Author: Komputer Korner
Date: 22:39:31 11/26/98
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On November 26, 1998 at 11:08:48, James T. Walker wrote: >I enjoy all of the reviews here. They help me to decide which programs etc. to >buy or not. I must disagree with one comment on the Item 11. You recommend >that programs should resign when they detect a negative mate(Mate of computer). >I really would not like to see that function. I had an old dedicated computer >(Fidelity I think) that once resigned on me in the face of a "Mate in 2". Of >course I hadn't seen it. I spent almost a half hour trying to find it and never >did. I had to let the computer show me where it was. Imagine today's computers >quiting on a "Mate in 13". >Jim Walker You could always play it out anyway. In MChess 8 you can ask that M-chess resign if it is down by more than 7 pawns in the score so I assume that includes negative mates anyway. But you are right it could be an option. Here is the corrected version of the article. M-Chess Pro 8 Revised article 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 4 th 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 it’s 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: 1) 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. 2) 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. 3) 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. One point about deleting moves in user opening books is warranted. When you delete a move in a user book, this is tantamount to actually deleting the whole variation deeper than the move because the program will not print the rest of the moves nor will it play them. 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 WIN 9X and restarting in MSDOS mode. Of course even if you install under WIN NT 4 in a dual boot machine, you can still boot up in WIN 9X 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 either WIN 9X or Win NTt 4. 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. Some tips: 1) To get the Chess 232 board working, simply click on “Print All Moves”. 2) The limits are a) maximum length of game is 201 moves b) maximum hash tables are 63 Mb c) maximum search depth is 34 ply d) maximum length of variation printing for workbook is 49 moves. 3) If you find that the menus disappear too fast when accessing with the mouse, I would suggest changing the mouse speed to SLOW. This can be done by changing it in Settings/Mouse Speed. 4) The M-Chess book option toggles back and forth to engine book enabled and no engine book enabled. There always is a + sign beside one of the engine books even when the M-Chess Book option is toggled off. This is because the program saves you time by always having the last book toggled on and when you toggle on the M-Chess book then the particular book that has the + toggle will be the one that opens. 5) If you specify a player filter when importing games from a PGN file, you can get a search result of the games of that player. You then can instantly create a user book out of the results of the search. 6) Other moves in the books, which have no codes, and which are NOT played, can be observed by setting "Book"..."Passive/Main Book" and/or "Book"..."Passive/User-Books".) Now for a list of the faults: 1) No icon supplied to run in a DOS box or in a Windows environment. 2) After choosing a menu, the mouse disappears and it is confusing switching from one menu to another when the same problem happens. 3) 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. 4) There is no on screen help. 5) The opening book editor still has a major flaw. In monitor mode, the program doesn’t show it’s 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 10 and TascBase 2.1 also have this problem. 6) The database features are still rudimentary and are falling behind the competitors. Ex: still no search feature except by player and no chess tree. 7) The actual Fischer time control bonus does not show up on the screen. 8) The 4 arrows on the screen beside the board should have a bubble help feature. 9) The home key should have an icon button. 10) 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. 11) There is no game overview feature that divides the game into 10 or more smaller boards. 12)There is no figurine notation used. 13) You can't jump to any move directly in the move list, but there is a Go To Move feature. 14) You can't add variations to the move list. 15) There is no move comment window. 16) There is no flexible resign option, meaning that you can’t set the level at which M-Chess will resign but you can claim a win if Mchess is 7 or more pawns (or equivalent )down. 17) Only 1 game at a time can be deleted. 18) 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. 19) There is no modem to modem play or connection to any internet site. 20) In set up feature, the dialog box just before exiting to the main screen should read "Save setup and exit to main screen." The setup submenu should be named “Setup position”. 21) There is no contempt feature. 22) In the tablebase info only one move is given for each branch in the information window. 23) A maximum of 15 book moves show on the screen and you can’t list the ones that don’t show. 24) 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. 25) The coach/teacher feature is the best coach feature in the business when it works. Even with a very low threshold of .10 of a pawn it will sometimes not come on. I was getting mated in one position and it still didn’t show up. My suggestion is to put .01 of a pawn if you want the coach feature to come up often or experiment with the threshold yourself. 26) The sub section titles within the manual are not shown properly. It is too difficult to find a sub section. 27) The system of storing and recalling a game in the PGN archives is too cumbersome. Rebel 10 has a much better system. 28) There is no intelligent mouse movement of piece feature such as the famous Heumas feature of ChessBase. 29) In the Log of Analysis with Log Extra analysis turned on, M-Chess will sometimes repeat PV lines. 30) The games are not numbered in the PGN archives. 31) There is no direct way of transferring the M-Chess formatted games into pgn. 32) 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. 33) The game header save screen blocks the view of the board. 34) Adding a game to a PGN archive has had the game seemingly inserted at random in the list if you have previously deleted a game in that list. Actually it isn’t random because the PGN standard is at fault here. The standard says that the games will be inserted according to player names alphabetically and dates. 35) Header info such as number of game moves and player ELO is not shown in archive game header list 36) 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. 37) The score evaluation does not show the positional/material score accurately. M-Chess has its own way of presenting the score which isn’t of much use to the user. 38) The MCP8 menu items "standard book", "tournament book", and "variety book" should be renamed to "standard mode", tournament mode", and "variety mode". So where does this leave us with a recommendation? Well with a price of $49.95 U.S., it is the lowest priced top playing engine on the market. The reasons to buy M-Chess Pro 8 are: 1) to obtain the strongest chess playing program against humans at medium time controls. 2) A chess teacher/coach with actual full PV lines 3) The best learning feature on the market 4) Dynamic tablebase access 5) Set program rating and get accurate ratings from results played against the machine 6) Chess 232, Chess Assistant 3.02 and auto 232 compatibility Other good points about the program are: 7) The number of positions calculated is always shown on the screen. 8) M-Chess will save games in it's own format using evaluations that it made in analysis. 9) 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! 10) It has the best database capability for EPD files of any program besides Bookup itself. 11) You can download a PGN file into a user editable opening book. 12) It is the only program that has ShuffleChess as one of the playing modes which can use all the menu functions within that mode. 13) 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. 14) The uneditable program opening books contain a total of over 600,000 moves. 15) You can print the book moves. 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. -- Komputer Korner
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