Kasparov's Gambit, or simply Gambit, is a chess playing computer program created by Heuristic Software and published by Electronic Arts in 1993 based on Socrates II, the only winner of the North American Computer Chess Championship running on a common microcomputer. It was designed for MS-DOS while Garry Kasparov reigned as world champion, whose involvement and support was its key allure. A Macintosh version was planned to be released in 1995.
History
Julio Kaplan, chessplayer, computer programmer, and owner of the company 'Heuristic Software', first developed Heuristic Alpha in 1990–91. The original version evolved into Socrates with the help of other chess players and programmers including Larry Kaufman and Don Dailey, who, later, were also developers of Kasparov's Gambit.
Improvements to Socrates were reflected in a version called Titan, renamed for competition as Socrates II, the most successful of the series winning the 1993 ACM International Chess Championship. During the course of the championship Socrates II, which was running on a stock 486 PC, defeated opponents with purpose-built hardware and software for playing chess, including HiTech and Cray Blitz.
Electronic Arts purchased Socrates II and hired its creators to build a new product, Kasparov's Gambit, including Kasparov as consultant and brand. It was the company's effort to enter the chess programs market, dominated at the time by Chessmaster 3000 and Blitz. In 1993 it went on sale, but contained a number of bugs, so was patched at the end of that year. The patched version ran at about 75% of the speed of Socrates II which was quite an achievement considering the whole functionality of the software was sharing the same computer resources.
In 1993, it competed in the Harvard Cup (six humans versus six programs) facing grandmasters who had ratings ranging from 2515 to 2625 ELO. It finished the competition in 12th and last place. Grandmasters took the first five places and another Socrates derivation - Socrates Exp - was the best program finishing in 6th place.
According to team developer Eric Schiller, a Windows version was planned by Electronic Arts, but was never finished. Electronic Arts had earlier produced the chess variant Archon: The Light and the Dark (1983), and later followed up with Battle Chess II: Chinese Chess (2002) and Jamdat Mobile's Kasparov Chessmate (2003).
Reception
Computer Gaming World in 1993 approved of Kasparov's Gambits "stunning" SVGA graphics, Socrates II engine, and coaching features, concluding that it was "above any PC game on the market". It was a runner-up for the magazine's Strategy Game of the Year award in June 1994, losing to Master of Orion. The editors called Kasparov's Gambit "beautifully crafted", a "great teacher" and "a chess game for the 'rest of us.'" It holds the 145th place in Computer Gaming Worlds 1996 list of 150 Best Games of All Time.
Features
Gambit was intended to have the capabilities of a champion level software and a teaching tool for a wide range of player levels. It was Electronic Arts' first use of windowed video showing digitized images, video and voice of champ Garry Kasparov giving advice and commenting on player moves.
Primary features include: Interactive tutorial with video-help by Garry Kasparov An inline glossary of chess terms A library of 500 famous games played by past world champions An auxiliary graphical chessboard showing the computer's analysis while playing or reviewing moves An interactive move list An analysis text box, showing move's elapsed time, depth, score of the best evaluated line and number of positions seek Multiple computer playing styles allowing creation and customization of computer opponents A coach window including the moves played and comments about openings and advice, sometimes showing videos of Kasparov
Rating
The human strength rating is calculated using Elo formula with the included personalities and the player's own performance, going from 800 to 2800 points. New players get a customizable 800 Elo, which changes according to the total number of games played, opponents' relative strength, and game results.
Creation of personalities enables five adjustable characteristics in percentage (0-100%)—strength, orthodoxy, creativity, focus and aggressiveness—which define, besides its style, its Elo rating. User Elo is calculated according to Gambit's universe of electronic players and the user, and so do not match rankings in real world. Instead this feature was designed to provide a useful way to measure the player's strength and progress against Gambit.