Aart's Dedicated Computer Chess Page

As an enthusiastic young chess player, Aart Bik was thrilled to get the Fidelity Electronics Sensory Chess Challenger 8 as a birthday present from his parents in 1981. Since then, he always has been fascinated by programming a computer to play chess, which eventually resulted in the development of his own UCI engine BikJump and the stand-alone application Chess for Android.

After a while, Aart found that if the Chess Challenger responsed to e2-e4 with e7-e7 from its random opening book, it could always be beaten at Level 1 through the game shown below. As depicted on the corresponding photo, the Chess Challenger would admit its defeat by flashing all 64 red indicators.

[Challenger]

[Date "sometimes in 1981"]
[White "a much younger Aart Bik"]
[Black "Chess Challenger (Level 1)"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. Bb5 a6
4. Bxc6 dxc6
5. Nxe5 Qd4
6. Qh5 Qxe4+
7. Kd1 Qxg2
8. Qxf7+ Kd8
9. Qxf8# 1-0

The Chess Challenger was followed by a few more "dedicated" chess computers before Aart made the transition to chess software for personal computers. Although more practical, it lacks some of the charm of those early day chess computers.

Please note that this page is privately maintained by Aart Bik.