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About The Author
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Willem Rens, a retired professional, wrote a chess program named Gambit-80
around 1980. The program was one of the first reasonable playing programs in the
Netherlands. It became commercial and known in tournaments where computers
played against computers. The language for the program was the Z80 assembler
language running on RadioShack’s TRS-80, one of the early home computers. The
author had several ideas to improve the program, but most failed hopelessly.
Reasons were hardware limitations (16k of memory!) and not to forget the
complexity barrier. About thirty years later, a lot happened in computer land.
And when Microsoft introduced .NET, the author became challenged to try his old
ideas about chess programming with Visual Basic. The result was named GambitVB.
GambitVB plays reasonable chess and offers a complete and friendly
user-interface. GambitVB is not written with the intention to be a chess
champion, but will beat the common chess player. The emphasis is on
well-structured, self-documenting, object-oriented code. When the author wrote
his first program, he was inspired by the book “Sargon: A Computer Chess
Program” written by Dan and Kathe Spracklen. Today, a web site providing free
software and free documentation looked an obvious choice to inspire others.
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About The Program |
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- GambitVB can be
used on any Windows computer that supports Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0.
- The performance of
GambitVB depends on the power of your computer. GambitVB has been tested on a
powerful Windows Vista computer as well as on an older Dell Dimension 8250 with
512 MB of memory and Windows XP SP3 installed.
- The GambitVB User
Guide (in PDF or Word format) can be downloaded from this website.
- GambitVB is a
complete chess program controlled by a chess clock. Primary time and secondary
time are configurable by the user.
- GambitVB executes
in one of three modes: Board Setup, Running Game, and Review Game.
- In Board Setup
mode, you configure the chess board and the time
control.
- In Running Game
mode, you play chess against the computer. Played moves, Opening titles en ECO
codes are printed into a separate window.
- In Review Game
mode, you can review a previously played game. You also have the flexibility to
save, reload, and select a position to restart the game.
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