Ode to Gandalf 6

[Swifty357]

I registered the other day so I could respond to a post about LChess. Then I decided to start my own topic because I didnt want to hijack his topic. But I just wanted to see if anyone remembers Gandalf and Lokasoft Chess Partner Gui? Gandalf has one of the most human styles of any engine. Gandalf had a bunch of chess knowledge programmed in, a positional style yet also very aggressive, with a very selective search compared to its competitors . Also came with a huge opening book with over 2 million positions. Chesspartner Gui is great in my opinion. with pgn database functionality, a bunch of opening book making tools, fics/icc frontend, with a engine research tool for engine vs engine tourneys. Also works well with uci and wb engines. A bunch of analysis, playing, training options. Its the reason I havent updated my windows os, i would be gutted if Gandalf 6 stopped working. I have a link were a guy fed a bunch of engines moves from Fischer's 60 memorable games. Gandalf 6 won with 69 percent matching rate of Fischers moves.

https://chessengines.wordpress.com/2013 ... gandalf-6/


I also like Rebel(now ProDeo) and Smarthink which are both free of charge updates to the old commercial lokasoft programs. Pro Deo has so many cool options especially 1.85 and works great as a winboard engine in Chesspartner. Chess Tiger was awesome too. I also had Ktulu 8, i wished lokasoft still sold these programs because I put off getting Ktulu9 and now its out of print like all the old products. I think Chess Partner 6 with LCHess is the only product still being sold. Which is a shame because I would buy Ktulu 9 in a heartbeat. Anybody else like these engines.

[mclane]

Yes I do remember Gandalf by steen suurballe and Dan wolf.
When I remember it right steen appeared at the championship in Munich, was it 1993 ?! with Gandalf and when I remember it right kicked fritz out of competition.

Steen looked like James Bond on the tournament when he told us:
"my name is suurballe, steen suurballe. "

Also later gandalf was always good for a surprising win in the top field, e.g. I remember when I operated chess tiger at the paderborn tournament, tiger was very short winning the tournament , when Gandalf killed tiger in a king attack.

http://www.thorstenczub.de/Paderborn.html

Gandalf knew about king attacks statically in the evaluation function.
The knowledge was so good that it could open a closed position when no search could see the attack, but Gandalf saw it and openend the position and the attack came through.

A pity the development did not continue.
I do hope that steen and Dan are ok and have a nice life.
I liked them.
Nice people.

[Dann Corbit]

I have all of those engines.
You have to like an engine with a Lord of the Rings reference in the name.

[Swifty357]

What a cool story Thorsten Czub. Thanks for sharing that history.

And I agree Dann Corbit the LOTR name is great. Some of the logos for Arena for Gandalf are awesome in my opinion. I dont know who made them but they did a good job. I have the update that allows personality editor to change Gandalfs values to make different playing styles, but I have always been to afraid to go changing those things for fear I couldnt get it back to default if I messed up something. I dont know a lot about how engines work, just been a fan/user of chess engines since Chessmaster 5000.

[Norbert Raimund Leisner]

look here: http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=c ... e_gui_list (section Lokasoft)

Ktulu 9 is out of stock - version from May 2009:
it runs neither with Windows 7 SP1 win32 nor x64 - just after a double mouse-click on the Ktulu.exe-file the application is immediately closed!
(with my former OS Windows XP SP3-32 bit I had no problems to execute it correctly)

I have it tried out with Arena-ChessGUI-WinBoard Interface
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=c ... pport_list

chess logos ~ you will find the collection here:
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=c ... logos_list

Lokasoft current chess software http://shop.lokasoft.nl/section.php/8/1

Best wishes,
Norbert

[Swifty357]

thanks for the links Norbert. Well thats to bad that ktulu 9 needs older windows os.

