Sargon II Chess

[16KVIC20]

I had Sargon II Chess for my VIC in the 80s, and I also have it for my current VIC now.

Is it just my bad Chess playing, or is Sargon II pretty hard? I think it is quite hard for me to play when displayed on the screen, I prefer the 3D nature of a real board, it helps me to see things more clearly.

I pretty much always stalemate the computer in Sargon II, I don't think I have ever beaten it, although I have beaten my Saitek electronic chess set.

I'm genuinely interested what people think as my 12 year old son is now quite good at Chess, a worthy opponent, in fact I lose sometimes!! I need to dust off the VIC and try him on Sargon II I think.

[beamrider]

What level do you play on? As I recollect it was pretty good - I can't recall beating it. Will have to give it a another try.

[highinfidelity]

I think it is pretty hard indeed.

Although I know the basics, I'm not really a chess player, but I spent many evenings assisting my father while he played against the VIC. The funny thing is that he couldn't really grasp the game on screen, so we had to use a real chessboard and I had to type in his moves and also move the real chess for the VIC. Funny things of the eighties.

However, I remember it was relatively easy for my father to stalemate at level one, and beat the VIC occasionally. At level two, the VIC won most of the times, with my father stalemating occasionally and winning very very sparsely.

I seem to remember that from level 3 onward, the waiting times were so long that we never really managed to go through an entire match, but I figure that at level 6 (top level, if my memory doesn't fail) Sargon might be almost impossible to beat for an average player.

[eslapion]

Sargon II is good to play chess with. Its not good at all to LEARN chess.

For many years I couldn't beat it. I played Chess Titans which comes with windows 7 for quite some time, slowly raising the difficulty level up to 5.

Once I managed to beat Chess Titans at level 5 THEN beating Sargon II was relatively easy at level 0.

I also played the TICT software on the TI-92 Plus calculator (a 68k processor running at 10MHz) and it is quite tough but, of course, it responds faster than Sargon II and is just as unfriendly to new players.

Chessmaster 10 is also great to start from a Newbie status.

[orion70]

So, that's why I never beat S2. It's not that I'm totally stupid, is it?

[highinfidelity]

So, that's why I never beat S2. It's not that I'm totally stupid, is it?

Er... Well... If you put it that way...

Seriously, it seems that Sargon II was very much ahead for its time. There's an interesting page on Wikipedia where its history and success at chess tournaments is described. Seemingly it mostly ended on podium, defeating on occasion a 5 million dollars mainframe machine. There really must be some good A.I. routine in that program!

So no surprise you never beat it. As written earlier, when playing against it with my dad, basically the goal was to stalemate. Should the match end with a stalemate, we knew we had played well. A checkmate was a very rare event, as Sargon II doesn't make "mistakes" as we intend them nor becomes distracted, so it's very very able to detect any potential attack and defuse it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_%28chess%29

[orion70]

The only limitation is that on a VIC-20 at high levels it takes forever to think (not that I play at high levels, though ).
I read in the Wikipedia article that the chess master Mikhail Botvinnik was involved in the development of AI - good credits for Sargon!

[beamrider]

You could always run under Vice in Warp mode. Would be interesting to see how it stacks up against modern day PC offerings.

[eslapion]

...Sargon II doesn't make "mistakes" as we intend them nor becomes distracted, so it's very very able to detect any potential attack and defuse it.

It doesn't make mistakes but when you study it carefully, you realize it has a questionnable system of priority (such as when to do or not to do a pieces exchange) and a lack of strong strategy at low playing levels.

Its not that difficult to defeat. I mate it more than 50% of the time at level 0.

Also, it almost always begins a game by launching its knights and the weaknesses of such an opening are well documented.

You could always run under Vice in Warp mode. Would be interesting to see how it stacks up against modern day PC offerings.

Now that could give quite interesting results.

[16KVIC20]

Thanks for all your replies guys; and sorry for not replying sooner!

I do feel quite a bit better after reading your collective experiences of our "friendly computer's" most famous Chess program. It seems that by stalemating it on a regular basis I was actually doing quite well!

I'm going to fish the VIC out of the loft and set up my 12 year old Chess Grand Master in front of it, to see how he gets on. I find playing him is only slightly easier than Sargon II; that is I do win usually, but with some fair difficulty. I figure I can't be that bad to have taught him so well, but then a proportion of that is also his own work and determination.


To clarify, I usually played Sargon II at the low levels, usually the lowest, but sometimes harder. I do recall stalemating at Level 3 at least once.

When my son has played, I am going to run Sargon II versus Saitek Electronic Chess!

UPDATE:


Well I tried him on level 0. He played two games and was checkmated by the computer both times. He said that he found it very hard, but that he'd like to play it more as he needs something/one hard to play against for when I don't have time.

I haven't tried Sargon II vs Saitek yet.

[16KVIC20]

Saitek Mephisto Vs Sargon II Chess for VIC 20:


Now this was an interesting experiment (well I think so anyway).

I set up the Mephisto to play White, and Sargon II to play Black. I put Sargon II on level 1, and Mephisto on level C2, which equates to just over halfway towards the hardest setting of C8. This was a guess at how to pitch it really.

Anyway, the results:


Sargon II Checkmated Mephisto in 17 moves, using only 4 pieces, 2 of which were pawns captured by Mephisto. Sargon II was having a pretty good think about it, I think the whole game lasted a little over 20 minutes.

Although this wasn't really all that scientific as testing goes, I think this indicates that Sargon II certainly is a bit of a tough cookie. I might try it again on level C6 or so, that is supposed to have a thinking time of 5 minutes. I'm wondering should I leave Sargon II in level 1, or notch it up one? Maybe I'll leave it as is, and see what happens, then notch it up if it should be defeated.

That's it, I'll leave Sargon II in level one and move Mephisto up the levels to see at which point it can Checkmate Sargon, if at all!

As I was doing all this, I was rather half heartedly thinking what my moves would have been. All I'll say is they were nothing like either computer! I'll leave it at that!

[highinfidelity]

Thanks, interesting experiment and interesting reading!

My bet is that Saitek Mephisto will not be able to defeat Sargon II by rising its level. It will stalemate at its best. This is because I believe that Sargon II has more built-in A.I. I'm curious to see if I guessed it right.

Did you perhaps took note wether the games tend to repeat themselves (those that begin with the same first move, that is) or not? Machines with some at least basic A.I. should not tend to repeat the same games over and over.

[16KVIC20]

Hi highinfidelity, thanks for your reply, and for your interest.

I have only played 1 match in this way so far, so it could be just luck; except for the way that Sargon absolutely tied the Mephisto up in knots.

I also think it will manage Stalemate at best. I shall certainly be doing more experiments and I shall post my findings here. When, I've tried Mephisto I may see how Sargon II copes against the Chess that came with Windows.

[orion70]

I'm also interested in these comparisons. Thanks for doing them. It would be even more interesting if you could attach a list of the moves, so that everyone could follow Sargon's strategy and maybe learn from him (it?).

[16KVIC20]

I'm also interested in these comparisons. Thanks for doing them. It would be even more interesting if you could attach a list of the moves, so that everyone could follow Sargon's strategy and maybe learn from him (it?).

Well I did think about that just before I switched the VIC off. In the morning hopefully I'll have time for a rematch at a higher level. I'll write the moves down and post them.

Glad you're liking the comparisons! The Mephisto is only meant for up to intermediate players really, but surely with Sargon II on level 1 they should cross over somewhere along the line?

If Mephisto can out think Sargon (I don't think it can) I wonder what we would see first, a stale mate or a check mate?

I must say that so far I am very impressed with the VIC's 30 + year old program!