Emulator Magic Chess

[Marianna]

Iask because had a Fidelity Chess Challenger in 1979, and used it frequently until it bugged out in 1984 and got tossed. Sadly I dont know the version, as there were at least ten, from ELO 800- >2000 probably at that time. But, still I imagine that many of us had a FCC too,and wonder after playing for years, where it stands in terms of strength. Memory can fool us. It would be fun to play it again.

I do not need more stuff though. Also not interested in reasons why this should not be done, is dumb, or could just be accomplished by getting a used device. Thats not the point. Yes it is still possible to purchase the device, used on eBay. But realistically, you played against a program- Ron Nelsons software built partly on Altair I gather. It stands nearly toe to toe with Steve Wozniak's Apple I in terms of technical advance. I would imagine that the logic was also the basis of other evolutions of product in other devices, and those implentations are also of interest. You can imagine the logic lives as a phylogeny of life, a tree of code, one derived from another, until Stockfish for example, each more impressive than the last.

The Fidelity Chess Challenger device had no idea where the pieces were on the board, except via history. That is, there are no unique chip sensors in each piece. That was the myth and magic. You could believe you were playing against a device that "knew" where they were, almost human. But it had a history that it held in memory. So, if you made a wrong move, or even en passant, it would frequently ERR and you would have to stop. The move tree would then have a flaw and couldn't proceed programmaticaly. Nonetheless despite the flaws it was groundbreaking, the first commercial device of its kind, and beatable by regular players. I liked it a lot.

Today I seek the ghost of this machine. The first modern program with legitimate skills. The physical embodiment of the device was nice, but realistically the software program, as implemented on the web somewhere, would be awesome historically, and widely distributable to the world. I cannot find any version of it online however, without getting into a mess of emulators, forums, and backporting old drivers on new hardware. It's a morass to figure out. It seems insurmountable. But there are better coders than I out there. The spirit must have been captured, and archived somewhere. So I open the question here.

This call is an open post to port the programs FCC1-10, and X, to Javascript, wherever they may be. Sadly I might not be able to do it myself, and am considering organizing an effort to do so publically. It could then be dropped into a web portal, and playable by anyone. If there is a link to that, and it exists already as a code repo, or a binary, then even better. The logic could be rewritten. While fixing the flaws would be another level of effort, and would ruin the historic nature of it, thats part of the gestalt of this effort.

I believe the later Fidelity systems (1980 and beyond) were using the Sargon program written by Kathe and Dan Spraklen. The original Sargon was written in assembly, so I don't think a simple port would be possible.

There is a wonderful emulator called CB Emu which emulates hundreds of the old dedicated chess computers of the 70's through the 90's. Included are pretty much all of the many Fidelity units. Created by Franz Huber. You can get it here: If you have any questions about how to use it, feel free to ask. I've played with dozens of these chess computers, and it's fantastic fun.

I agree, the CB-Emu emulator is very nice. While on that web site, readers might also want to check out the Chess-DOS-VirtualMachine, which has 10 classic chess programs from the days of DOS. (OK, you might as well download the Tasc-Emu emulator while you're at it. :-))

I just played the original Fidelity Chess Challenger yesterday, and I feel like it was stronger than I remembered. My original unit in 1980 did not have much in the way of opening knowledge. I was surprised yesterday by a French Defense. I agree with your desire not to have more stuff, but I had often wished I had kept my old machine. I ultimately picked up one on eBay, and I've been delighted with it. It's great to hear the beeps as I enter the moves into the keypad. I was surprised also by how much I like the chess pieces. I recommend thinking twice about owning this again: it doesn't take up that much room.

i just played the fidelity chess challenger with 7 levels on level 2 against antonio bot 1500 and fidelity smashed antonio i was surprised for level two i thought id be able to handle the level 7 not a chance ,im gonna find out what level old school challenger can get up to on the bots im curious because i looked it up and found some stuff saying the challenger was like 1350 but i think its much stronger

Chess challenger 7 levels are kind of weird. Level 7 is called tournament and restricts its move time to 3 minutes. Level 6 is stronger and will take 6 minutes on average. Level 5 is probably stronger still, it's called 'Postal Chess' and thinks about each move for a day or so.

Is it possible to disable mouse wheel scrolling in AVD? Because I am using apple magic mouse and almost every mouse touch (not click - just touch) acts as click in Emulator and it drives me crazy.

To expand on the accepted answer: While your emulator is running, you should have a narrow panel next to it with buttons for rotating the screen etc. At the bottom of this is an overflow menu which takes you to "extended controls". The Settings page in here contains the fabled "Disable mouse wheel" switch.

In complete information games like chess, a player can always be certain about if and when an opponent cheats only given their own observations of the past and present state of the game because the decisions all players make (where to move a piece), and the board state are always fully public.

Which I could imagine happening through them manipulating hidden information in a way that is against the game's/cards' rules. Such as retrieving a card from their library that does not match the tutor's specifications (the tutors seem to require revealing the retrieved cards however, probably for this reason), or retroactively changing a decision to their advantage when it is revealed to the other player(s) (which might be prevented by making the player provably commit to it by writing their decision down)?

Do such situations actually exist which necessitate that an independent arbiter observes/tracks the game as well, so that evidence of the cheating does not get lost, and the matter of whether or not someone has cheated is adjudicated correctly?

If so, does the arbiter have to watch the entire game from both/all sides and note down every decision, or does the game ensure that they can always correctly reconstruct decisions once a player detects an incongruity, not using past observations?

During play, all printed cards (un-sets excluded, along with online-only cards) are worded in such a way that their effects can be verified by other players. Hackworth's answer goes into more detail here. It's very difficult to prove a negative, but I've never seen a card which was not designed this way.

However, that only guarantees that cards are resolved correctly. The game does not allow players to inspect their opponents deck to ensure that the deck itself is legal. There are several kinds of illegal deck (some could be more easily hidden than others):

The rules of the game, together with the card designs, make sure that cards whose abilities affect the game state or have to fulfill certain criteria will at some point be visible to all players, if only at the end of the game. Some casual (not tournament-legal) game variants that put more emphasis on the social aspect of Magic might have exceptions, such as the Un-sets or certain multiplayer variants, but these are not discussed in the Comprehensive Rules that describe typical tournament formats.

For another example, if you play a card as a 2/2 morph creature and that creature survives until the end of the game, it has to be revealed as the game ends to make sure you were allowed to play it as a morph.

708.9. If a face-down permanent or a face-down component of a merged permanent moves from the battlefield to any other zone, its owner must reveal it to all players as they move it. If a face-down spell moves from the stack to any zone other than the battlefield, its owner must reveal it to all players as they move it. If a player leaves the game, all face-down permanents, face-down components of merged permanents, and face-down spells owned by that player must be revealed to all players. At the end of each game, all face-down permanents, face-down components of merged permanents, and face-down spells must be revealed to all players.

That being said, rules violations both intentional and not do happen, of course. For that reason, each official tournament is required to have a Head Judge, an WotC-accredited person with sufficient knowledge of the game rules and tournament organization. The Head Judge assists players and ensure the orderly conduct of the tournament, including checking allegations of cheating, as described in the Magic Tournament Rules (MTR). The MTR further define the types of information in a game of Magic and how players are required to keep track of them.

This Head Judge requirement, however, is not part of the Comprehensive Rules that govern an individual game of Magic. Any game of Magic can correctly finish without any outside supervision at all. If cheating occurs, then the rules are not to blame, because by definition, they have been broken by the cheater.

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