Author: Moritz Berger
Date: 10:52:47 09/09/98
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On September 09, 1998 at 12:48:21, Ed Schröder wrote: >>I do have some qustions to Ed Schroeder: >>Is Rebel 10 stil compatoble to the Chess 232? > >No. OK, why don't we have a poll here on CCC about how many people are affected by this decision? My Chess232 board is not there to gather dust on my desk, so I clearly don't like this decision. Let's use this forum to take a stand and vote in cyberspace instead with our purse - less painful for Ed if his decision turns out to be controversial and potentially detrimental to his Rebel sales. >>Does Rebel 10 still support the Autoplayer 232? > >No. Wow, that's really bad news! After ChessBase will have again autoplayer compatibility with their new products, Ed choses to make the same MISTAKE like ChessBase did with Fritz 5 (for which he heavily criticized them!). One of the reasons Rebel was kind of acceptable as a DOS program was the fact that it at least supported the autoplayer. Now that this will be deliberately removed, there's one excuse less for buying a non-Windows dinosaur. Rebel clearly addresses expert players and computer chess enthusiasts. While the former feel sorry for the lack of chess board support, the latter audience depends to a high degree on the ability to set up autoplayer machines for testing purposes. If testing becomes impossible this way, nobody will be able to verify the (impressive, in my opinion) strength of Rebel vs. other programs. The one Anand match will not be good enough to claim significant playing strength improvements (after all, Rebel 9 might have scored as well as Rebel 10 did). Only independent testing (read: also auto232 games to produce a significant number of games) qualifies as an indicator of competitive improvements. Do I have to remind everybody on the fatal debate that emerged after Fritz 5 was released without autoplayer and of the silly claims that it really didn't play well? The true motivation of these claims would have been even clearer if everybody (!) would have been able to just let Fritz fight it out for itself on John Doe's machines at home vs. other programs. This verification was not possible and the smear campaign at least irritated some people to a degree that they were not sure if playing strength wasn't a reason *NOT* to buy Fritz (there were several posts about this on r.g.c.c.). Oh yes, and Fritz also defeated Grandmasters en masse at faster time controls, this didn't stop the bad-mouthing about its lacking chess skills. Already I see it coming: People will speculate about the reasons why Rebel isn't available for auto232 matches with other programs any longer. Combined with the fact that it doesn't participate in world micro championships, it almost looks like if it wasn't strong enough to compete. From my experience with an auto232 compatible beta version, I can assure you that REBEL 10 plays well enough to best even the strongest programs around! But you want it to compete on your PC, right? Without autoplayer support, this is not feasible, sorry. Remember, customers do have a choice: Autoplayer support: Genius, Hiarcs, Fritz+Junior+Nimzo engines, Shredder, M-Chess, Crafty (in the works), Rebel 9 (!), you-name-it ... No auto232 support: Rebel 10 Where's the upgrade incentive if Rebel 10 is to be still a DOS program, but without a much cherished and often used feature of all previous releases? What's the economical reasoning behind investing extra work to remove a killer sales feature for loyal customers? Just to take revenge on the SSDF sounds silly... Probably they will not test Rebel without autoplayer, but if they do nothing will be accomplished by this action but to annoy everybody involved. I feel very sad because I was already looking forward to do testing with Rebel 10 on the autoplayer vs. assorted opponents. No new features in Rebel 10 will be good enough to make up for this diminishment of the joy I take in testing computer programs. - As far as I am concerned, I will never ever do manual testing against other programs on tournament level (where Rebel excels!), if only for the reason that I don't have that much time to throw away. Does anybody actually like the political decision to remove auto232 support? Please speak up, maybe we can stop this nonsense! (sorry for the strong words, but I simply don't get it). Moritz
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