Two Chess Programs Reviewed By James Judge
                   Gnu Chess - I meg STs only
                       Powquatsi - all STs
                 (Amgia Gnu Chess is on PD 624)

Ah, chess - the king's sport, no sorry, that's bungee-jumping. A
game of two halves, sorry, that's snooker. Oh, you know what it is
- the game with sixty four pieces and thirty two squares.  What
with the Short Vs Kasparov thing happening at the Savoy over these
past few weeks, I thought I'd get into the mood and get a chess
book from the library and a couple of PD programs.  After finding
out that most of these 'Umbogunji-Australian Defences' don't work
on the lower levels of the two programs I decided to give up the
idea of trying to be Short (Nigel, I mean) and just played...  and
lost.

POWQUATSI

This program (from here-on referred to as POW) looks simple but
offers quite a range of options from 3D and 2D boards to being
able to edit the board, timers (but no time limit), the option to
swap sides (useful, hehe) and change the board and piece colours.

There seems to be no set opening moves, the computer just analyses
all the viable moves and picks the best for that particular
moment. This does lead to no general all-round strategy from the
computer and the rapid exchanging of pieces. And yes, the normal
losing of the game.

What with the strange strategy of the computer, it always plays
the same move to your same move. Eg if you're white and move 1 e4
it will always reply the same.

You can also take back a move (or moves) and generally mess around
during the course of play. You can also print out the game's moves
if you want to.

Not much to say really except that is looks shoddy and is OK for
the odd game but I've seen plenty of others that are far better.

GNU CHESS

This is a far more professional presentation than POW. With the
screen set in nice light browns and the 2D board taking up two
thirds of the screen. To the left of the board is the host of
icons which control the game from editing the board to stopping
the computer using the opening moves book.

The computer plays in a far more logical way to that of POW which
leads to a far more entertaining game.  It does use some popular
opening moves (Sicilian Defence etc.) and continues with an
overall strategy, changing it when it needs to and not going for
the childish moves of POW.

You can change sides, ask for a hint, take back one or more moves
and edit the board so you can set up the famous last moves of a
game and see how the computer would have handled it.

As well as these general options you can disable the moves book,
which makes it a bit more like POW and change the level from 1 to
10. The levels change the computer's time limit from 60 moves in 5
minutes to 1 move every 10 hours (yes, ten hours.  Useful if you
happen to have a spare computer...).

In the version I've got, two player and modem play are disabled
but in future editions these should be implemented and make the
game even more enjoyable.

You can't print the moves but who would want to? Just play the
game and enjoy it.

Overall a very nice game which is great to play. The computer
plays intelligently and will even impart its wisdom to you.

POW can't even begin to come close to this game but it is only for
the 1 meg owners so 512 owners, upgrade, you don't know what you
are missing!