Mephisto (chess computer)

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The Mephisto Exclusive (here with the module drawer pulled out). At the front in the middle the LCD display module, on the right the basic module with the control panel and on the left the opening module as an optional extension.

Mephisto was the brand name of a series of chess computers from the Munich company Hegener + Glaser (H + G), which held a dominant position in Germany in the 1980s. During this time, different models of Mephisto regularly won the annual world chess championships for microcomputers . The namesake was Mephistopheles , the devil in fist cloth .

history

Mephisto I

The success story begins in 1980 with the Mephisto I model , a black, handy box with the dimensions (L × W × H) 11 cm × 17 cm × 4 cm (see also the photo of Mephisto I under web links ). On the right side there is a keyboard with 17 keys for entering the moves of the human opponent. And on its left side there is a four-digit alphanumeric LCD display for displaying the moves of the computer in the form “E2E4”. The first Mephisto was developed in 1979 on the basis of the 8-bit RCA1802 microprocessor by the then 26-year-old Thomas Nitsche and the 24-year-old Elmar Henne , with the 25-year-old Ossi Weiner contributing the opening library. H + G brought it onto the market at the beginning of August 1980. Because of its shape and color, the device was nicknamed "The Briquette ".

Mephisto II

In December 1981 the first successor model came on the market, Mephisto II , which outwardly hardly differed from the first Mephisto (see also photo of Mephisto II under web links ). However, in contrast to its predecessor, it had twice as much program memory (16  kByte instead of 8 kByte), expanded and more powerful software and a significantly larger opening library (4000 instead of 220 half moves ). In addition, he could display the position evaluation and the train number. At the end of 1981 the clock frequency was almost doubled from 3.5  MHz to 6.1 MHz, which further increased the playing strength. Shortly afterwards, an electronic chessboard the size of a tournament appeared , which signaled the computer moves with the help of 64 light-emitting diodes .

Mephisto III

Shortly before Christmas 1983, the Mephisto III, the first device in the future groundbreaking " Modular Series " (see below), came onto the market. The new model was also characterized by a chess program completely revised by Nitsche and Henne , which at the time was uniquely hardly based on the brute force method and at the time was considered "one of the most intelligent programs in the world".

Modular series

From the turn of the year 1983/84, three electronic chessboards of different sizes appeared to replace the “briquette”. All were identified by three module drawers in which the computer and other modules could be inserted. With the help of 64 reed relays in the magnetic sensor board and magnets in the foot of the chess pieces , the moves on the board were automatically recognized and the annoying move input via the keyboard was eliminated. Furthermore, 64 light-emitting diodes, one in the lower right corner of each field, were used to display the computer moves directly on the board. The three board models differ in their equipment and dimensions. The inexpensive “modular” was made of plastic, measured 35 cm x 30 cm x 3.5 cm and had 3 cm x 3 cm silver and black fields. The “exclusive” chess board was made of precious wood, had 4 cm x 4 cm light brown and dark brown fields (picture) with external dimensions of 41 cm x 41 cm x 4 cm. This was similar to "Munich", with a 5 cm x 5 cm field size and 50 cm x 50 cm x 6 cm having the playing area of ​​a regular tournament board.

Mephisto Exclusive S.

From September 8th to 15th, 1984, an improved version of the Mephisto III program, called Mephisto III-S , was now running on a 16-bit Motorola 68000 microprocessor clocked at 12 MHz and installed on the Exclusive board for the 4th micro- World Cup in Glasgow . Mephisto was able to win the tournament with 5 points from 7 rounds and tied with three other chess computers and was the first microcomputer chess world champion . Since it was also the only one of the four winning devices that was commercially available at the time, Mephisto Exclusive S also won the coveted title of “Commercial World Champion”.

Mephisto Amsterdam

In May 1985 the Briton Richard Lang came into contact with H + G. He had previously written the successful chess program Psion Chess , which had also become ex aequo world champion at the 4th Micro World Cup in Glasgow last year , and has now taken over after the two previous authors Nitsche and Henne had separated from H + G Fortunes of Mephisto. Within a few months up to the 5th Micro World Cup, which took place in Amsterdam from September 5th to 17th, he managed to further improve his software and implement it in the Mephisto Exclusive. His Mephisto Amsterdam , with Ossi Weiner as team boss, dominated the tournament and won it with 22 to 2 points and a long way ahead of all competitors. The winning program from Amsterdam came onto the market shortly afterwards as a module for the 68000 Mephisto chess calculator, which continues to run at 12 MHz.

Mephisto Dallas

A year later, at the 6th Micro World Championship in Dallas , the program, which was further improved by Richard Lang, was used for the first time on a 32-bit microprocessor . It was the Motorola 68020 , which was clocked with a remarkable 28 MHz at the time, while series devices were operated at half the clock frequency, and which clearly won the World Cup with 6 points from seven games.

