Author: Mike Byrne
Date: 20:04:30 01/22/03
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an interesting read, my own chess initiation followed these lines: 1972 - Followed everygame of the Spasski - Fischer match - move by move - games used to be adjourned in those days - so often the game moves ended at 40 , and you had to pick where you left off the next day. There we no PC's then - at least to my knowledge. This may surprising to the younger chess folks in the US, but every game of that match was published in just above US newspaper on the front page with all the moves. That match was huge in the US, especially with the US/Russian theme in the height of the cold war. I was 16 and in high school at the time. Still have my "bookself" chess game made by 3M that I purchased at the time. Nice little folding wood set in a cardboard box. If Fischer didn't go nuts (yes, I think he is mentally unstable - chess genius for sure, but not stable IMO), chess would be a lot bigger today in the US. Fast forward to 1978 - saw an ad or Fidelity Chess Challanger 7 in the WSJ for $99 bucks. I was amazed, purchased one and I have been hooked ever since with computer chess. My current interest now is to replay great games of the past. I also started collecting Chess Informant books - I am now just 5 books away from collecting every volume. I started that 20 years ago - but really didn't make the big push until this past year. One smart thing I did 20 years ago, was to purchased some of the early volumes as a few of them are now out of print. I also have every Chess Informant Game published in CB format with complete Informant annotations - that's cool. Time flies by when reviewing great games of the past. In addition, I am in the process of putting some very nice game collections together in CB format, all the most signifcant games, major tounaments etc over the last 200 years. My favorite chess computer is the wood Mephisto 68030 with Genius 2 running at 33 Mhz pn a 68030 chip. In those days (1992), the 68030 33 Mhz was about as fast as 433(486 chip) 33 Mhz - which were the high end machines at the time time. ICC was totally free for everybody in those days and I used that Mephisto 68030 under the handle of "fitter" - maually playing the moves over the board and then entering them on the computer with a mouse - playing 5 3 games and beating GM's. That was a lot of fun. There were not a lot of computers on ICC back then and GM/IM's were much more willing to play computers on the internet. Of course now, that has all changed. Once the 586-P90's came out , Genius 68030 was no longer competitive. Eventually I migrated to crafty and with Bob Hyatt's help, I was soon able to compile modified versions of crafty on my own. That has always been great enjoyment and without Bob's work and time, I would never have able to do that. I can make modifications, but I can't program and Bob would be the first to tell you I can't program. That's it for memory lane. ;>)
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