Should Computer Chess Club get a dedicated chess computer subforum

[chrisw]

It is not my intention to „manipulate“ a poll.
There are 3 votes:
Yes
No
Don’t know.

IMO this is what democratical votes are about.
Either you vote for yes/no or don’t know.

So you ignore the 65% result ?
With which legitimation to do so ?

You are one of the founders of this forum and of Talkchess forum.
What is the point that legitimates your decision?


Do you really believe people who use dedicated chess computers are interested in 3000+ ELO engines on today’s hardware and GPUs and vice versa ??

Who are you trying to kid?
Yes and No?
Actually yes, followed by a sentence nobody could disagree with. And no, followed by a sentence all would disagree with. Check use of word “only”.

Plus I doubt there are 30 people who want a separate dedicated forum. They haven’t appeared in the posts, just in the biased voting. How could that be?

Is there a decision maker? I would guess you need to win the argument and with biased polls and questionable voting figures, you’ve not done so.

[mclane]

I do apologise when i made something wrong. English is not my mother language.
Maybe i made a mistake in writing wrong words/sentences,

Sorry to interrupt you from more important things.

My idea was that a dedicated chess computer subforum (with vintage software) would be a good idea for CCC.

The idea was NOT to “split” the forum into subgroups but to enhance the forums capabilities by giving it a special room for dedicated history and games, features and tests.

When i was younger i tested dedicated chess computers for “Computer Schach & Spiele”, a german computer Chess Magazin.
I wrote articles about schroeders mm4/5 , kaplan, morsch and many other machines.
I made friendship with richard lang, don daily, Christophe theron, john stanback, marty hirsch, Mark Uniacke… and
To summarise the experience, i thought CCC would profit from having a dedicated subforum.

But of course i am listening your wise advise.
If you say it is not necessary to build a subgroup then i do trust you.

You are one of the pioneers here.
You remember the early years of zx80/81 chess software and dedicated units.

Its up to you.

[chrisw]

I do apologise when i made something wrong. English is not my mother language.
Maybe i made a mistake in writing wrong words/sentences,

Sorry to interrupt you from more important things.

My idea was that a dedicated chess computer subforum (with vintage software) would be a good idea for CCC.

The idea was NOT to “split” the forum into subgroups but to enhance the forums capabilities by giving it a special room for dedicated history and games, features and tests.

When i was younger i tested dedicated chess computers for “Computer Schach & Spiele”, a german computer Chess Magazin.
I wrote articles about schroeders mm4/5 , kaplan, morsch and many other machines.
I made friendship with richard lang, don daily, Christophe theron, john stanback, marty hirsch, Mark Uniacke… and
To summarise the experience, i thought CCC would profit from having a dedicated subforum.

But of course i am listening your wise advise.
If you say it is not necessary to build a subgroup then i do trust you.

You are one of the pioneers here.
You remember the early years of zx80/81 chess software and dedicated units.

Its up to you.

This thread gets sillier by the minute. It’s not up to me.

There’s a special topic thread for new releases, you could make one for early software. My opinion for what’s it’s worth is that you’ve fetishised this early software and dedicated units way over their actual importance/performance. They’re basically not even near TSCP standard and actually extremely primitive, marked only by a mass of marketing BS to justify their huge selling prices (several thousand dollars in some cases) and massive mark ups by the reselling shops. The actual programmers got very little.

[towforce]

This is not how 8-bit chess computers were sold in the day, but being weak is actually a positive attribute. That's why chess.com have a selection of bots which play a weak game. It's the people who spend large sums of money on top-end graphics cards to squeeze out still more chess skill when they're already massively better than the best human whose mental health should be questioned.

A square tower block will beat the pyramids on many specifications: which one gets the most visitors who are there to visit the building, though?

Having said that, a thread for 8-bit chess in the main forum is actually not a bad idea.

[mclane]

There are even 4 Bit machines!
I am doing a tournament with these computers.

Then we have the first consoles that usually did primitive games, even they came with chess modules. Some with external hardware, e g. Philips with wim rens external machine.

https://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/i ... opac_C7010

[mclane]

Chris W. wrote:

This thread gets sillier by the minute. It’s not up to me.

There’s a special topic thread for new releases, you could make one for early software. My opinion for what’s it’s worth is that you’ve fetishised this early software and dedicated units way over their actual importance/performance. They’re basically not even near TSCP standard and actually extremely primitive, marked only by a mass of marketing BS to justify their huge selling prices (several thousand dollars in some cases) and massive mark ups by the reselling shops. The actual programmers got very little.

————
Do you have an idea how much money and resources have been made into commercial dedicated chess computers ?
Until today we have dedicated chess computers.

How many programmers made a good living from selling their engines to commercial companies such as Philips, chafitz, applied concepts, fidelity, scisys, novag, cxg, hanimex, H+G, dgt, millennium, …


To call this as fetish is IMO a complete misunderstanding.

To name a few commercial programmers who sold to this „fetish“:
Wim Rens
Richard lang
David Broughton
Dan + Kathe Spracklen
Ron Nelson
Mike Johnson
David Kittinger
Julio Kaplan
Thomas Nitsche + Elmar Henne
Ulf Rathsmann
Frans Morsch
Ed Schroeder
Johan de Koning
…
Chrilly Donninger



I don’t see anything wrong with this because the customers wanted these products ans sold for them.

[fkarger]

I don't think it's relevant whether it's a fetish or not.

What matters is whether it is beneficial overall for the CCC.

The fact that some people are interested in it speaks in its favor.
What speaks against it is that it could disperse the community more.
These kinds of arguments should be weighed against each other.

[mclane]

The poll is over.
52 people voted.

36 people voted for a dedicated chess computer sub forum.


8 people were against it. 8 did not know how to decide.

IMO an impressive number for such a sub group.

[Harvey Williamson]

8 people were against it. 8 did not know how to decide.

They didn't vote no they voted "No, only new state of the art computerchess software is interesting here"

A much higher number probably if the questions were:

1 Should we have a dedicated sub forum
2 Should we discuss them in the main forum