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Subject: Review of ALEXS by Larry Kaufman

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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