Gideon and His Three Hundred 1
- Gideon and His Three Hundred; as in Judges 7:9-23; illustration from a Bible card published by the Providence Lithograph Company, Gideon (Bijbel) from Wikipedia.nl (Dutch)↩︎
Gideon,
a Rebel based series of chess programs developed by Ed Schröder and marketed by TASC and Hegener & Glaser in conjunction with plug-in cards as well as dedicated chess computer modules based on ARM2 RISC processors. The native PC program Mephisto Gideon was developed in cooperation with Hegener & Glaser, and later marketed by Ossi Weiner and various other companies and dealer.
The World Microcomputer Champion and World Champion titles from 1991 and 1992 look a bit ambiguous, since they are not only dedicated to Gideon or the 1992 entry ChessMachine (with a Gideon program), advertised by TASC for the ChessMachine and Hegener & Glaser for the Mephisto RISC modules, but from Ed's perspective also to Rebel itself 1 .
Contents
RISC
Gideon was the name of the first ARM2 RISC version of Rebel, running on a TASC ISA card for an IBM PC. It became third at the WMCCC 1990 in Lyon, and World Microcomputer Champion at the WMCCC 1991 in Vancouver 2 . The further improved Gideon 3.1/32 MHz ChessMachine became World Champion at the WCCC 1992 in Madrid. RISC Gideon was further marketed as PC plug-in ChessMachine by TASC in bundle with The King program by Johan de Koning 3 , and as dedicated chess computer of the Mephisto RISC series by Hegener & Glaser 4 5 .
Description
from Don Beal's WMCCC 1991 report 6:
Written by Ed Schröder (programmer) and Jan Louwman (a strong chess-player and designer of the opening book), both previously known over many years for their Rebel program that run on 6502 pocessors, Gideon is a new program for the ARM-2 RISC CPU and has taken 1.5 years (4000 man-hours) to develop. The evaluation function is complex, incorporating much chess knowledge, and positional scores can range up 1.5 times a Pawn. Gideon includes specialized knowledge for many types of endgame (defined to be when material < 26) such as rook-and-pawn endings. The search techniques include iterative deepening, check extensions and singular extensions. Moves are generated one-at-a-time, rather than all-and-sort.
Mephisto Gideon
The PC program Mephisto Gideon was developed in cooperation with Hegener & Glaser and was Ed's first program running under the MS-DOS operating system, also bundled as Mephisto Advantage with the Saitek PC Auto Chessboard. It was entirely written in C and marketed by Ossi Weiner and other dealer in large quantities 7, while independently Schröder BV kept their own brand name Rebel selling it via their own distribution channels in smaller quantities 8. In 2012, Ed Schröder resurrected Mephisto Gideon Professional as WinBoard and UCI compatible donationware 9 10.
See also
Forum Posts
- New programs released! by Ralf Stephan, rgc, October 10, 1993 » Chess Genius
- Mephisto Gideon Professional (1993) for Winboard and UCI by Ed Schröder, CCC, August 17, 2012
- Q to Ed Schröder-Gideon Pro = Rebel Decade ??? by Gustavo Mallada, CCC, January 28, 2014
External Links
Chess Program
- Mephisto Gideon from Rebel Pure Nostalgica
- ChessMachine from Rebel Pure Nostalgica
- Mephisto Gideon's ICGA Tournaments
- Chessmachine's ICGA Tournaments
- Download Chess Programs hosted by Ed Schröder
- Donationware by Ed Schröder
- Chess by Robert Byrne, New York Times, June 25, 1991 - on Chess Machine Gideon versus Cumulus, WMCCC 1991 11
Misc
References
Don Beal (1991). Report on the 11th World Microcomputer Chess Championship. ICCA Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2↩︎
Ed Schröder - Mephisto Gideon from Schachversand Niggemann↩︎
Mephisto Gideon Professional (1993) for Winboard and UCI by Ed Schröder, CCC, August 17, 2012↩︎
Vancouver 1991 - Chess - Round 2 - Game 1 (ICGA Tournaments)↩︎