A real roasting for chestnuts!

Producer: CP Software
Out of Pocket: £9.95 cass, £13.95 disk
Author: Chris Whittington

Clock Chess '89 may be unlikely to trouble Gary Kasparov, but it claims to be 'probably the world's strongest 8-bit chess program' and also to reach 'those parts that other other chess programs cannot'. While such lager ad slogans might cast doubt on its seriousness, an endorsement by UK chess champion Mike Basman, together with a detailed manual suggest it isn't, in fact, a joke.

Originally a PCW disk-based program, the Spectrum game comes in two versions, 48K cassette and +3 disk. Both are inferior to the original PCW version, according to the makers. The 48K game has additional limitations: a smaller opening library and no 3-D display option, in-game text has been cut forcing heavier reliance on the manual, a special problem-solving facility is deleted, no save/load option and the 'Take back move' has been limited to ten moves. While we reviewed the disk version, the 48K game still looks pretty formidable.

Clock Chess is promoted as the most powerful such program around. It claims to have a library of opening moves of 32,000 bytes; understand all the rules of chess (including underpromotion, draw by repetition); intelligently search potential moves, and to have beaten all its potential competitors during its development. Interestingly, during play it will display what moves it's considering, and even predict what your move will be if you want.

At the start of the game you can select Easy play, have the computer Match your thinking time, rigidly limit the computer to a set number of minutes/seconds per turn, play against the clock or have it Supervise two human players. There are also special options to play 'blindfolded' with one or both sides invisible and select how 'desirable' a draw is for the computer. Once in the game you can make the program play your next move; display previous moves; take back moves, and have the game self-play.

The Easy game is refreshingly fast and I even came close to victory, until defeated by the repetition rule. Harder levels require more thinking time and are much more challenging. We tried the game against Colossus 4 Chess - which it is claimed to be superior to. We set both programs 30 seconds thinking time, but the latter program usually took longer and, perhaps because of this, narrowly won. For the beginner the more serious drawback is the lack of any joystick control, other than cursor and, even sillier, no letters/numbers on the board's edges to make obvious the chess notation.

In conclusion this is a respectable addition to the ranks of the chess programs and is worth serious consideration from all enthusiasts. Other gamesplayers should give it a look, but mediocre presentation is unlikely to attract too many new converts.

CP Software
£19.95 disk
Reviewer: Richard Blaine

Clock Chess 89 is, or so the blurb on the back of the box says, the strongest and most versatile chess program yet for the Spectrum series. I can believe it 'cos as a good, though not outstanding, chess player, I found it the equal of many of the dedicated chess computers on the market.

I'm not going to get technical, in my opinion, a chess program like this should be just as accessible to people who are learning to play the game as to people who have been playing for many years. It should be able to adapt to the strength of each player, and offer them a tough - but not impossible - challenge. And Clock Chess 89 certainly succeeds on these points.

You can handicap the computer if you are a beginner, you can make it take the same time to think as you do; or you can set it a thinking limit for anything from five seconds to over 15 minutes. The longer it has to think, the better the move it will come up with. You can also set the program so that both you and the computer have to play a certain number of moves within a set time - usually five minutes. Speed chess at its most cutthroat!

To be honest, I'm a bit hesitant about just listing all the program's features. If I do, it's a boring review; if I don't, you may not get all the information you need. At the risk of being boring, I'm going to give you a good idea of just what you get with Clock Chess 89. You can set up 'mate in x' problems; you can get the computer to analyse positions; you can play blindfold chess; you can tell the computer whether it accepts a draw, and when.

When you are actually playing, you have a wide variety of options. You can make the computer switch sides (useful when you don't want to lose); you can get the program to show what moves it is considering; you can get the computer to play itself; you can get it to take back a move... You can also save it to disk - and if you're a chess buff, that means you can go away and analyse the board for as long as you want, without giving the computer extra time to think. Cunning, huh? But it probably won't help much - it didn't for me.

To be honest, though, the options above would only really be remarkable if they weren't in the program. What matters is the strength of the game the computer plays; and it seems to play very strongly indeed.

My complaints? Well, I only have one, really. When I loaded up, I got a rather garish screen display, with a board that seemed to take up only about a fifth of the screen. The colour choice was so bad - white and black pieces on a yellow and green board - that the white pieces were virtually invisible on the lighter, yellow, squares. It was only after I had played through a few games, and had found that I was getting a headache, that I discovered from the picture on the back of the disk box that there was a 3D option, with a very handsome looking board shown as if you were actually seated at a real chess board.

Overall Clock Chess 89 is an excellent program, well worth getting if you are a serious chess player.