OPENING BOOK
COLOSSUS has an opening book of about 3000 positions, which it uses to play the first few moves of the game quickly and accurately. Lines vary from 2 ply to 17 ply deep. When there is a choice of book moves at any position, COLOSSUS will choose between them at random, with a slight bias towards the moves which COLOSSUS itself considers best.
RESULTS
COLOSSUS 4.0 has been tested against numerous other home computer chess programs and has beaten them all. In the tests, sixteen games were played on various levels, with an equal number of whites and blacks for each program. One point was awarded for a win, half a point of a draw, no points for a loss. The results of these tests were a follows:-
COLOSSUS 4.0 (Apple II) beat the following programs by:
- Mychess 2.0 - Beyond - CBM 64 - Score: 10:6
- White-Knight Mk12 - BBC Publications - BBC - Score: 11:5
- Sargon III - Hayden - Apple II - Score: 12:4
- Superchess 3.5 - CP Software - Spectrum - Score: 12:4
- White-Knight MK11 - BBC Publications - BBC - Score: 14:2
- Parker Chess - Parker Games - Atari - Score: 14:2
- Cyrus Is Chess - Sinclair - Spectrum - Score: 14:2
- Superchess 3.0 - CP Software - Spectrum - Score: 15:1
- Chess 7.0 - Odesta - Apple II - Score: 16:0
- Sargon II - Hayden - Apple II - Score: 16:0
- Chess - Atari - Atari - Score: 16:0
- Chess - Acornsoft - BBC - Score: 16:0
- Grandmaster - Audiogenic - CBM 64 - Score: 16:0
- Chess - Acornsoft - Electron - Score: 16:0
- Chess - Psion - Spectrum - Score: 16:0
- Master Chess - Mikro-Gen - Spectrum - Score: 16:0
Of course, the results cannot be guaranteed precisely, in every set of sixteen games. In practice they are bound to vary slightly either way, but they do give a very good guide to the relative strengths of the programs.
Excerpts taken from “Commodore 64 COLOSSUS 4” User Manual
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