Richard Lang, the programmer of such famous programs as Psion Chess, and Chess Genius, has released a version of Chess Genius for the Palm computing platform. People (myself included) have been waiting a long time for a decent chess program for their Palm handheld. The fact that Chess Genius is also one of the few programs to beat Garry Kasparov is just icing on the cake. Site after site has heaped praise on this program, and with good reason – it is the only alternative for the serious player who wants to play chess with his/her Palm device.
This program is a model of good software design. It fits in well with the Palm philosophy, in that it is very easy to use, and exceedingly stable. I experienced no crashes of any kind. The board design is also very pleasing to look at, and is definitely better than any other chess program for this platform. Richard Lang has coded the entire user interface in C, and optimized it for speed. So, you can play game in two or three minutes, and the interface has no problems keeping up (Palm IIIx/V equivalent). The user interface also has a full set of graffiti shortcut keys, and hardware buttons are enabled for stepping through a game score, which shows attention to detail.
Setup of positions is easy and intuitive, and once again sets the standard for other programs of this kind. If you need to do something else on your Palm (like check your datebook, for instance), you can switch away to the other application, and then switch back to Genius, and you will be right were you left off (clock ticking and all).
I think that the program could use an infinite analysis setting, and maybe that is in the works for a future version. Although the Palm is probably not the best platform for conducting game analysis :-).
You should also note that this latest version (which is a free update to version 1.1 users) has a PGN save a load facility. PGN games accessed from Genius are stored as memos, so it's easy to transfer games to and from your Palm (just hotsync).
I’ve seen a number of people asking questions about this program on the net. Many of the queries concern playing strength. After playing maybe 40 games on the program, I would estimate that it’s rating is probably around 2000 ELO (Palm IIIx/V equivalent). This is only a rough guess, and your mileage may vary.
Playing strength is probably at it’s highest in the middle game. The opening book of the program is somewhat limited, but it tends to play a wide variety of openings as white. The book is not especially deep, but let’s be honest, you cannot expect miracles from the Palm platform. Likewise, endgame strength is limited by a lack of hash tables (which will probably never be added, due to architectural constraints of the Palm OS). Overall though, this is a very strong program considering that you are running on a 16 Mhz processor with 8M or RAM or less.
The other question that people typically ask is why they would want Chess Genius instead of PocketChess, which was the first chess playing program for the Palm. I think that most of the people reading this page (and that own a Palm) will definitely want Chess Genius. It has a much stronger chess engine, a better board, much better position setup, and a much wider variety of playing levels (easy, sudden death/game in X minutes, mate in N, and average time/move). I thought the two most important factors were presence of the sudden death time controls, and the much stronger engine. Without the former, a chess program is useless to me, and Chess Genius for Palm is the only program that has it.
So the bottom line is that Chess Genius is really the only game in town for the serious player. Richard Lang has produced a quality product, and should be proud of his work.
More information (and additional reviews) can be found at www.chessgenius.com.
Optimizing program operation and playing strength
There are some stronger players out there that will probably be looking for ways to increase the playing strength of this program (there are those that are never satisfied, or that are inveterate tweakers). Well, it turns out that you can add another 50-100 elo points by overclocking your Palm. I OC’d my Palm to 50 Mhz, and mounted a large heatsink, and Peltier cooler to it. Of course, I had to carve a huge hole in the back of my case, and I now need to carry 12 D-cells with me.
Ok, that’s enough joking. I did none of the above :-). While you can overclock your Palm, it is not something that I would recommend. It has the potential for shortening the life of your computer. However, there are some programs that call themselves overclocking utilities, but in reality, all they do is remove wait states from the processor. I think that using one of these has less of a chance of being detrimental to your Palm device than raising the clock speed (which is what most overclocking is about). So I would recommend that you go to www.palmgear.com and check out two programs: Cruise Control and Afterburner. Of the two, Cruise Control is much safer for you to use. While you can get much better performance from Afterburner, the potential for damaging your computer is higher. Both utilities will shorten your battery life.
I take no responsibility for any damage that may result from using an overclocking or wait state rremoval program on your Palm.
Another program that you will want to check out is Atool (www.enteract.com/~mwilber). This free utility allows you to keep your Palm on longer, before it powers off automatically. While you will probably never need to do this when playing blitz games against Chess Genius, it does come in handy when playing slow ones. Atool also tracks battery usage, and engineers and gadget freaks will love it.
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