Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 11:24:50 02/16/00
Hi CCC: Just returning from my yearly 15 days in a beach of the central coast of Chile, my country, one populated by many girls in bikinis but no sharks at all, I cannot resist to post some impressions about which is the best stand-alone chess computer ever, at least according to my humble judgement. This is a persuasion I have developed thorough the years each time I go again to the same beach with older children, -they does not anymore ask me to face together with them the waves: they prefer the muscled guys with cooper-color skins- different books but the same chess stuff. To go at once to the core: I am talking of Travel Master Kasparov, and old tiny unit that stroke the shells in the age of dinosaurs or almost: 1991. The little thing got many praises. In Vol.2 N°1 of Computer Chess Reports Larry Kaufman described this way little pretty Travel Master: “Its tactics are near master level models, its positional play is perhaps like alow level expert model and its endgame ...probably still better than any other pocket model...” Very well, although this last part of the sentence probably means nothing as much not many pocket models even existed in 1991 and those that did exist were not far better in endgame technics than Fidelity 7. Nevertheless, if you count master level strength in tactics and some proficiency in positional play you have, in average, a respectable strong machine that besides was gifted with many features. Well done, prettily finished, enough little sized to put it in any coin of a stuffed luggage, it was and still is a kind of ideal machine to go out of the city. Of course I could -and surely you could- take my notebook charged with the top current available software, but also loaded with my files, data, word processors and so and so, almost half of my working life. And I am not brave enough to jeopardize all that in a hotel, a beach, a plane or a car. Are you? So Travel master is the thing to go with. At the 100 bucks or so I payed in 1992 or 1993, its a bargain. Probably the stronger current version cost almost the same or even less. And, boy, it is a pleasure to play it. Strong enough to put you in problems and get you more than once, is not strong enough to crush you all the time. You lose, you win, you draw: is not the perfect kind of score to keep the interest in the game? Yes, I have had many machines, but this piece of plastic that almost does not need energy -only now I have been compelled to change the batteries- get the five stars. I do not imagine anothert one for my next travel to he same beach in february 2001. Fernando
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