Author: Timothy J. Frohlick
Date: 17:51:06 11/26/01
Go up one level in this thread
On November 26, 2001 at 20:22:56, Dr. Franklin wrote: > > Can someone give me some feedback on the strength of Mchess 8? What type of >sytle does it use? Can it sacrifice for positional reasons? Does it have a >competent endgame, ect, ect, ...any info would be appreciated -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- M-Chess Pro 8 Review by Komputer Korner -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Click here to discuss this article in the Computer-Chess Club. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This program is not for the average tournament player because it is so strong that only masters will be able to appreciate its playing strength. The previous version finished in 4th place out of 34 programs at the 1997 World micro computer chess championship and this version according to IM Larry Kaufman would be able to achieve a GM title if it was allowed to participate in enough norm tournaments. I believe it as watching its play, I can perceive no difference between it and a human GM. It even plays like a human and values initiative and will willingly sacrifice for position. M-Chess seems to have a speculative style that at the same time is very solid. It has an improved and larger opening book and M-Chess is famous for being in book in very deep lines. It is the best learning program in the business and Marty Hirsch the programmer swears that the learning has even been improved. However, for the program to learn you must be at a very high level to test its strength. IM Tom O'Donnell played the previous version a 10 game match at Fischer time controls of 5 5 and Tom lost 9 of the 10 games and drew the other one. It seems that from now on, testing these programs will require longer time controls. Version 7.1 of M-Chess had 12 new features and version 8 has 3 new features. The new features of version 8 are: It has a new Claim Victory feature which allows the user to claim a win if you are up by more than 7 pawns. Only GMs will be able to use this feature. There is a new Set rating feature whereby the user can set any rating he wants for the machine and I have tried this out and it seems to work perfectly. There is now a chess teacher which is optionally set whereby the program will warn the user that he has blundered. The blunder is established by a user set threshold. The teacher will ask you if you want advice and if you say yes it will present the line that the user will now fall into and the line that would have happened if the user had played what the machine thought was the best move. The teacher then asks if the user wants to take back the move. The calculation of ratings has been improved and the learning function is improved but unless you somehow manage to draw the program in at least one game these features won't be enacted. To run M-Chess in DOS with a boot disk you need HIMEM.SYS for up to 63 Mb of hash tables. M-Chess will also run from the DOS prompt with 63Mb of hash tables after shutting down Windows 95/98 and restarting in MS-DOS mode. Of course even if you install under Windows NT 4 in a dualboot machine, you can still boot up in WIN 95/98 and then restart in DOS mode to get the large hash tables. It does not use fast linear memory anymore with the x switch. To refresh the copy protection you must do it from Windows 95/98/NT4. M-Chess Pro 8 takes no prisoners. It is built for the chess wars, human and computer and if strength is what you are after, then strength is what you get. Other good points about M-Chess are: The number of positions calculated is always shown on the screen. M-Chess will save games in it's own format using evaluations that it made in analysis. The auto cycle mode combined with the learning mode at 2 seconds per move can enable a user to set the machine playing itself overnight and when you wake up the machine is a stronger player at that time control by virtue of the fact of having played hundreds of games! It can be called up from within Chess Assistant. It is compatible with the Chess 232 PC Board It has the best database capability for EPD files of any program besides Bookup itself. You can download a PGN file into a user editable opening book. It is the only program that has ShuffleChess as one of the playing modes which can use all the menu functions within that mode. You can offer a draw and resign to the program and the program will give you a rating. However to obtain a rating you must get at least a draw from the program and that is very difficult to do. The uneditable program opening books contain a total of over 600,000 moves. The limits are: maximum length of game is 201 moves maximum hash tables are 63 MB maximum search depth is 34 ply maximum length of variation printing for workbook is 49 moves Now for a list of the faults: No icon supplied to run in a DOS box or in a Windows environment. After choosing a menu, the mouse disappears and it is confusing. Switching from one menu to another same problem. The full menu configuration is not saved when exiting the program and no dialog box appears asking you if you want to save it. Options like monitor mode have to be reset. There is no on-screen help. The opening book editor still has a major flaw. In monitor mode, the program doesn't show its permanent brain thinking and thus you can't get any PV's while editing the book. This is a major flaw when using the opening book editor