Steve B wrote:Thats Impossible
but then again ..so was the Mark VI beating the Epsilon
Believe it or not that was just the stock 8 Mhz Star Opal. Of course, Star Opal did lose that match 1.5 to 18.5. I believe the 24 Mhz version plays about 50 points stronger, rather than the strength increase one would normally expect. This is because if the extremely selective search is going to miss something obvious, the 24 Mhz speed seems to only pick up about 50% of those oversights. The Star Opal needs to be set on level WG8 (average 20 minutes per move) to largely eliminate these horrendous oversights. But then, as we have seen from the From Gambit position, the Star Opal can also seem to suffer from "overthinking", since it plays the normal Nf3 on the lower levels.
There were also 3 victories against the Advanced Star Chess, plus the 8 against Express 16K I have mentioned previously. As I say, the result against Express 16K was particularly remarkable, since I have only had my Star Opal defeat my Cavalier once in about 12 encounters. It makes me wonder if the differences between the Express 16K and Cavalier are possibly slightly more than subtle. This is something I can look into when I get the chance. The results achieved by the 8Mhz Star Opal have been:
Advanced Star Chess: +3 / =8 / -9
Express 16K: +8 / =2 / -10
Saitek Cosmos: +0 / =1 / -19
Excalibur Grandmaster: +0 / =2 / -18
Mephisto Miami: +1 / =1 / -18
Novag Amber + 0 / =0 / -20 (so Star Opal does not get one single point against the next model up in the range!)
It also has three games against the Citrine, all lost.
Chess is like painting the Mona Lisa whilst walking through a minefield.