[carldaman]

Ktulu 9 actually runs fine on Win 7 64-bit here.

look here: http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=c ... e_gui_list (section Lokasoft)

Ktulu 9 is out of stock - version from May 2009:
it runs neither with Windows 7 SP1 win32 nor x64 - just after a double mouse-click on the Ktulu.exe-file the application is immediately closed!
(with my former OS Windows XP SP3-32 bit I had no problems to execute it correctly)

I have it tried out with Arena-ChessGUI-WinBoard Interface
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=c ... pport_list

chess logos ~ you will find the collection here:
http://computer-chess.org/doku.php?id=c ... logos_list

Lokasoft current chess software http://shop.lokasoft.nl/section.php/8/1

Best wishes,
Norbert

[supersharp77]

I registered the other day so I could respond to a post about LChess. Then I decided to start my own topic because I didnt want to hijack his topic. But I just wanted to see if anyone remembers Gandalf and Lokasoft Chess Partner Gui? Gandalf has one of the most human styles of any engine. Gandalf had a bunch of chess knowledge programmed in, a positional style yet also very aggressive, with a very selective search compared to its competitors . Also came with a huge opening book with over 2 million positions. Chesspartner Gui is great in my opinion. with pgn database functionality, a bunch of opening book making tools, fics/icc frontend, with a engine research tool for engine vs engine tourneys. Also works well with uci and wb engines. A bunch of analysis, playing, training options. Its the reason I havent updated my windows os, i would be gutted if Gandalf 6 stopped working. I have a link were a guy fed a bunch of engines moves from Fischer's 60 memorable games. Gandalf 6 won with 69 percent matching rate of Fischers moves.I also like Rebel(now ProDeo) and Smarthink which are both free of charge updates to the old commercial lokasoft programs. https://chessengines.wordpress.com/2013 ... gandalf-6/

Hey Brandon.....I agree with your opinion 100% concerning Lokasoft and the Lchess engine.....I had been using Fritz gui for the most part because of all the Fritz engines (chessbase) Fritz 6 Fritz 5.32 Deep Fritz... Doctor etc and the Swiss tourneys and KO tourneys but some engines don't work 100% in that Gui.....I wonder why chessbase never added a "pure winboard" interface.....with Lokasoft gui it is so.....so easy to add winboard or Uci engines....engines that work so so or not at all in Fritz work GREAT in Lokasoft.....obscure engines work great in Lokasoft......Chessmaster (King 350 323....332..etc) seem to play stronger in Lokasoft......with the ERT you can play 3-4 tournaments all at once on different screens with no problems! You can save yourself quite a bit of time!! Only engine not working is Muriel (KDL chess v0.7) ...and Hiarcs WCSC 14 (which does not seem to work outside of the Hiarcs gui for some reason)......Ktulu 9 is still floating around on various places on the net......Gandalf 4.32 was one of the toughest engines to track down Smarthink 1.01 Moscow is not around anywhere so far..
..AR

[Norbert Raimund Leisner]

After a complete new installation (MSI Installer) with serial number + my name the problem still remains with Ktulu 7-8-9, but older versions e.g. Ktulu 3.5 wb cause no problems - last working Ktulu edition for my OS is 5.2.

Other Lokasoft products like Chess Tiger 2007, Rebel 12 or SmarThink 1.20 show not such a strange behaviour.

Norbert

[Dayffd]

I still have all of the engines mentioned in this thread. Gandalf 6 runs fine, but unfortunately it's rating on my list has been taking a beating from some of these newer engines. All of the Ktulu series run fine here up to and including Ktulu 9; in fact it just won a nicely played 4 minute game against Fritz 11 SE. One of the Tiger engines, it may be Tiger 2004, I've had problems with as it does not have a uci option, but so far none of the others, I think. I have Windows 7, and use a Fritz GUI; often enough Fritz 12 which seems rather prone to crashing, and Fritz 11 which is a lot more stable but occasionally has problems with a 64 bit engine. Fritz 13, 14 and 15 GUIs I don't care for as there is no field to insert an elo rating into when running engine tournaments, unless I maybe I need to reinstall those GUIs. But if that were the case I would question why this is the same with those lst three.