Sargon IV

[paul.h.nelson]

Does anyone have any info. on Sargon IV--if and when it will be available, and
how it plays. Please post data to the net.

Paul Nelson
Bell Labs
Naperville, ILL

[Herbert Kanner]

In article <10...@cbnewsd.ATT.COM> pa...@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (paul.h.nelson) writes:
>Does anyone have any info. on Sargon IV--if and when it will be available, and
>how it plays. Please post data to the net.
>

Minimal data follow (apologies for not even saving the lengths of the
games:

I purchased a Sargon IV for the Macintosh last week. Had it play three
games against the Par Excellence Challenger. At average time of 3
min/move, Sargon playing white, and at average time of 1 min/move,
Sargon playting black, Sargon checkmated Challenger in under 30 moves.
At 5 sec/move, Sargon playing white, the game ended up going in
circles, and I declared it a draw, not having the patience to wait for
the machines to so decide. Sargon was running on a Macintosh II.

One weirdity is that you can offer Sargon a draw. I repeatedly tried
this when Sargon was down much material, even when Sargon was on the
verge of being checkmated, and the draw was declined. On the other
hand, you can activate a feature wherein Sargon will resign if it sees
that it's opponent has a forced mate. I have no idea what criteria
must be met in order for it to accept a draw offer.

--
Herb Kanner
Apple Computer, Inc.
{idi,nsc}!apple!kanner
kan...@apple.com

[jovanovic]

Sargon IV has been available now for a while for the Macintosh. I
believe that I have seen a version out for the IBM also. Its chess
play is incredible (IMHO). I haven't been able to beat it yet,
even at the "easiest" levels. It has a massive opening library, and
the Mac II version includes a bunch of endgame examples, not to mention
some 30+ famous Fischer-Spassky, K-K, etc. games. I paid $40 for
the Mac II version, and the IBM version shouldn't be to much more.
Also, with the Mac II version an application called Piece Sculptor
is included, so you can design your own pieces, in 256 colors.
All around, a great game definitely worth the money!!

steve j

[Herbert Kanner]

One more observation on SargonIV. At it's lowest "normal" level: 5
sec per move average (60 moves in 5 min), it had no difficulty with
the K B N vs. K checkmate. The only difference I could observe
between this level and the next higher (15 sec/move) was that at the
lowest level it made a couple of moves with N and/or B within the
first few moves, whereas at the next level and above it stuck to K
moves, taking advantage of opposition, and did not bring up the pieces
until the lone king was on the rail.