Author: Tord Romstad
Date: 10:12:12 02/22/00
Go up one level in this thread
On February 18, 2000 at 23:31:54, James Robertson wrote: >I was wondering if someone could tell where to find out about the strength of >CSTal.... if it could be divorced from a discussion of its programmer, that >would be all the better. I am probably not the right person to answer this question, because like almost everybody else on this message board, my chessplaying abilities are nowhere near those of the top chess programs. However, my personal impression of CSTal is that it is still not quite as strong as the top programs. I never play comp-comp games, so my observations are based only on my own games against the programs. I haven't made any detailed statistics, but I am almost 100% sure my score against CSTal is clearly better than against the other commercial progams (I estimate that I score around 20% against CSTal, and less than 10% against Rebel or Hiarcs). It should be mentioned, however, that I only play fast games (30 minutes or less) against the programs and that I run them on relaively slow hardware (a PPro 200MHz). CSTal profits more from more thinking time and faster processors than its competitors. The style of play of CSTal, however, is much more enjoyable than that of any other program. To me, this is much more important than playing strength. I quit playing serious chess about eight years ago, and now I only play occasionally for my own enjoyment. For this, CSTal is the best choice. If you are a serious chess player, it might be better to buy Fritz or Rebel. For those of us who just want to have fun, CSTal is a better way to spend our money. In the near future, I will probably switch from my current PC to a Macintosh Powerbook. CSTal is probably the only PC program I will miss (in fact, it is the main reason I still have a small Windows partition on my hard disk). Tord
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.