Chessmaster
by Gameloft,
$19
Reviewed January 2003
If you are Bobby Fischer or Gary Kasparov,
you have Deep Blue or Deep Junior to play with. For the rest
of us, there is Chessmaster. Ported from one of the most
popular chess programs to Palm by Gameloft, Chessmaster for
Palm offers a great learning and practicing opportunity for
people on the go. The handheld version keeps the core of
the desktop Chessmaster series and has stripped all the 3D
visuals to fit in the palm of your hand.
The strength of Chessmaster lies in its
mentoring abilities, even though the game engine is strong
enough to beat the most experienced players. The Mentor option
in this Palm version includes some quick help tips in Quick
Advice, Detailed Advice, Analysis and Teaching, as well as
some lengthy tutorial sessions such as Chess Rules, Chess
Tutor and Chess Rater. The Quick Advice shows you the suggested
next move visually on the chessboard, while the Detailed
Advice gives you more moves in notation. When you use the
Analysis, the engine will look at your current board and
provide you with some intelligent suggestions and the likely
results. The Chess Tutor includes 10 levels ranging from
the Basics to Kings and Pawns, Queens and Rooks, Mating,
Basic and Roots Combos and Sacrifices. Each level is a very
short description of the moves with notations.
In addition, there are also a few dozen
openings you can practice, including many variations of QGD
(Queen’s Gambit Declined), DD (Dutch Defense), SD (Sicilian
Defense) and many more established successful openings. To
help those who need access the notation and stats, you can
choose Learning notation, Advance notation as well as War
Room in the View Options. You also have easy access to view
pieces taken, moves made as well as the coverage for both
sides.
There are several modes you can play
and practice in Chessmaster. Other than the regular Human
vs. Computer, Human vs. Human and Computer vs. Computer,
one of the most interesting and impressive things in this
program is that you can load over 150 classic matches including
Kasparov vs. Deep Thought, Byrne vs. Fischer, Anderssen
vs. Kieseritsky and many more of the greatest chess battles
in history. If you are playing against the computer, you
can also give one of the 16 Personalities to your opponent
with different AI difficulty levels. The Tournament and
Championship games are designed for the vets to sharpen
their skills in epic battles.
The graphics in Chessmaster for Palm are
in the traditional 2D view with a few variations in chess
sets, very easy to see with bright colors. Even without the
3D special visual effects, my 33 MHz Clie
SJ30 still experiences some slow downs in Analysis and
other tutorial functions. Chessmaster supports all Palm OS
devices including OS 5 and grey scale. It takes 900K in memory
and needs 2MB RAM to run.
While it is hard to list every feature
this program can offer, it is rather easy to see that Chessmaster
is for both casual chess players and more serious chess
vets. While some new engines are still learning, this engine
is already matured. If your kids have a Palm PDA, this
would make a great game for them.
Playing Hint and Tips
Explore all the options this game has to
offer. You will find tons of great features.
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