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Subject: Re: old and very old programs, colossus chess... sargon...

Author: Lenard Spencer

Date: 15:00:33 01/29/01

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On January 28, 2001 at 11:14:58, Fernando Villegas wrote:

>Hi T:
>I also miss Martyn B. and after a long search I located him and I sustained some
>comunication with him about why he left the field. It happened  a couple of
>years ago. He said to me that he just got bored of it and prefered to go to
>checkers field. He thought not enough mone worth the effort was gotten in chess
>programming. In Checkers he produced some very good programs, but BTW I do not
>know if there he got the money he wanted. Nevertheless I insisted: maybe he
>could come back some day. I questioned that and he said "maybe some day. In any
>case I feel I could tweak for the best almost any current chess program. I have
>learned many more tricks for that". So maybe some day we will see another
>Colossus. Yes, Colossus 4 was very good. I runned it in an old Atari and was
>worth the money. And yes, it was better than Colossus X.
>Fernando

Ah, yes, the old guard, I remember them well.  I still have my old Atari 800XL
(a couple of them, in fact) and every now and then I fire up the old programs
just to remember how it feels to actually WIN a game.  Sargon II, Colossus 3 and
 4, Chessmaster 2000, Chess 7.0 (Larry Atkin's program distributed by Odesta),
and several others.  I remember when the Odesta program came out in 1982 it sold
 for US$79, and I got mine in a clearance sale for $20.  Like most all the
programs of the time, fairly decent in middlegame tactics at longer time
controls, but somewhat lacking in the endgame....

Those were the days....



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