Author: Michael Agnos
Date: 13:18:10 10/22/03
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On October 22, 2003 at 12:13:49, George Sobala wrote: >On October 22, 2003 at 05:11:28, Michael Agnos wrote: > > >> >>Now regarding Dr. Sobala's comment; Purple's current offering for PC's called >>"Chess" is just a ghost, if even that, of CSTal-2 with only five levels of play. >> One poster here claimed it is no relation whatsoever and called it a waste of >>money. > >I think it is a relation because there is a CST2 icon in the interface! However >I agree that it is a waste of money (even though I only paid about £5 for it). > >> >>However, the "complete" CSTal-2 is still available from this Canadian firm: >>http://www.globalstarsoftware.com under the name "Tournament Chess." >>Unfortunately, it's missing the feature that allows you to connect to other >>chess servers. > >If it is missing a feature how can you be sure it is the real full program? >Thanks for the link though. Sadly, I can't be sure it is the real full program! :-( I first became aware of CSTal-2 from a now-discontinued Global Star product called "10 Pro Board Games" which I bought to play bridge! I soon became fascinated with the chess program and bridge was forgotten, for now.. ;-) After a thorough search of the Web, I discovered my version of CSTal had a rather minimal interface and went searching for a better version. Alas, the original maker, Oxford Softworks, was sold to Purple Software. Purple did sell the full version for a time. As far as I know, Global Star's "Tournament Chess" is the most "complete" version commercially available. As it turns out, "Tourn. Chess" isn't all that different from my original version. It does have a much prettier and user-friendly interface and works better with Windows XP. But the basic chess engine is the same. Is it worth $20? I'd say yes! I play it much more often than Fritz or Chessmaster, due to its entertaining style. warm regards, Mike p.s. At five minute chess, I get way ahead of CSTal on time, and then it entices me to blunder, I swear! ;-) p.p.s CSTal's original rating of around 2100 was based on running it on older Pentiums at 90 MHz. With my 2.0 GHz Celeron/256 MB, I would expect its rating to be much higher.
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