SPOC: The Chess Master
SPOC (SPOC, the Chess Master) is an early chess program for the IBM PC by Jacques Middlecoff, written in 8086 assembly. SPOC stands for Selective Pruning Optimization Chess, claiming a new algorithm for the game, and was commercially released in 1983 by Silicon Valley based SDL Cypress Software, San Jose, California. In his review, along with the Chess Partner program, chess player and programmer Dave Whitehouse's recommendation was to wait for something better to come along. However, SPOC 2.0 was able to take back moves, to enter positions, and to promote pawns to any piece.
SPOC played the ACM 1985, searching about 300 nodes per second, with a good result versus two Canadian programs where some repetition issues occurred, further losing from the third Canadian entry Phoenix and from CHAOS.
How to play:
Click on the joystick icon in the SPOC: The Chess Master online emulator to see how to control the SPOC: The Chess Master game
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