and it is interesting that Rebel 9 and TascBase 2 also have this problem. The user also can't delete a whole variation in the book. He must delete each individual ply. The next best move feature should not pick a vastly inferior move to the discarded one. There should be a minimum evaluation window in relation to the first move chosen. The database features are still rudimentary and are falling behind the competitors. Ex: still no search feature and no chess tree. The actual Fischer time control bonus does not show up on the screen. When accessing the menus it is too easy to skip a menu that you want to access. Unless swindling characteristics have been built in, when a minus mate occurs (a mate against the program), the program should offer to resign right away and if refused should move instantly. The 4 arrows on the screen beside the board should have their function written on the screen to lessen the learning curve. The home key should have an icon button. The manual does not explain how to connect to the Chess 232 PC Board. There is no menu item for this. I imagine you have to do this from the command line in DOS, but there is no explanation. When importing a PGN game with player header information, the player names should replace the player headings in the top right hand corner of the screen. The M-Chess book option toggles back and forth to enabled and no book enabled. It should be possible to have only the user book loaded. There is no game overview feature that divides the game into 10 or more smaller boards. No figurine notation is used. You can't jump to any move directly in the move list. You can't add variations to the move list. There is no move comment window. There is no flexible resign option. Only 1 game at a time can be deleted. There is no 3D board. Personally I like to play on the 2D boards, but there is no accounting for tastes of users who like the 3D effect. There is no modem to modem play or connection to any internet site. In set up feature, the last menu item should read "Save setup and exit to main screen." The setup submenu should be named "Setup position". There is no contempt feature. In the tablebase info only one move is given for each branch in the information window. A maximum of 15 book moves show on the screen and you can't list the ones that don't show. The copyright notice should tell the user to press enter at the beginning of entering the program. Analysis of multiple games is only possible in a PGN archive. Indeed with the M-Chess proprietary format, no database operations are possible. All database operations are possible with PGN files only. The coach/teacher feature is the best coach feature in the business when it works. Even with a very low threshold it will often not come on. I was getting mated in one position and it still didn't show up. The sub section titles within the manual are not shown properly. It is too difficult to find a sub section. The system of storing and recalling a game in the PGN archives is too cumbersome. Rebel 10 has a much better system. There is no intelligent mouse movement of piece feature such as the famous Heumas feature of ChessBase. In the Log of Analysis, M-Chess will sometimes repeat PV lines. The games are not numbered in the PGN archives. There is no direct way of transferring the M-Chess formatted games into pgn. There is no way of directly changing the header info of PGN games once they have been saved. You must load and save the game again. The game header save screen blocks the view of the board. Adding a game to a PGN archive has had the game inserted at random in the list if you have previously deleted a game in that list. If you store a game in the PGN archive sometimes the program will hang. Header info such as number of game moves and player ELO is not shown in archive game header list. I was able to hang the program by clicking on trade sides and then switching menus. This resulted in a non logical position appearing with the WK at e1; WQ at d1,e2; WR at a5,a1,h1; WB at b7,b8,c8,b5,c1,f1; WN at d7,e8,b1,g1; WP at b3,c2,d2,f2,g2,h2; no black king???!! BQ at d8,f8,c7; BR at a8,h8; BN at c3,e7, g8; BP at a7,f7,g7,h7. M-Chess will access only the directory where M-Chess is installed. It will not access the floppy drive nor any other directory. The program should automatically add the PGN extension when you are creating an archive. There is a bug when logging a setup position to a PGN file. Sometimes the program will put a 9 on the 8th rank if that rank is blank. Certain PGN files will hang the program when accessing the game header. So where does this leave us with a recommendation? Well, its price of $59 U.S. is the same as Rebel 10. The reason to buy M-Chess Pro 8 is to obtain the strongest chess playing program against humans. Of course Rebel 10 (with it's strength against humans being almost on a par with M-Chess Pro 8 and with many more features) gets the nod but again if you want the absolute strongest then M-Chess Pro 8 is for you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Your Move Chess & Games Homepage] [Web Computer Chess Reports Homepage] [What's New] [E-mail Us] [Chess Software] [Stand Alone Chess Computers] [Human vs. Computer Games] [Computer vs. Computer Games] [Computer Rating Lists] [Chess Program Testing] [Computer Chess: The Human Perspective] [Subscriber Feedback] [Computer-Chess Club] [Computer Chess Resource Center] .
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