The Challenge
When evaluating games and measuring the firepower of chess engines, enthusiasts—and why not professionals—of chess rely on Stockfish, an excellent free and open-source resource. A couple of months ago, Yorgos Fountis decided to organize a match between Stockfish level 1 and a rival that many already consider obsolete: Chessmaster 2000, running on an Amstrad CPC 6128 computer from 1985. The final result catches our attention a bit, even with mistakes made and other strange decisions.
When I was younger, I tried to face Chessmaster several times. Then I moved on to Sargon V (which had excellent graphics for the time), and as our readers can imagine, I didn't do well with either. The impressive increase in computer processing power and the historic match between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov accelerated the development of better and more powerful engines, up to current offerings. Which is the best? Some believe it is Komodo 11. Others place Houdini higher. Rybka and Critter also appear, and of course, we cannot forget Stockfish, recently used in a very particular exercise.
The Duel
What's next on the list? A duel through time. Yorgos Fountis prepared an Amstrad CPC 6128 computer from 1985, installed a copy of the old Chessmaster 2000, and faced it against Stockfish level 1. It is estimated that Chessmaster 2000 has an Elo rating ranging between 1,500 and 1,600 points, while Stockfish level 1 reports 1350, although several comments on the Web place it 600 points lower.
Chessmaster 2000 took the victory after 60 moves, but made some mistakes along the way, especially when it exchanged a pawn for a bishop. Had it promoted to queen, the game would have been sealed in its favor three or four moves earlier. To be honest, the game was already over around move 40, however, Stockfish did not give up. I think it would be very interesting to face Stockfish with old chess games at a similar level. Maybe we can learn something from them...
