Subject: Tested Peter Tax's program

From: [email-masked] (Ulrich Mayring)
Date: Tue, 11 May 93 13:21:59 MET DST

Hi folks,

Am I actually the only one on this list beside Peter Tax, who tested his
Abalone version on the Mac? If not, I would be interested in hearing what
you think of its playing strength.

(BTW: Peter, I lost your EMail address, please send me message.)

Anyways, I played a few games against the three different computer oppo-
nents (Terminator III, Darth Vader and Bill Gates IV). Except for the
fact that the Mac seems to hang itself, whenever Darth Vader is playing
at 3 plies or more and further excepting the fact that Terminator III 
thinks overly long on some moves, the program works really fine.
Moves can be entered with the mouse and the Computer moves are not made
immediately, but they are foreshadowed by some blinking on the screen 
in order to make it visible what the Computer wants to do.
The three computer opponents do not seem to play a lot different, but I
only played two or three games against each, so I may not be able to
really tell. What surprised me was, how good they actually are. If I am
not careful they can beat me. Only if I put together all my concentration
and really think about moves can I beat them. However, then I beat them
every time. (On the other hand it may be said that when I play non-
chalantly, they beat me about half the time).
Since I don't know how good I actually am, this does not tell me a lot,
but Peter, who must have a lot of experiences with his program, may
bring some light into it. So, how do you do against it?

Further detailed comments later, I gotta run now...

Ulrich

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From: [email-masked] (Michael P. Frank)
Date: Tue, 11 May 93 13:57:37 EDT

I've played Peter Tax's Mac Abalone program too.  It's nice.
I should have a battle sometime between it and MITAbalone.

-Mike