Zarkov Chess by John Stanback

[Norbert Raimund Leisner]

Hello,

yesterday I received a message by him:

Hi Norbert,

I have no objections to releasing any versions of Zarkov to the public.

John

If you have any further questions, his email-address can be found here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/

Best wishes,
Norbert

[Rebel]

Hello,

yesterday I received a message by him:

Hi Norbert,

I have no objections to releasing any versions of Zarkov to the public.

John

If you have any further questions, his email-address can be found here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/

Best wishes,
Norbert

There are 2 versions of Zarkov in here.

[Vinvin]

Hello,

yesterday I received a message by him:

Hi Norbert,

I have no objections to releasing any versions of Zarkov to the public.

John

If you have any further questions, his email-address can be found here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/

Best wishes,
Norbert

There are 2 versions of Zarkov in here.

And there are 19 different versions tested on the unified rating list :
http://home.scarlet.be/vincentlejeune/r ... 160414.txt

Code: Select all

Zarkov 4.5e      
Zarkov 4.5l-4.5r 
Zarkov 4.5v      
Zarkov 4.5y      
Zarkov 4.67      
Zarkov 4.74      
Zarkov 4.75      
Zarkov 4.77      
Zarkov 4.86      
Zarkov 4.97      
Zarkov 4.99      
Zarkov 5         
Zarkov 6.20      
Zarkov 6.25      
Zarkov 6.33b     
Zarkov 6.36      
Zarkov 6.44      
Zarkov 6.48d     
Zarkov 6.55      

[reflectionofpower]

Hello,

yesterday I received a message by him:

Hi Norbert,

I have no objections to releasing any versions of Zarkov to the public.

John

If you have any further questions, his email-address can be found here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/

Best wishes,
Norbert

I always liked Zarkov's style, very positional AND solid

[fern]

I wonder who can deliver the last Zarkov versions. BTW, the generosity of Ed S., giving away every bit of the great stock of his products, is worthy of a medal. Giveaway merit medal. ..

Fern

[reflectionofpower]

I wonder who can deliver the last Zarkov versions. BTW, the generosity of Ed S., giving away every bit of the great stock of his products, is worthy of a medal. Giveaway merit medal. ..

Fern

Don't forget the trusted person who always was on ICC with Zarkov: Max Harrell. he WOULD have the latest IF he isn't too busy with astronomy.

fin Zarkov

June 11 2016 was his last time on

[fern]

Well, if you know him, ask him...
There is in stock a second Giveaway medal...

Fern

[S.Taylor]

Hello,

yesterday I received a message by him:

Hi Norbert,

I have no objections to releasing any versions of Zarkov to the public.

John

If you have any further questions, his email-address can be found here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/

Best wishes,
Norbert

MANY years ago, I was speaking to Mattew something from Zarkov, and he said that he would send me a free gift of the latest test version (which was on an old floppy disk) if i would in return, play a few games with it, vs my 2 chess computer machines, and send back the results.
I was like a child at the time, but i was well able and willing to play them manually vs Zarkov on an old 386 or 486, bellonging to my father.
In the end, I recieved the Dos program, but i never got around to doing the whole test and my parents moved house and so i never fulfiled my committment, and I've felt guilty ever since!
I recieved something for nothing! (stealing?)
I hope it is forgiven!
And who was this Mattew? is he now a GM?

[BrendanJNorman]

Hello,

yesterday I received a message by him:

Hi Norbert,

I have no objections to releasing any versions of Zarkov to the public.

John

If you have any further questions, his email-address can be found here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/chess/

Best wishes,
Norbert

According to John's website, Frank has a copy of the winboard engine Zarkov 4.5X.

Does anybody know if Frank still has it and (if he does) if it would be possible to release such a beauty into the wild?

Would be awesome to play some games against such a classic engine as well as to match it against some others.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi,

I have all the versions John sent to me.
Indeed versions 4.5e - 4.5z are really interesting.

After all I know John try out different things with newer versions after the 4.5 seria. Most aggressive are the older 4.5x versions. Really wonderful computer chess for self playing games.

If John don't have the older version I can sent him the versions back for a release today.

I wrote it in an other thread.
In my opinion never ... never ... the work by John Stanback should be lost. In my opinion one of the most important computer chess persons. Of course, it is the baby by John but in case of Zarkov ... I have to say that. It's very very important for the computer chess history that John give his work on Zarkov free. This engine never should be lost.

So many very strong chess engines will be forgotten in the next years computerchess ... it's pity. I like the work Günther Simon do here.

BTW:
We lost different talents with clone discussions. A good example is the work in ElChinito. Pascal and Eugenio ... China chess World Champion ... lost a bit the good call ... the programmer try out different things in not freely available test version of ElChinito and I released the wrong version of this engine



Computer chess are in the past often very hard ... better ... to many persons thinking "I am TheKing" ... and to many others give such persons to many attention.

Computerchess today and computerchess in the past is a combination of unorganised persons ... most with good itention but in reality ... all is more and more unorganised.

OK, different other things are really good. But all in all ... in all the years we are working not with full power on much more important points.

Today I am thinking often ...
Better for me is to cancel 30% of the information I have from "my" first time. To many commercials made problems, to many people ... got free versions from commercials ... made problems, again and again same cloners with different names.

Enough!

ZARKOV for free will be great for all.
A muster example for schools ... how strong chess programming was in the first times and from which persons comes the first good and important ideas. Never we should forget our basics.

Best
Frank

Everyone does what they want for their own interest. Each computer chess fora is full of such material.

To read (good example is the Andscacs programmer):
My congrats for your new version ...

Very rarely in computer chess!