A blast from the past: WAXMAN

[Mike S.]

Hi. I would be interested in test results from the resurrected WinBoard engine WAXMAN, which is a new conversion of an old chess program:

http://www.waxman2008.com/waxman.html

I tried to run it in a Windows Vista/Wb2Uci/Fritz 10 environment, but that doesn't seem to work properly. It did work basically, or sometimes, but soon the engine would "freeze" and I had to cancel the task in a process tool, because it wouldn't go away normally. Maybe it works better in Arena or in WinBoard.

The programmer Ivan Bacigal lifts a secret: The name Waxman is based on the fact that it was first created on a DEC VAX computer.

In 1993, I wrote a review about Waxman for the german CSS magazine, and I also included a description of it in the shareware chapter of the book "Schach am PC" which was one of the very few books about computer chess. In that time, I had the impression that Waxman was extra strong in terms of tactics, although maybe positionally crude. On a 486/50 MHz, it scored 4.5-5.5 in a match against the good chess comp Mephisto Polgar which was a respectable result at that time. I do not doubt that Waxman could have won the match with a solid opening book, which it didn't have. - For testing, the new engine should of course be equipped with a standard generic opening book, at least (or better, test with one of the usual opening suites).

[lexdom]

Many thanks to Ivan Bacigal for "resurrecting" his engine. One of the early chess programs to play against, now we can pit it against other engines.

Waxman seems to have problems with Vista. Do you have other systems? I have tested it in XP as a wb and wb2uci with Arena and Winboard GUIs and experienced no problems.