Mephisto Roma

Also in 1987, at the 7th Micro World Cup in Rome , Mephisto, with similar equipment as in the previous year and the Lang and Weiner team, became world champion again. This time, however, only two companies competed in the commercial group.

Mephisto Almeria

The 8th Micro World Cup took place in 1988 in the southern Spanish port city of Almería . In contrast to its predecessor model Roma, the Mephisto Almeria had been noticeably revised and improved. This included a new operating concept with only six keys (four of which are arrow keys ) instead of the previously usual 18 keys and a 32-digit dot matrix display . In addition to these equipment features, the chess features have also been improved. The opening library of the Almeria contained 60,000 half-moves, which is 20,000 more than the Roma . Almeria was the first to use hash tables as a major innovation . Positions that have already been calculated once with their evaluations are stored in a space-saving manner, which avoids the multiple calculation of identical positions, such as those that appear in the endgame in particular . This leads to a significant increase in playing strength in this phase of the game. Mephisto also won this tournament and became world champion of all (six) classes.

Mephisto Portoroz

The then still Yugoslavia belonging Slovenian seaside resort of Portoroz in 1989 was the venue of the 9th micro-World Cup. Mephisto Portoroz was the only commercial participant and was declared the winner in the manufacturer group on the first day of the World Cup without a fight. There was also a software group in which nine programs competed for the title. This included Mephisto X , a software developed by Lang and Weiner from Almeria , which was identical to that of the Mephisto Portoroz , but ran on a 68030 processor with 36 MHz. Here, too, Mephisto won and became world champion.

Mephisto Lyon

In 1990 the Lang and Weiner team developed the Mephisto Lyon . As an innovation, it contained two different opening libraries. The one with a once again expanded and now particularly broad opening repertoire , which also featured gambit moves and "double-edged" moves. In this way, the game is made varied and particularly interesting for the human opponent. The second was the severely limited "tournament library" where only particularly strong sequels were played. This served to avoid unnecessarily weakening Mephisto when competing against other computers. As with its predecessor, it was also possible to influence the playing style by selecting "solid", "active" or "risk" as well as newly modify the value of the stones, so depending on Gusto playing style between "material oriented" and " positionally ”. For the first time used Lyon with singular extensions a previously only on mainframe computers like Deep Thought used technique of forced variants (where the enemy each is only one sensible continued) are analyzed very deeply. This increased the tactical power of the computer, especially in the middle game .

From November 24th to 29th, 1990, he took part in the 10th Micro World Cup in Lyon . As in the previous year, he was the only one who competed in the group of commercial chess computers, and here received the title again without a fight. In the software group, however, there were eleven competitors. After very interesting and sometimes dramatic games, Mephisto Lyon won and won the world title with a point ahead.

Mephisto Vancouver

1991 saw a change in the Mephisto team. Instead of Ossi Weiner, H + G brought the then 25-year-old Dutch chess player Jeroen Noomen to Richard Lang's side. He supported him with his knowledge of chess and significantly expanded the opening library of Mephisto . It was designed to be extremely wide and varied, with some sharp variants being implemented. For the first time, however, the general skill level could not be increased (see also skill level ).

At the 11th Micro World Cup from May 1 to 11, 1991 in Vancouver , Mephisto was the only participant in the manufacturer group and won this title again without a fight. In the software group, however, this time he was “only” third, one point behind the new world champion Gideon . This was version 9.04 of the Rebel chess program by the Dutch programmer Ed Schröder , who had also worked for H + G since 1985. Ossi Weiner marketed this PC program for H + G as Mephisto Gideon .

skill level

The following table illustrates the increase in the skill level of the different Mephisto models over time. Similar to human chess player, it is common also chess computers, a skill level ( English rating ) in the form of an Elo rating assigned. It should be noted here that Elo numbers for computers are not easily comparable with those of human chess players . The reason is that they are determined almost exclusively through games between computers. Thus, with regard to the absolute size of the valuation numbers, there is no calibration between the chess performance of human master players and that of chess programs. The ratings given here are, as far as possible, taken from the SSDF ranking list (as of July 27, 2017) of the Swedish Chess Computer Association. 

