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Sargon (Computer)

Number of games in database: 12
Years covered: 1978 to 2001
Overall record: +2 -8 =2 (25.0%)*
   * Overall winning percentage = (wins+draws/2) / total games.

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SARGON (COMPUTER)
(born 1977) United States of America

[what is this?]

Its programmers are Kathleen and Dan Spracklen. Gary Shannon, brother of Kathleen, rewrote a port of Sargon II for the TRS-80 that runs on the Apple II. Sargon III uses a capture search algorithm instead of its original exchange evaluator.

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Sa...

Wikipedia article: Sargon (chess)

Last updated: 2018-11-28 06:20:38

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 page 1 of 1; 12 games  PGN Download 
Game  ResultMoves YearEvent/LocaleOpening
1. Mike vs Sargon ½-½501978ACMB00 Uncommon King's Pawn Opening
2. Sargon vs Awit  1-0661978ACMB20 Sicilian
3. Euwe vs Sargon 1-0511979Offhand gameB06 Robatsch
4. Short vs Sargon 1-0201980BlindfoldC02 French, Advance
5. Botvinnik vs Sargon 1-0371983HamburgA21 English
6. Sargon vs Constellation ½-½371986Dator mOteC51 Evans Gambit
7. Chessmaster vs Sargon 1-0201986Los AngelesB06 Robatsch
8. Chessmaster vs Sargon 1-0261986Los AngelesB05 Alekhine's Defense, Modern
9. Sargon vs MepIII Modular 1-02519874+4 (1)C34 King's Gambit Accepted
10. B Wall vs Sargon  1-0361987Man vs. MachineA00 Uncommon Opening
11. B Wall vs Sargon  1-0411987Man vs. MachineE00 Queen's Pawn Game
12. Sargon vs S Ahmed  0-13420018th MatchE97 King's Indian
  REFINE SEARCH:   White wins (1-0) | Black wins (0-1) | Draws (1/2-1/2) | Sargon wins | Sargon loses  

Kibitzer's Corner
Aug-09-10  whiteshark: Here is the Sargon I full source-code for Z80 (the book content in fact): http://web.archive.org/web/20070614...

Naturally Sargon is impressive, but having a chess program fully running (even if primitive) on 1KB RAM (code+data) is hot! It’s not a good chess program and will only challenge beginners, true beginners, but still it plays chess!

Apr-22-20  Messiah: It is somewhat disturbing that this page contains only one comment. Here is the second one.
Apr-22-20  SChesshevsky: Besides Sargon the computer chess player, I guess there were also some impressive ancient rulers named Sargon.

But for me, it's Sargon, from the original Star Trek series, who seems to have the best taste. First, he gets to take over Kirk. And then he also gets Diana Muldaur as his wife.

Oct-10-22  nok: It seems Sargon was written in assembly.

What was the first chess program in a high level language?

.

Oct-11-22  stone free or die: <nok> Good question.

I think Crafty (and maybe its successor Cray Blitz) must be a contender.

(Though all early C programs probably had optimized assembler code sections linked in)

Oct-11-22  stone free or die: <nok> Prodigy is another possible candidate:

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Pr...

.

Oct-11-22  stone free or die: Following the lineage up from <Prodigy> we arrive at the inevitable <Fortran> based program (circa 1974):

<Ribbit>

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Ri...

Oct-11-22
Premium Chessgames Member
  beatgiant: Older than <CHAOS> (circa 1973)? https://www.chessprogramming.org/CH...
Oct-12-22
Premium Chessgames Member
  beatgiant: Or Tech (1970), written in BLISS https://www.chessprogramming.org/Tech
Oct-12-22  stone free or die: <beat> I always thought of BLISS as a glorified assembler language for some reason. I knew VMS used it quite a bit - but I really didn't know much...

Checking out the wiki page on it reveals it's not an assembler. On the other hand, it's not really a high-level language either, at least in some regards:

<BLISS has many of the features of other modern high-level languages. It has block structure, an automatic stack, and mechanisms for defining and calling recursive routines ... provides a variety of predefined data structures and ... facilities for testing and iteration ...

On the other hand, BLISS omits certain features of other high-level languages. It does not have built-in facilities for input/output, because a system-software project usually develops its own input/output or builds on basic monitor I/O or screen management services ... it permits access to machine-specific features, because system software often requires this. BLISS has characteristics that are unusual among high-level languages. A name ... is uniformly interpreted as the address of that segment rather than the value of the segment ... Also, BLISS is an "expression language" rather than a "statement language".>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS

Oct-12-22  stone free or die: Looking at the <CHAOS> page I see that it really had its origins in the 1960's, but its official debut was at the 1973 ACM tournament I guess.

So using that as a hint I looked at the earliest ACM tournament - back in 1970 and found another early Fortran engine - Coko III, which ran on an IBM 360.

But there were other programs written in high-level languages already in 1970.

<J. Biit> was another high-level program - written in PL/I by Hans Berliner(!), dating from the late 60's.

<Schach> is another Fortran example, from 1968.

There was also <Awit>, an Algol W program, which was "inspired" in 1966.

https://www.chessprogramming.org/AC...

Oct-12-22  nok: Thank you, very interesting pages. So there are candidates BU (Before Unix.)

I was thinking more micros when I asked. I'm sure someone tried in PL/M or Basic...

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