C64 Revisited: Chessmaster 2100 and Colossus 4 lead after round 5

In pursuit on my childhood memories with C64, i'm back in time to 80's via software emulation. It feels crazy but still fun to find ways (uh!) to make these fossiles play chess the way we want. Most of them don't have any time control but just levels. It's just hard to establish equal time controls between these oldies.

One may pass a week with these old chess programs to understand better how it's comfortable to call dozens of engines into Arena on a PC and just watch the games automatically played with all moves recorded into PGNs or just the standings once a day!

Now, my insanity counter shows 220 games manually played by 23 programs.

After my last post, i've found and introduced two additional programs i was not aware of before: Coffee House Chess Monster and Schach64. The latter is probably the weakest chess program ever released. It's a kamikaze built to make you feel like Magnus Carlsen.

While adding two new programs, i disqualified Cesar which crashed all the time and redid the pairings to restart from scrath using already played games when necessary.

Thanks to time saving smart swiss system, there's almost no useless game played and even after 5 rounds, results are speaking: Colossus 4 and Chessmaster 2100 rule and will be fighting for the C64 crown. Their predecessors Colossus 2 and Chessmaster 2000 perform well too and cause serious harm to other candidates like MyChess II, Cyrus II, Sargon III and Chess 7.5. 

You better click on below chart to see the standings and sorry for the optical trouble caused.

As expected, the ranking is different here, due to various factors like different active chess (30 sec/move) levels i selected for some programs, disabling deep thinking option and the fact that i try to increase games between programs of closer strength.

ELO performances are given without calibration for the moment. I've just fixed the leader Chessmaster 2100 to 1600, though i feel it's too much. I think it plays around 1400. But the ranking matters more than  calibration in closed tournaments. One can add or remove as much elo as he wants to list anyways.

The experiment is not over yet due to still wide elo error margins. Maybe it will be better to start 3 divisions after round-7, given that the swiss pairing matrix will probably reach its limit soon.

The results by rounds can be found below and a PGN collection of the games will be soon uploaded to box.com.

ROUND-1:

Cluster-High

Colossus 4.0 - MyChess II: 2½-1½ (=110)

Chessmaster 2100 - Sargon III: 4-0 (1111)

Chessmaster 2000 - Cyrus II: 2-2 (0011)

Chess 7.5 - Chess 7.0: 4-0 (1111)

Falken Schach - Colossus 2.0: 1-3 (0010)

Grand Master - Coffee House CM: 1-3 (==00)

Cluster-Low

Hypra Chess - Caissa 5.2: 2½-1½ (=110)

Master Chess - Schach64: 3-1 (=1=1)

Battle Chess - Sargon II: ½-3½ (0=00)

Kempelen 2.0 - Petchess 4000: 4-0 (1111)

Super Schack - Grobi 1.0: 2-2 (0110)

Microchess 3: unpaired

ROUND-2:

Cluster-High

Colossus 4.0 - Chessmaster 2100: 2½-1½ (01=1)

Chess 7.5 - Colossus 2.0: ½-3½ (000=)

Chessmaster 2000 - Coffee House CM: 3-1 (0111)

MyChess II - Cyrus II: 3½-½ (11=1)

Sargon III - Chess 7.0: 1½-2½ (10=0)

Falken Schach - Grand Master: 2½-1½ (011=)

Cluster-Low

Hypra Chess - Sargon II: 2-2 (01==)

Kempelen 2.0 - Master Chess: 3-1 (1==1)

Super Schack - Microchess 3: 4-0 (1111)

Caissa 5.2 - Grobi 1.0: 3-1 (0111)

Battle Chess - Petchess 4000: 2½-1½ (10=1)

Schach64: unpaired

ROUND-3:

Colossus 4.0 - Colossus 2.0: 2½-1½ (=011)

Chessmaster 2100 - Chessmaster 2000: 2-2 (0101)

MyChess II - Chess 7.5: 3½-½ (1=11)

Chess 7.0 - Coffee House CM: ½-3½ (000=)

Falken Schach - Kempelen 2.0: 2-2 (0=1=)

Cyrus II - Sargon II: 4-0 (1111)

Hypra Chess - Super Schack: 2-2 (=01=)

Sargon III - Grand Master: 4-0 (1111)

Caissa 5.2 - Battle Chess: 2-2 (==01)

Grobi 1.0 - Master Chess: 4-0 (1111)

Microchess 3 - Schach64: 4-0 (1111)

Petchess 4000: unpaired

ROUND-4:

Colossus 4.0 - Chessmaster 2000: 2½-1½ (1=10)

MyChess II - Chessmaster 2100: ½-3½ (=000)

Cyrus II - Colossus 2.0: 1-3 (0001)

Chess 7.5 - Coffee House CM: 2-2 (0101)

Sargon III - Falken Schach: 3½-½ (111=)

Sargon II - Superschack: 2-2 (1100)

Chess 7.0 - Hypra Chess: 3-1 (0111)

Caissa 5.2 - Kempelen 2.0: 2-2 (1=0=)

Grandmaster - Grobi 1.0: 3½-½ (1=11)

Battle Chess - Microchess 3: 4-0 (1111)

Petchess 4000 - Schach64: 3½-½ (1=11)

Master Chess: unpaired

ROUND-5:

Chessmaster 2100 - Colossus 2.0: 3-1 (1==1)

Colossus 4.0 - Cyrus II: 3½-½ (11=1)

MyChess II - Chessmaster 2000: 1-3 (1000)

Sargon III - Chess 7.5: 3-1 (0111)

Falken Schach - Coffee House CM: 3½-½ (11=1)

Chess 7.0 - Grand Master: 3½-½ (1=11)

Caissa 5.2 - Sargon II: 1-3 (0=0=)

Hypra Chess - Kempelen 2.0: 2½-1½ (1=01)

Super Schak-Petchess 4000: 3-1 (11==)

Microchess 3 - Master Chess: 3-1 (1101)

Battle Chess - Schach54: 4-0 (1111)

Grobi 1.0: unpaired

ROUND-6:

Pairings shown above, on standings chart, marked red.

Tournament conditions:

* Performance elo based Swiss pairing & ranking

* 4 games per pairing

* 30 seconds/move or closest level setting

* Ponder disabled or prevented by pausing the emulator.