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Socrates ¹

Socrates,
a series of DOS chess programs by Don Dailey and Larry Kaufman. Socrates was initially the 8086 assembly port of the C program Heuristic Alpha, developed for Julio Kaplan's company Heuristic Software. It had its tournament debut at the ACM 1991. While the C program evolved to Mini and Titan aka Socrates II, winner of the ACM 1993 on a 486 PC ahead of Cray Blitz and HiTech, later sold to Electronic Arts as engine of the mass-market entry Kasparov's Gambit, its 32-bit x86 assembly counterpart Socrates, the best program at Harvard Cup 1992 with 3 out of 5, beating grandmasters Patrick Wolff, Maxim Dlugy and John Fedorowicz ¹ , incorporated knowledge from Titan and evolved to Socrates 3.0, finally released and commercially market in 1993 not by Heuristic Software, but through a company called MDI ² . Since Larry Kaufman mentioned in 1992 that Null Move Pruning doubles the speed of the search ³ , NMP was likely also implemented in Socrates.

Screenshot

Socrates 3.0 Screen ⁴

Photos & Games

Harvard Cup 1992, Patrick Wolff and Don Dailey ^{5 6}

[Event "3rd Harvard Cup 1992 G/25"]
[Site "New York, NY USA"]
[Date "1992.07.11"]
[Round "02"]
[White "Socrates"]
[Black "Patrick Wolff"]
[Result "1-0"]

1.e4 d6 2.d4 c6 3.Nf3 g6 4.Be2 Bg7 5.O-O Nf6 6.Nc3 Qc7 7.h3 Nbd7 8.Re1 O-O
9.a4 b6 10.Bc4 e6 11.Bd2 Bb7 12.e5 dxe5 13.dxe5 Nd5 14.Qe2 a6 15.Rad1 c5
16.Bxd5 exd5 17.e6 Nf6 18.Ng5 d4 19.exf7+ Kh8 20.Nb1 Qc6 21.Qf3 Qxf3 22.gxf3
h6 23.Re7 Bd5 24.Ne6 Bxe6 25.Rxe6 Rxf7 26.Rxb6 Kh7 27.Kg2 Nd7 28.Rb7 Rc8
29.Na3 c4 30.Ba5 Rc5 31.Bb6 Rg5+ 32.Kf1 Rd5 33.Nxc4 Nxb6 34.Rxb6 Rxf3 35.Rxa6
Rxh3 36.Ke2 Rc5 37.b3 Rc3 38.Rd2 h5 39.Re6 h4 40.Re4 Rh5 41.a5 h3 42.Rd1 Rxc2+
43.Kf1 Ra2 44.Re7 Kh6 45.Rf7 d3 46.Rd7 Ra1 47.Rxa1 Bxa1 48.Kg1 Be5 49.Nxe5 Rxe5
50.b4 Rb5 51.Rxd3 Rxb4 52.Rxh3+ Kg5 53.Ra3 Rb7 54.a6 Ra7 55.f3 Kf4 56.Kf2 Ke5
57.Kg3 g5 58.Kg4 Kf6 59.Ra5 Ke6 60.Kxg5 Kd6 61.f4 Kc6 62.f5 Kb6 63.Ra2 Ra8
64.a7 1-0

Game on Lichess.org

See also

• Corel Chess
• Heuristic Alpha
• Kasparov's Gambit
• Mini
• Star Socrates
• Titan

Publications

• Larry Kaufman (1993). PC Software. Computer Chess Reports 1992-93, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 8-9
• Larry Kaufman (1993). PC Software. Computer Chess Reports 1993, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 9
• Thomas Mally (1993). Mäeutik oder Schmäh-Eutik? PC Schach 3/93 (German) ⁷

Forum Posts

• Socrates 3 vrs. Kasp. Gambit by RBasham700, rgcc, November 08, 1997
• socrates chess program by Frank Zimmer, CCC, May 31, 1998
• Socrates 3.0 and Win95 by Tim OLena, CCC, July 29, 1998
• Socrates 3.0 and Windows 95 by Heiko Mikala, CCC, November 07, 1998
• Re: Socrates 3.0 and NT - incompatible ? by Don Dailey, CCC, February 25, 1999
• socrates, don, posting here and future by Thorsten Czub, CCC, January 28, 2001
• Re: How do you count nodes? by Don Dailey, CCC, September 05, 2011
• La Máquina Preservadora 4. Don Dailey & Larry Kaufman by Luis a, Meca Foro, October 18, 2013

External Links

Chess Program

• Socrates II from Wikipedia
• The chess games of Socrates (Computer) from chessgames.com
• Free Chess Downloads by Ed Schröder

Socrates

• Socrates (disambiguation) from Wikipedia
• Socrates from Wikipedia, the classical Greek philosopher
• Titan (mythology) from Wikipedia

References