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Subject: Re: About CSTWhite.Exe version

Author: Moritz Berger

Date: 16:51:50 04/07/98

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On April 07, 1998 at 18:21:46, Fernando Villegas wrote:

>by the way, did you play CSTAL wiht the new engine against G5 or with
>the Paris version?
>Cheers
>Fernando

I tested about 30-40 different CST versions, including the Paris
versions (plural!) and both version that were released afterwards. I
didn't test all versions against Genius, but it was the most reliable
nightmare for CST; even the version which got 50% vs. Rebel 8 lost
horrible vs. Genius 5.

I agree that CST is nice to play against, simply because it plays
different and most of the time not as boring as the rest of the pack.
But didn't you yourself advocate M-Chess for that purpose ;-) ?

Moritz

P.S.:

some things I like about CST

1. HUGE book - largest commercial book of any program I own and CST
plays mostly well enough with it
2. Wildly customizable - I bet nobody understands all those parameters
3. optional detailed search protocol (similar to Crafty's logfiles)
4. Auto232 support
5. sufficient database capabilities
6. Nice 3D board, decent 2D board
7. couple of test suites included
8. Display of many search parameters on screen
9. ELO handicap levels
10. Decent time control options, including Fischer increment etc.
11. It's pretty cheap
12. Multiple lines in a gamescore are possible

what I don't like about it

1. Some parts of the user interface need improvement (e.g. database
search)
2. Some rather serious engine bugs spoil the results vs. computers and
humans
3. Support from Oxford Softworks is not great
4. It's a DOS program, incompatible with Windows NT 4
5. Doesn't work with the TASC smartboard



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