SAITEK RISC 2500 V. 1.04 128K ROM & 2048K RAM
http://www.spacious-mind.com/html/risc_2500_2mb.html
Someone emailed me and asked me the other day what version King my Risc 2500 was, ooops I thought, that's embarrassing as I didn't know. So I took out my Risc which I haven't touched for over a year to check. Well by scrolling left and right with the arrow keys I quickly found out.
Mine is a 1.04, therefore obviously there has to be more than 1 version of King inside a Risc 2500. So what do you all have?
TEST GAME 1 RESULTS - 15TH CENTURY MASTERS
Saitek Risc 2500 is a very interesting computer with a lot options. It has 5 built-in styles as shown above. The above test was played on the EXPERT setting. Generally speaking most people consider the Expert/Offensive setting as the strongest setting. The above test seems to confirm this opinion. But then again here are the results of Test Game 2:
TEST GAME 2 RESULTS - THE TURK
In Test Game 2, the NORMAL setting clearly came out on top and this time the OFFENSIVE setting was clearly last. I think this nicely shows that ALL the settings are interesting and who comes out better mostly depends on the type of opponent you are playing. Which makes all these setting really interesting for human players to test their skill across a chess board on the living room table. Play a defensive opponent today, and tomorrow an aggressive opponent.
SCORE AFTER 2 TEST GAMES
NORMAL setting comes out on top after 2 test games. But this could change very quickly again and is very much dependent on the style of your opponent. Probably this is why the old pre high speed computer tests with fixed evaluated positions were suitable for some computers and not for others. A limited amount of hand picked positions by humans made it tough to find the right balance to suit every computer from the lowest skilled computer to highest skill computer. It just wasn't possible to do back then, because of a lack of suitable technology.
So in a nutshell, its time to embrace some new methods of testing as you continue to enjoy the old methods.
Well Saitek Risc 2500 v 1.04 overall did not score as well as Mephisto Montreaux's test results that Steve posted here:
http://hiarcs.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6835&start=15
Now another thing that makes Risc 2500 interesting for human players besides the 5 built-in style settings, is the ability to select the skill level of your opponent starting from NOVICE and progressing through MODERATE and STRONG to the strongest setting which is EXPERT.
This effectively gives you 20 Style settings that should be suitable for beginners to Master strength.
If this is not enough you can also turn on the EASY setting which removes the computer's ability to think on opponent's time which effectively would give you another 20 style settings under the EASY mode, making it a total of 40 style settings.
But it doesn't ender there either. Turn the HASH off and you now have 80 style settings.
And there is more! Do you want to play SELECTIVE or BRUTE FORCE? You have this option as well, which finally gives you a total of 160 Style settings to experiment with.
What a versatile computer! For curiosity's sake, I am going to stay with Risc 2500 a little while longer and test the NOVICE, MODERATE and STRONG styles as well, just to see if they are truly suitable for novice, moderate and strong players as well.
PS. The settings that I am using are EASY off, HASH on and SELECTIVE on.
So what is your version of RISC 2500?
Best regards,
I have version 1.03 and 1.04. I've heard of a version 1.02 but have never seen/gotten my hands on such a version.