Modell         Jahr   CPU    Elo
I              1980   1802   1225
II             1981   1802   1401
III            1983   1802   1464
Exclusive S    1984  68000   1630
Amsterdam      1985  68000   1829
Dallas         1986  68000   1925
Roma           1987  68020   1931
Almeria        1988  68020   1972
Portoroz       1989  68030   2141
Lyon           1990  68030   2152
Vancouver      1991  68030   2129

More Mephisto models

The Mephisto Academy contains the software from Ed Schröder
  • Mephisto Academy
  • Mephisto Advanced Travel Chess Computer
  • Mephisto Alaska
  • Mephisto America
  • Mephisto America II
  • Mephisto Atlanta
  • Mephisto Avanti
  • Mephisto Beach
  • Mephisto Berlin 68000
  • Mephisto Berlin Professional
  • Mephisto Bistro
  • Mephisto Champion
  • Mephisto Chessbook
  • Mephisto Chess Challenger
  • Mephisto Chess Explorer
  • Mephisto Chess Trainer
  • Mephisto College
  • Mephisto ESB 6000
  • Mephisto Europe
  • Mephisto Europe A
  • Mephisto Excalibur
  • Mephisto Excalibur Glasgow
  • Mephisto Expert Travel Chess
  • Mephisto Explorer Pro
  • Mephisto HG 170
  • Mephisto HG 240
  • Mephisto HG 440
  • Mephisto HG 550
  • Mephisto Junior (sensor)
  • Mephisto Junior (keys)
  • Mephisto Junior Master Chess Computer
  • Mephisto Madison
  • Mephisto Maestro Travel Chess Computer
  • Mephisto Manhattan
  • Mephisto Marco Polo
  • Mephisto Master Chess
  • Mephisto Mega IV
  • My first Mephisto
  • Mephisto Merlin 16K
  • Mephisto MeXs
  • Mephisto Miami
  • Mephisto Micro Travel Chess Computer
  • Mephisto Milano
  • Mephisto Milano Pro
  • Mephisto Mini
  • Mephisto Modena
  • Mephisto Monaco
  • Mephisto Mondial
  • Mephisto Mondial II
  • Mephisto Mondial 68000XL
  • Mephisto Montana
  • Mephisto Monte Carlo
  • Mephisto Monte Carlo IV
  • Mephisto Monte Carlo IV LE
  • Mephisto Montreal 68000
  • Mephisto Montreux (Johan de Koning)
  • Mephisto Mystery
  • Mephisto myth
  • Mephisto Nigel Short
  • Mephisto PC chess board
  • Mephisto Phantom
  • Mephisto Polgar
  • Mephisto Chess Academy
  • Mephisto chess school
  • Mephisto Chess School II
  • Mephisto Super Mondial
  • Mephisto Super Mondial II
  • Mephisto Supermini
  • Mephisto Talking Chess Trainer
  • Mephisto Talking Chess Academy
  • Mephisto Travel Chess

Web links

Commons : Mephisto (Chess computer)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Briquettes for Little Coal in Computerschach und Spiele (CSS), No. 6, 1997, pp. 63–65
  2. ^ Briquettes for small coal in CSS, No. 6, 1997, p. 64
  3. ↑ Modular Series Brochure accessed on November 7, 2017
  4. ↑ Four World Champions - Microcomputer Chess World Championship in Glasgow in CSS, No. 4 + 5, 1984, pp. 7-15
  5. ↑ Mephisto defeated them all - Fifth Microcomputer Chess World Championship in Amsterdam in CSS, No. 5, 1985, p. 9
  6. ↑ Mephisto beat them all - Fifth Microcomputer Chess World Championship in Amsterdam in CSS, No. 5, 1985, pp. 7-13
  7. Jump up ↑ A strong piece - First experiences with the micro-world champion Mephisto-Dallas in CSS, No. 1, 1987, pp. 26-27
  8. ↑ Little participation in micro-WM in CSS, No. 5, 1987, pp. 42–43
  9. ↑ Micro-WM in Rome - A review in CSS, No. 6, 1987, pp. 32–36
  10. ^ Diary of a world championship in CSS, No. 5, 1988, pp. 21–28
  11. ^ A near sensation and tangible scandal in Portoroz in CSS, No. 5, 1989, p. 24
  12. ↑ Almost sensation and tangible scandal in Portoroz in CSS, No. 5, 1989, pp. 24–29
  13. ↑ The first computer IM ? - Frederic Friedel reports on the new Mephisto Lyon in CSS, No. 5, 1989, pp. 24-29
  14. ↑ It almost went wrong - 10th World Microcomputer Chess Championship in Lyon in CSS, No. 1, 1991, pp. 11–15
  15. ↑ More knowledge - more power - A first look at the new Mephisto Vancouver in CSS, No. 5, 1991, pp. 21-25
  16. ^ Putsch of PC programs - more power - Günter Niggemann reports on the micro World Cup in Canada in CSS, No. 3, 1991, pp. 9-17
  17. ↑ Mepisto Gideon Pro accessed on November 16, 2017
  18. ↑ SSDF Rating List as of July 27, 2017, accessed on November 15, 2017
  19. ^ Briquettes for small coal in CSS, No. 6, 1997, p. 63