Ultramega Colossus 4.0 C64 vs Stockfish DD Android bullet

While playing first rapid games between several C64 chess programs, i wanted to conduct an experiment to verify whether extremely unfair time controls could help Colossus of 1985 resist a little bit against Stockfish DD Android.

As expected, the game didn't quickly turn into a miniature and lasted more than 40 moves. Colossus could even promote a pawn to queen just before being checkmated.

The oldie was awarded with 24 hours per game, allowing 500k to 1.5M nodes per move and 6 to 8 plies analysis depth. That's way i wanted to call this config Le Mans with a little sense of humour.

Of course, that definitely required the warp mode on Vice emulator, delivering a C64 running at 53 times faster than the original hardware.

Poor Stockfish was limited to the minimum possible time control of Droidfish GUI. The book was also limited to 5 moves.

Looking at the moves played, it's obvious that from 1985 to 2013, chess programming has progressed much beyond hardware improvements.

A post analysis of Colossus' moves, made by Stockfish at one minute time limit, as seen in below game record, revealed the bare truth that between weak engine and a strong one, only a few moves are different. However even a few moves below average are largely sufficient to push the victim into the darkest "no way out" tunnels which lead nowhere but to absolute death!