Colossus Chess

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Colossus Chess 4.0 3D board on C64

Colossus Chess, (Colossus)
the series of chess programs by Martin Bryant developed from 1983 on an Apple II in 6502 Assembly, based on Bryant's former program White Knight. Colossus Chess 2.0 was the first commercial release in 1984 for the Commodore 64 and this and subsequent versions for other 6502, Z80, 68000 and 8086 based home computers and personal computers, such as Atari 8-bit, BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga, and finally for the IBM PC. Colossus Chess pioneered a sophisticated GUI with an optional 3D chessboard, and lot of new features for that time, and has become one of the best selling chess programs of all time . Colossus Chess played the European MCC 1983 in London and the WMCCC 1984 in Glasgow.

Colossus Chess UCI

While the work on the commercial Colossus Chess series finished in 1991, Martin Bryant started a completely new and freely available UCI version in 2004, running under Windows, first written in C# then converted to C , released in 2005 through 2008 , as well as 13 years later in 2021 as 64-bit Windows executable .

Some features as mentioned in History / Test Results of the Colossus Chess UCI site :

Search

• Iterative Deepening
• Aspiration Windows
• Fail-Soft Principal Variation Search
• Transposition Table
• Move Ordering
  • Internal Iterative Deepening
  • Killer Heuristic
• Selectivity
  • Passed Pawn Extensions (in Endgame only)
  • Recapture Extensions
  • Adaptive Null Move Pruning
  • Futility Pruning
  • Mate Distance Pruning
  • Late Move Pruning
  • Late Move Reductions
• Quiescence Search

Evaluation

• Lazy Evaluation
• Material
• Mobility
• Rook on Seventh
• Pawn Structure
  • Pawn Hash Table
  • Doubled Pawn
  • Passed Pawn
  • Candidate Passed Pawn
  • Pawn Race Code
• Tarrasch Rule
• Wrong Color Bishop and Rook Pawn
• King Safety
• Mate at a Glance

Misc

• Perft

See also

• White Knight

Publications

• Martin Bryant (1984). Chess software for home computers. Computer & Video Games, January 1984, pdf hosted by Mike Watters
• Tony Harrington (1984). Of might and men. Personal Computer News, November 1984, pdf hosted by Mike Watters

Forum Posts

1996 ...

• Searching for Martin P. Bryant / Colossus X -Chess by Thorsten Czub, rgcc, November 08, 1996
• Colossus X - how strong today ? by Thorsten Czub, rgcc, June 25, 1998
• Re: Stadistic question: Nero 5, Colossus Chess X, CM3000 by Jari Huikari, CCC, October 08, 1999 » Nero

2000 ...

• old and very old programs, colossus chess... sargon... by Thorsten Czub, CCC, January 28, 2001
• Interview with Martin Bryant, the Man behind Colossus by Fernando Villegas, CCC, May 18, 2002
• isn't there a new version of colossus ? by Thorsten Czub, CCC, April 29, 2004
• Colossus Chess - Still life in the old horse by Bryan Whitby, CCC, October 21, 2005
• Colossus 2007d Available by Martin Bryant, CCC, September 22, 2007
• Colossus 2008a available by Martin Bryant, CCC, September 07, 2008
• Colossus 2008a : 2453 by Patrick Buchmann, CCC, September 09, 2008
• Colossus 2008b available by Martin Bryant, CCC, September 23, 2008

2010 ...

• Re: Colossus 2008b by Graham Banks, CCRL Discussion Board, January 12, 2011 (Download)
• Colossus 2008b by Bryan Whitby, CCC, December 10, 2017

2020 ...

• Colossus Chess 2021 !! by Thorsten Czub, CCC, September 28, 2021
• Colossus 2021a - Minor updates by Martin Bryant, CCC, October 01, 2021

External Links

Chess Engines

• Colossus Chess from Wikipedia
• Colossus' (Chess) ICGA Tournaments
• Chess Computers - The UK Story by Mike Watters

Colossus 2.0

• Commodore 64/128 Old Computer Chess Game Collection - Colossus 2 from The Spacious Mind
• Colossus Chess 2.0 from GameBase 64
• Colossus Chess 2.0 - Lemon - Commodore 64, C64 Games, Reviews & Music!

Colossus 3.0

• Atari 400 800 XL XE - Colossus Chess 3.0 from The World's Finest Atari Database

Colossus 4.0

• Colossus Chess 4.0 from The Gamebase Collection
• Commodore 64/128 Old Computer Chess Game Collection - Colossus 4 from The Spacious Mind
• Colossus Chess 4.0 - Lemon - Commodore 64, C64 Games, Reviews & Music!

Colossus Chess 4.0 product manual (C64)

• Colossus Chess 4 - World of Spectrum
• Spectrum 48K - Old Home Computer Chess Games Collection - Colossus Chess 4.0 from The Spacious Mind
• Colossus Chess 4 for Amstrad CPC (1986) from MobyGames
• Colossus Chess 4 for BBC Micro (1986) Ad Blurbs - MobyGames

Colossus X

• Atari ST Old Computer Chess Game Collection - Colossus Chess X from The Spacious Mind
• Colossus Chess X : Hall Of Light – The database of Amiga games
• Free Chess Downloads by Ed Schröder

Colossus Chess UCI

• Colossus Chess UCI
• Colossus Chess UCI (Wayback Machine, May 2016)
• Colossus in CCRL 40/15

Misc

• Colossus from Wikipedia
• Colossus of Rhodes from Wikipedia

The Colossus of Rhodes (novel)

• Colossi of Memnon from Wikipedia
• Colossus computer from Wikipedia

Lorenz ciphers and the Colossus by Tony Sale, Bletchley Park

• Colossus (comics) from Wikipedia
• Colossus (novel) from Wikipedia

The Fall of Colossus

Colossus and the Crab

• Colossus: The Forbin Project (film) from Wikipedia
• Colosseum from Wikipedia
• Colosseum (disambiguation) from Wikipedia
• Colosseum - Rope Ladder to the Moon (1971), YouTube Video

Mark Clarke, Clem Clempson, Chris Farlowe, Dave Greenslade, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Jon Hiseman

References

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