[IAEP] Chess activities

[mokurai at earthtreasury.org]

On Fri, April 29, 2011 10:08 pm, Yoshiki Ohshima wrote:
> At Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:40:41 +1000,
> Kevin Kirton wrote:
>>
>> Would you need a chess engine though? Obviously you would if you
>> wanted an activity where a player could play against the XO. But a
>> chess engine would be heavy work for the XO wouldn't it?

There are chess engines in a wide range of sizes and competences. The
gnuchess 6.0 tarball is 561K. It can beat most amateur players handily,
which is quite sufficient for teaching the rudiments of the game, and
rather more.

http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/chess/

According to

http://computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/

gnuchess ranks 65th among computer chess programs, with a computer-only
Elo rating of 2681+-33. The highest-ranked program, Houdini 1.5a, has a
rating of 3309+-33. The bottom of their list, ranked 215, is Predateur,
with a rating of 1926+-41.

Former world champion Garry Kasparov had a standard FIDE human-only Elo
rating of 2851 at his peak. There have not been enough human-computer
games under tournament conditions to calibrate the two scales. Deep Blue,
which beat Kasparov in their second match, did not play enough games to be
rated before IBM dismantled it.

>> Wouldn't a simple on-screen chess board with collaboration enabled be
>> a good fit for the XOs?

I see no need to hold back.

>   Just FYI, although it is not good, Etoys comes with chess game last
> time I checked.

+1

> -- Yoshiki
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>


-- 
Edward Mokurai
(默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر
ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/