TalkChess.com

What got you into computer chess? Battle Chess, a love of programming, and no chess set.

My dad taught me to play chess when I was 10. I was a pretty active player up until I finished high school. I won the high school championship, although I was never very high rated.

Fast forward to the 1980s. I was in grad school and was doing some software consulting work and independent software development on the side. I was aware of some of the early computer chess work and had played around with Gnuchess, Borland's Turbo Chess and a few other programs. I did some research on the topic of chess programming (back in those days, that meant visiting a university library and reading some articles), and wrote a really crappy program of my own in Modula-2 (the UI was pretty decent for that era but the engine was bad). A little later I was starting to teach myself programming for Microsoft Windows, then a very new technology. I got the idea of writing a chess program in C++, mostly to practice my Microsoft coding skills. So that became the first version of Arasan (UI + engine in one package, like its Modula-2 predecessor, although it had no code in common with that).

--Jon

DBTundra wrote: ↑Tue Oct 16, 2018 5:08 am What got you into computer chess?

Chessmaster 3000 and the multiple GM personalities it had.

Psion Chess, Chessmaster 2100 and Mephisto-Europe computer. And those strange program for PDP-11 in my school - with text interface and cryptic old English notation...

The store where my father was sales manager started selling a couple of types of dedicated chess computers.

I got a Commodore VIC 20 and this http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/ ... -II-Chess/ game cartridge when I was 13 years.
I learned some chess basics at the same age from a book.
Later I wrote some "four in a row" program on a C64 at age of 16 and had some lessons about gaming theory in university at age of 22.

Then I lost contact for half of my life before someone at work pointed me to TCEC and chessprogramming scene when I asked him about a post he made at facebooks TCEC page.

Andreas

DBTundra wrote: ↑Tue Oct 16, 2018 5:08 am What got you into computer chess? Battle Chess, a love of programming, and no chess set.

I used to think it was the closest to human thing you could get in machine form.
I have never yet come across another person who felt the same way as me.

I was also crazy over being able to know what a grandmaster would suggest in some positions.

Again, no one EVER felt like me. As far as i know.

Also, i was longing to see world famous combinations that made history, come out of my own bed room (ie my own private room).

Chess Challenger 1,3, Novag 1.6, Mach III, then the software.

DBTundra wrote: ↑Tue Oct 16, 2018 5:08 am What got you into computer chess? Battle Chess, a love of programming, and no chess set.

The ability of computers to outperform humans!

MK1, mkv, Mephisto 1