ADINFER-ChessEVAL ©
Dedicated Chess Computers
As an
example, I got the gift of a 286/2x PC with the
card of the Chessmachine 32mhz CM 3.0-3.1 of Ed
Schroder and all J. de Koning programs on it.
Amazingly,
this PC had the unique Fritz Hong Kong
Book made by C de Gorter
for the WCC. In fact, C de Gorter was a beta tester
of Fritz. He received the
original Book from Frans Morsch,
the author of Fritz and
he modified it. It is interesting to know
that they are different of those found
in the
commercial release.
This time, I went to see him with
a clear objective: to buy the TASC version 2.23.
The first discussions went
through e-mails...
then, I
went to see him to finalize the deal.
History of the TASC Version 2.23
| The story of Hans van Mierlo |
|
My question is: what is so different between the 2 versions used by TASC? Indubitably, the Book: more moves are present in the EPROMs of the version 2.23. This Book plays even more sharper lines than the version 2.20.
The
version 2.23 has the World Championship Book
which has never been released for competition
reasons. I will give an example of these differences: I will show that some of the variants of this 2.23 Book are new.
I mean
clearly that the TASC R30/R40 (version 2.2 to
2.5) , the Montreux, the Risc 2500 are not able
to play these
variants:
Grünfeld
1 d4 Pf6 2 c4 g6 3 Pc3 d5 4 Pf3
Lg7 5 Lg5 Pe4 6 cxd5 Pxg5 7 Pxg5 e6 8 Dd2 exd5
9 De3 Kf8 10 Df4 Lf6 11 h4 h6 12
Pxd5.
Budapest gambit with 3 Sg4 and
Se4
watch it:
side variants are also very dangerous
1993 Munchen: TASC R40 version
2.23 versus
Wundermaschine Genius 2.
I suppose that one of the
reasons of the defeat of the TASC R40 was
because of the
Wundermachine faster
microprocessor...
Wundermaschine Genius 2 (ChessEval Collection)
A precision: in the following text, by “WC Book”, I mean the Book that was used in the Match between the Mephisto Wundermaschine and the T ASC R40 2.23.
This was the only time the
EPROMs where used in the R40.
Before the Match Ossi Weiner was
terrified by the Book of C de Gorter and asked
him: “Did
you create a killer book against the Mephisto? “
The reply was: “ No, I just put
more openings in the 2.23 program: it will allow
it to understand and go faster with some
positions”. It means that the Book of C de Gorter would sacrifice one or two pawns to have more time to develop its game? This could be wrong of course, but I suppose that the owners of a R30/R40 will understand what point I am making here...
TASC Version 2.23 versus the
Tournament Machine London 1 d4-Sf6 2 c4-g6 3 Sc3-Lg7 4 e4-d6 o:p>
5 f4-0-0 6 Sf3-c5 7 d5-e6 8
Le2-exd5 9 e5!-dxe5
10 fxe5-Sg4 11 Lg5-Db6 12 Sxd5!
-Dxb2 13 Tb1-Dxa2
14 0-0-Sxe5?!
Here, ends the book of the TASC
v2.23.
The TM London stayed in book
untill move
9 .
Bad move if taking the pawn!
Better is Sc6 for Black.
Four moves later on move 18 ,
the
R30 2.23 tries Dd6 Checkmatt in 7 !!
Another interesting point is to
know why this version has never been released
In 1993, the competition was becoming difficult for the Dedicated Chess Computers: the PC world was finding its way to more powerful microprocessors and more efficient chess programs. The era of the Dedicated Chess Computers was reaching its end. TASC did not release its version 2.23 for economical reasons:
a floppy disk with a strong program was
costing less than 100 Euros without the need of
a Dedicated Chess Computer.
The EPROMs version 2.23 can be used on any R30/R40 with the Smartboard 1 (the SmartBoard version II will not work). |
