing against it. I was in for a nasty (and pleasant) surprise. The thing plays excellent chess! I can hold my own in blitz games against IMs quite handily (at FICS when I really tried hard I reached 2300 -- more than 800 games played, and on ICC I am about 2250, but not really trying), but AlexS was more than a handful! Any other experiences with AlexS?? Fernando, you promised to play Alexs after my first posting about it, how do you estimate its strength? Anyone else? Regards, Djordje
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