Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 15:56:54 12/15/98
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Hi: You asked me in an email some thoughts about CSTAL and I gladly do it here just in case anybody else could be interested. Besides some pals here were so disappointed with that program that offered a trade of it. Well, this is my view about CSTAL in few words: if you are one of those amateurs that love to play computer Vs computers and expend almost all his chess computing time doing that, surely CSTAL is not for you. It was not programmed for that kind of chess and so you will find it weak. But if you are like me and purchase programs for the old, incredible absurd idea to play againts them, CSTAl is worthy the 50 bucks it cost. Maybe is not the strongest even againts human kind, BUT his wild play, his daring attacks, his weird moves finally create such a pressure in the board -not in the post mortem desk where is so easy to find refutations- that sooner or later, if you do not win the game very quick, you will ve overwheelmed. It seems to me that the CSTAL algorythms are not the usual maximin based in what is deemed best in opurely chessic sense, but lines are chosen according to its degree of pressure, even if threretically they are wrong. At last, many games are won and lost along wrong lines. Not always you can find the refutation of a fake attack, specially if you get tired after rejecting one after another. So Cstal keeps you over your toes and so it is an exciting game you always can get from it. Cheers Fernando
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